Emil Rosenow

Emil Rosenow

Emil Rosenow (born March 9, 1871 in Cologne , † February 7, 1904 in Schöneberg near Berlin ) was a German writer , editor and member of the Reichstag .

Life

Rosenow was the son of the shoemaker Friedrich Rosenow from Dallentin in the Neustettin district, who died early, and Charlotte Rosenow, née Röhr. His father died when he was 11 years old and at 14 he was an orphan. He came to see his guardian Gottlieb Gogarten alone, without his siblings. He initially earned his living as an apprentice bookbinder, but began his apprenticeship in banking in 1885 and joined the Schaafhausen Bank Association. At the age of fifteen, Rosenow published the Cologne humorist , for which he wrote most of it himself.

During his training as a businessman he began to deal intensively with the social conditions of his time and to observe them critically. So it came about that he came into close contact with the labor movement and joined the SPD in 1888 . At first he still worked at the bank, but his soon passionate advertising for the Social Democrats led to conflicts and ultimately to termination of employment1 on October 31, 1891.

SPD member of the Reichstag from Saxony from 1903

During this time Rosenow began to write, for the Kölner Anzeiger and the Elberfelder Freie Presse he wrote poems, short stories and leading articles. In 1892, at the age of 21, Rosenow became editor-in-chief of the SPD's workers' newspaper , the Chemnitz Observer . In those years he also wrote an important social reformation to improve the situation of the Chemnitz workers and worked as a lecturer in history in the workers' education association . He carried out this activity until autumn 1898. At the Chemnitz Observer , he met the editor's daughter Maria Anna Ludwig, whom he married in 1897 and with her had two daughters, Annamaria and Marianne.

At that time he was already writing serial novels, short stories and the novel The Injustice of Social Life , but these "barely got beyond the pattern of pathetically compassionate descriptions of misery and popular good-and-bad contrasts".

In Chemnitz and the surrounding area, Rosenow advertised a considerable amount for the Social Democrats and thus received several police penalties, including bans on performance. He was eventually detained for six months. He used the time during his prison stay to write and the novel Die Läge was written, among other things . Because of these stays, he lost his job with the Chemnitz observer .

In 1899 he edited the Rheinisch-Westfälische Arbeiterzeitung based in Dortmund for half a year .

Rosenow wrote two calendar stories for the New World , a social democratic magazine that was published until 1891. He also wrote for the social democratic satirical magazine Wahren Jakob , which was mainly read by SPD members.

Just one year after joining the SPD , he was elected a member of the SPD in the German Reichstag in 1899 , until then he was the youngest candidate to succeed. He then moved to Berlin in 1900 and was re-elected in 1903. He is described as a sought-after, eloquent party speaker.

In Berlin in 1902 he wrote the Saxon dialect comedy Kater Lampe , which was filmed by Veit Harlan in 1936 . The play premiered on the stage of the New Summer Theater in Breslau on August 2, 1902.

At the age of 33, Rosenow died in Berlin in 1904 of a rheumatic disease and was buried in the Schöneberg community cemetery.

estate

Rosenow left behind some drafts for a play called The Hope of the Vagabonds . This piece also deals with the life of the Saxon Robin Hood Karl Stülpner .
There is also another part of Rosenow's estate in the German Literature Archive in Marbach with "poetry (collection of poems), dramatic ( those who live in the shadows ), prose (novel The injustice of social life ), letters (including by Otto Brahms, Alfred Halm , Carl Ludwig and Otto Neumann-Hofer) and life documents (eviction notices and publisher accounts) ”.

Works

• Home

Rosenow wrote his first drama in 1894, the one-act play at home . "Out of artistic conviction, Rosenow oriented himself to the stylistic devices of naturalism, to the early Gerhart Hauptmann , to Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf ". However, even at home he created a clearly more aggressive image of himself, as he conveys “the inescapability of the process of social impoverishment”.

• The courting grouse

The four-act character describes "the breakout from the firmly established and deadlocked life situation of a company wife as an act of human self-liberation". But even here Rosenow does not achieve the “necessary artistic density”.

• Who live in the shade

The drama was written in 1899 and deals with a mining accident that led to conflicts that ultimately shattered relationships between the characters.

Rosenow succeeds in creating a very authentic piece with distinctive dialects and "detailed inclusion of an entire industrial landscape" typical of naturalism. The individual dialects are “characterizing and differentiating”, so Rosenow enables the reader to gain an immediate insight into his worldview. In addition, the individual characters are in a realistic and realistic, proletarian everyday milieu.

• Hangover lamp

The comedy was written in 1902 and is similar to the play Die Leben im Schatten in that the dialects and descriptions are also very pronounced. Rosenow gives each character an individual speech gesture, depending on the social gradation, more and more dialect-based, thereby "Rosenow managed to equip his characters with a high degree of vitality and closeness to life as well as a special kind of bizarre". Kater Lampe is based on rumors that Rosenow heard about another municipality during a stay in the Ore Mountains. According to this, some of the people described should actually have existed, but Rosenow changed their names.

• capital

1898

• The ten red thalers

Created in 1900, the subject of the plot and the surroundings of the characters are similar to his other, previous works, but what is new is that Rosenow openly incorporates social democratic motifs, which he previously mostly avoided. Social democratic speeches are given and there is even an election meeting of the SPD.

• Two agitators

This work was created in 1901 and here, too, the divide between poor and rich is addressed. As in The Ten Red Talers , the piece deals with social democratic issues in a way that critics clearly interpret as advertising for the SPD.

• Eduard Vehse's Illustrated History of the Prussian Court, Nobility and Diplomacy from the Great Elector to the death of Kaiser Wilhelm I.

Continued by Vehse (1802–1870) redivivus (di Emil Rosenow) (1903)

• Against clergy

A two-volume work on the religious battles of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which, among other things, the persecution of witches is discussed. However, since he died before the end of the second volume, Heinrich Ströbel completed the last chapter; how much he actually wrote is unknown. With this work Rosenow proves himself to be an able art historian.

• Collected Works

1906

• Collected dramas

With a biographical introduction by Christian Gaehde (1912).

style

Rosenow always avoided explicitly promoting the Social Democrats in his works. The show The courtship grouse is an exception . based on the also naturalistic work Nora by Henrik Ibsen , Two Agitators and The Ten Red Talers . Rosenow's dramas repeatedly deal with the “lifeworld of the poor and the declassed” and their exploitation. He focused on the misfortunes and joys of the individual characters and less on the class struggle-influenced society as a whole. His mostly fictional characters are always weighed down by the “determining determinism of overpowering, oppressive conditions and the often desperate search to overcome them”. In hangover lamp. as well as in The Hope of the Vagabonds , Rosenow based himself on real people, but in the former he changed the names.

Performances

His first drama Daheim was premiered on September 24, 1921, after it had been rejected by the Free Volksbühne during Rosenow's lifetime; the premiere took place at a KPD solidarity event for Soviet Russia .

The drama Living in the Shadows was first performed in 1912, also after Rosenow's death, as it had previously been banned. In contrast, the comedy Kater Lampe was successfully performed in several places in Germany from 1903 onwards. However, Rosenow died a year later, so that he did not earn much with the piece, but it secured an income for his widow and her second husband Hermann Essig .

People about Emil Rosenow

“Rosenow was by no means part of the scholarly elite of the German social democracy. To this day he is mainly known as a dramatist, above all for the play Kater Lampe, which is in the tradition of Hauptmann's social comedy (premiered in Breslau 1902). "

- Matthias John :

"Rosenow was a first-rate talent."

- Christian Gaehde :

literature

• Emil Rosenow . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, pp. 251-252.
• Rainer Theobald: Vehse redivivus: a social democrat (Emil Rosenow). In: From the antiquarian bookshop, supplement to the Börsenblatt for the German book trade. No. 5 (1987).
• Sigfrid Hoefert: Rosenow's "Kater Lamp". On the history of Gerhart Hauptmann's impact. In: Seminar. Volume 5, 1969, pp. 141-144.
• Conrad Schmidt : Emil Rosenow. In: The literary echo. Volume 14, 1911/12, Col. 819-824.
• Manfred Claus: Emil Rosenow in Rothenthal. On the trail of the popular play "Kater Lampe" and its author. In: Erzgebirgische Heimatblätter . 2/1986, pp. 39-44, ISSN  0232-6078
• Emil Rosenow: Collected dramas by Emil Rosenow. With a biographical introduction by Christian Gaehde . Vinegar, Berlin 1912.
• Wilfried Adling among others: Rosenow, Emil. In: Inge Diersen et al. (Ed.): Lexicon of socialist German literature: from the beginnings to 1945. Monographic-biographical representations. Language and Literature, Halle (Saale) 1963. pp. 415–417.
• Matthias John: On the persecution of witches in the historical picture of the German social democracy before 1914. Emil Rosenows Against the priestly rule. Cultural images from the religious battles of the 16th and 17th centuries. In: Marion George, Andrea Rudolph (ed.): Witches: historical factuality and fictional imagery. JH Röll, Dettelbach 2004. pp. 279-315.
• Ursula Münchow: Rosenow, Emil. In: Simone Barck (Ed.): Lexicon of socialist literature: their history in Germany until 1945. Metzler, Stuttgart 1994, pp. 392–393.

Web links

• Literature by and about Emil Rosenow in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Emil Rosenow at Zeno.org .
• Emil Rosenow in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Emil Rosenow in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors

supporting documents

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Emil Rosenow: Collected dramas by Emil Rosenow. With a biographical introduction by Christian Gaehde . Pp. 1-14.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Wilfried Adling and others: Rosenow, Emil. In: Lexicon of socialist German literature: from the beginning to 1945. Monographic-biographical representations.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Ursula Münchow: Rosenow, Emil. In: Lexicon of socialist literature: their history in Germany until 1945. P. 392–393.
4. ^ ^{A b} Matthias John: On the witch hunt in the historical image of the German social democracy before 1914. Emil Rosenows Against the priesthood. Cultural images from the religious battles of the 16th and 17th centuries. P. 298.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Ursula Münchow: Rosenow, Emil. P. 392.
6. ↑ Matthias John: On the witch hunt in the historical image of the German social democracy before 1914. Emil Rosenows Against the priesthood. Cultural images from the religious battles of the 16th and 17th centuries. P. 301.
7. ↑ Matthias John: On the witch hunt in the historical image of the German social democracy before 1914. Emil Rosenows Against the priesthood. Cultural images from the religious battles of the 16th and 17th centuries.
8. ^ Emil Rosenow: Collected dramas by Emil Rosenow. With a biographical introduction by Christian Gaehde., P. 13.