Adolf von Hatzfeld

Adolf von Hatzfeld (born September 3, 1892 in Olpe ; † July 25, 1957 in Bonn ) was a German writer .

Life

Adolf von Hatzfeld comes from the Westphalian noble family von Hatzfeld . The father was a magistrate . Hatzfeld grew up in Hamm and Düsseldorf . In 1911, he put in Emmerich the matriculation examination from; the composer and poet Gregor Schwake was one of his fellow high school graduates. Then Hatzfeld began a commercial apprenticeship in Hamburg , which he broke off after a short time. In the fall of 1911 he began an officer training as a cadet in Bückeburg . While under arrest for an argument, he attempted suicide with a pistol in July 1913 . The shot in the head made him blind .

After leaving the military began Hatzfeld a study of German language and literature , art history and philosophy at the universities in Münster , Freiburg and Marburg , which he in 1919 with the promotion to Doctor of Philosophy graduated (Topic: Achim von Arnim's "crown Guardian" and the romantic novel, Freiburg 1920). As a student in Münster he became an active member of the Catholic student association Markomannia in KV . From 1917 he lived in Munich , where he worked as a freelance writer and had contact with authors such as Rilke , Thomas Mann and Ernst Toller . In 1919 von Hatzfeld joined the USPD . From 1921 he made numerous trips to Flanders , Italy , Scandinavia , Scotland , North Africa , Sudan , Persia and the Crimea . From 1922 he was based in Cologne and since his marriage to Mathilde Wegeler in 1925 in Bad Godesberg ; In 1926 and 1929 the children Elisabeth and Georg were born. In the following years von Hatzfeld was involved in the Association of Rhenish Poets, which he co-founded in 1926, and since 1929 in the Rhenish Working Group of the German League for Human Rights . In 1927 he traveled to Moscow , where he met the former Soviet Foreign Minister Chicherin . The friendship with the Flemish writer Felix Timmermans , which was important for his work, fell at the same time .

In the years following the takeover of the National Socialists (Nazi) came from Hatzfeld more and more into the inner isolation that in 1935 the separation from his wife and to retreat into a country house in Ense-Bittingen in Soest led. In 1936 von Hatzfeld's economic situation deteriorated to such an extent that he believed he had to join the Reichsschrifttumskammer . In 1937 he also became a member of the NSDAP, for which he was particularly involved in cultural party events and in maintaining German-Flemish relations in the following years. After the death of his wife, he returned to Bad Godesberg in 1939.

After the end of the Second World War , von Hatzfeld went through a period of scarcity and illness. In 1948, while he was hospitalized for several months, he had to undergo a head operation to remove the bullet that had caused his blindness. From 1949 to 1951 von Hatzfeld worked for the " Wetzlarer Neue Zeitung ". Politically, he was again involved in the pacifist movement, which contributed to his isolation in the early Federal Republic . From 1950 to 1952 he lived in Positano , Italy , where he met Rudolf Hagelstange and Ignazio Silone . In 1952 he married his secretary Ruth Faßbender. Adolf von Hatzfeld died of complications from pneumonia .

Adolf von Hatzfeld's work, which is strongly influenced by his blindness, but also by his travels and acquaintances with fellow writers, includes novels , stories , essays and poetry . Von Hatzfeld is a representative of Expressionism, particularly in his poems. His literary impact was largely limited to the period between the First and Second World War, at which time he was also reviewing a record for Telefunken: To nature - driven hunt ; Immediately after 1945 he was only considered an outsider and was forgotten after his death.

Adolf von Hatzfeld received the Prize of the Young Germany Society in 1919 , the Joseph von Görres Prize of the University of Bonn in 1943 and the Annette von Droste Hülshoff Prize in 1953 .

Works

• Poems , Leipzig 1915
• Love , Munich 1918
• To God , Berlin 1919
• Francis , Berlin 1919
• Achim von Arnim's "Crown Guard" and the romantic novel , Freiburg i. B. 1920
• Sommer , Alfred Flechtheim , Düsseldorf 1920 (together with Marie Laurencin , who made 4 lithographs )
• Love poems , Düsseldorf 1922 (together with Karl Hofer)
• Essays , Hanover 1923
• Poems , Hanover 1923
• Youth poems , Cologne 1923
• The Lemmings , Hanover [u. a.] 1923
• To nature , Cologne 1924
• Poems , Freiburg i. B. 1925
• Positano , Freiburg i.Br. 1925
• Rural summer , Bielefeld 1926
• The broken heart , Stuttgart 1926
• The lucky ship , Stuttgart [u. a.] 1931
• Felix Timmermans, poet and draftsman of his people , Berlin 1935
• Poems , Hamburg 1936
• Poems of the country , Potsdam 1936
• The flight to Moscow , Potsdam 1942
• Melody of the Heart , Hattingen (Ruhr) 1951
• Incidents , Hattingen (Ruhr) 1952
• Franziskus und other seals , Paderborn 1992
• Adolf von Hatzfeld reading book. Compiled and with an afterword by Dieter Sudhoff . Cologne 2007 [= Nylands Kleine Westfälische Bibliothek 14] ISBN 978-3-936235-15-9 Online edition of the reader

Translations

• The Flemish battle poem , Jena 1942
• Excerpts from Boudewijn by Felix Timmermans, 1935

literature

• Dietmar N. Schmidt:  Hatzfeld, Adolf von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , p. 61 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Ilse Seiffert: Landscape and Tribalism in Westphalian Poetry, especially with Adolf von Hatzfeld , Bonn 1938
• Adolf von Hatzfeld , Dortmund 1959
• Elisabeth Deinhard: Adolf von Hatzfeld , Torino 1981
• Dieter Sudhoff: "The most important living Westphalian poets of the present". Adolf von Hatzfeld, Josef Winckler and the Droste Prize 1953. A documentation. In: Literature in Westphalia. Contributions to research 3/1995, pp. 153–193.
• Dieter Sudhoff: The literary modernity and Westphalia. Visiting a neglected cultural landscape. Bielefeld 2002 [= Publications of the Literature Commission for Westphalia 3], pp. 137–203

Web links

• Literature by and about Adolf von Hatzfeld in the catalog of the German National Library
• Adolf von Hatzfeld in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
• Adolf von Hatzfeld's estate in the University and State Library of Münster

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bernhard Bröckerhoff: P. Dr. Gregor Schwake OSB, 1892–1967, Abitur 1911 . In: Städtisches Willibrord-Gymnasium Emmerich (ed.): Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the reopening in 1832 , Emmerich 1982, pp. 121–126.