Karl Kaltwasser

Karl Kaltwasser (born September 17, 1894 in Wiesbaden ; † March 28, 1979 in Kassel ) was a German author and, during the National Socialist German Reich, as a national socialist - völkisch cultural politician, head of the Reichsschrifttumskammer des Gaus Kurhessen and from its founding in 1942 to around 1970 managing director of Brothers Grimm Society Kassel.

Live and act

Kaltwasser, the son of a craftsman, attended the state high school in Wiesbaden and graduated from high school at Easter 1914. In August of the same year he was drafted into military service and spent the next few years on the Western Front. In 1916 he suffered a serious wound off Verdun ; at the end of the war he was in Flanders . From 1918 he continued his studies of art history, literary history and philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , which he had begun in 1914 , moved to Frankfurt in 1923 and graduated there in 1925. From 1925 he worked as a freelance writer, theater critic and publicist, giving lectures, organizing training courses and scientific tours. In 1931 he went to Kassel because of his wife's job. There he continued his work as a private scholar.

In his speech on the opening ceremony of the Grimm Society on November 19, 1942, Kaltwasser commented on the extent to which the company was founded by well-known party functionaries (apart from Kaltwasser the Gauleiter Karl Weinrich , his deputy Max Solbrig and the Chief President Philipp von Hessen ) was integrated into the cultural policy strategy of the NSDAP :

“The call to found a Brothers Grimm Society with its headquarters in Kassel has with us, has it outside in the Reich and, as a number of letters from the Feldpost shows, has awakened a lively response from soldiers at the front. What the Gauleiter of our district, conscious of his cultural responsibility as representative and governor of the Führer in a heartland of the empire, suggested with this appeal, had already lived longer or shorter in us and outside in more than one head, albeit in very different ways Shape [...]. Regardless of how the mental past of what we are doing here today may have looked like in the various minds, it proves that something coincidental did not happen with the call of the Gauleiter [...], but that something was brought into being here, which for the Life was pressing and that had to become reality if a deeper meaning was not to remain unfulfilled and a great task was not to be overlooked. [...] That it serves the necessary return of our people to its real needs, keeps the noblest German heritage alive and continues to work in its spirit, that rightly expects the time of a Brothers Grimm Society. "

Kaltwasser, whose publications remained manageable as a writer and managing director of the Brothers Grimm Society in Kassel, was also active as a literary critic. In his 1938 speech Vom active Word , he referred to the poet Hans Grimm , with whom he was personally connected and whose distinction between “active” and “vain” words he included in his speech. Kaltwasser sees the task of "literature work" in the " service [...] to the active German word, to the active German book, to the active German literature in general " and summarizes that " our struggle, our defense against the vain and our service to the active word " apply. The former produced a literature that tore down the German world and helped unintelligible strangers to destroy it. " We know today how dangerous a rule of the vain word can be for the whole of völkisch life ". Kaltwassers criticism applies to those “ vain, tormenting writers intent on decomposition ” who “distorted and humiliated” the German people's greatest sacrifice, the First World War : “ Our descendants will never understand how the German people understand so much that is sick and disintegrating, so much unnatural Exaggerated, so much disciplined and shamelessly exaggerated poured into his life from books in his language ”. The main criterion for which literature is permissible in Germany must in future be solely that it is “German” in the sense he describes: “But above all it is important to be. To be true, to be loyal, to be German ”.

In the Soviet zone of occupation , Kaltwassers writings, Das Schicksalsbuch. A true story about “People without Space” (1937), Vom aktivigen Wort (1938) and Living Heritage. Speech for the opening ceremony of the Brothers Grimm Society in Kassel (1943) placed on the list of literature to be sorted out.

After the Second World War , Kaltwasser published an illustrated book about Wilhelmshöhe and Wilhelmsthal Castle and in 1957 published the history of the city of Kassel by Paul Heidelbach after his death. Together with Karl Vötterle and Bernhard Martin, he was the editor of the cultural magazine "Die neue Schau" from 1952 to 1958.

From 1952 to 1968, Kaltwasser was a city councilor of the Kassel FDP and from 1956 to 1968 its parliamentary group chairman. He was acting in a party that - according to Richard Wurbs - "was more of a nationalist after the war" and in which Kaltwasser "played a key role in determining the art and cultural policy of the city of Kassel".

Part of the estate of cold water is in the Kassel city archive . Karl-Kaltwasser-Strasse in Kassel is a reminder of him.

Publications (selection)

• The book of fate. A true story about “people without space”. Langen / Müller, Munich 1937.
• From the active word. A speech. Bärenreiter, Kassel n.d. (1938).
• Small city. Langewiesche, Königstein 1941.
• Living heritage. Speech at the opening ceremony of the Brothers Grimm Society in Kassel. Bärenreiter, Kassel no year (speech of November 19, 1942).
• Wilhelmshöhe and Wilhelmstal Castle. Langewiesche, Königstein 1955.

literature

• Ewald Grothe : Kaltwasser, Karl. In: Kassel Lexicon. ed. v. of the city of Kassel, vol. 1, Kassel 2009, p. 308.
• Ewald Grothe: The Kassel writer and publicist Karl Kaltwasser (1894–1979) during the Nazi era. In: Yearbook of the Brothers Grimm Society 19/20 (2009/10) (2019), pp. 189–202.
• Erich Stockhorst: Five thousand heads. Who was what in the 3rd Reich? Blick + Bild, Velbert, Kettwig 1967, ISBN 3-88741-117-X , 2nd edition, Kiel 1985, 3rd edition, Kiel 1998.

Web links

• Estate database of the Federal Archives on nachlassdatenbank.de
• Overview, letter K, 1946 on polunbi.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Kaltwasser: Lebendiges Erbe. P. 3, 12 f.
2. ^ Karl Kaltwasser: On the active word. Pp. 6, 9-11, 13.
3. ↑ Overview, letter K, 1946 on polunbi.de
4. ↑ Florian Hagemann: Will we be democrats , in: Hessische / Niedersächsische Allgemeine from November 29, 2005, o. P.
5. ↑ Contents: Manuscripts and prints on fiction, art and cultural history, Hessian and Kassel history, 1925–1979, size: 1 running meter.