Agnes Harder

Agnes Harder (born March 24, 1864 in Königsberg i. Pr .; † February 3 or February 7, 1939 in Berlin ) was a German teacher and writer.

Life

Agnes Harder was the daughter of the lawyer and later district court president Rudolf Harder and his wife Luise, née Keßler. Harder spent her childhood and youth in East Prussia . She attended the secondary school for girls and from 1881 to 1883 the teachers' college in Elbing . As an unmarried woman, she lived with her parents until their death. After passing the exam, she initially worked as a teacher. On the side she began to write and created smaller poems, and since 1891 also narrative works. Eventually she gave up the job of teaching and devoted herself entirely to writing. Extensive trips through Europe followed. Harder stayed in Italy and Sweden for a long time. She processed the experience of this trip into articles and travel pictures, which she sold to the Magdeburger Zeitung. This work marked the beginning of her journalistic career. Articles for the Berliner Zeitung, Preussische Zeitung, Deutsche Zeitung, Daheim and others followed later . a. In 1902 Harder moved to Berlin with her parents. In 1899, the three-volume novel Im Kaleidoskop was published , the plot of which is set in Berlin. In this work, Harder let people of all walks of life meet in a boarding house in the Tiergarten district. Harder tried to capture the zeitgeist from Berlin at the turn of the century and to illustrate it in the form of conversations with the guests. Its further development is already beginning to become clear here: the city of Berlin appears to be a juggernaut, while real quality of life can only be found in rural life. Harder lived in Berlin until her death in 1939, where she became secretary of the German Women's Association and a board member of the Lyceum Club . She often spent the summer on her sister's estate in East Prussia. Many of her novels are set in her East Prussian homeland, with the focus mostly on depicting women's lives. In 1927 she published her memoirs under the title From my childhood days in East Prussia . Her novels were received by a wide audience.

Even her first works, which appeared at the end of the 19th century, bear witness to a nationalist attitude that after the First World War emerged as völkisch nationalism in her writings. In the essay “Is Art International?” (1920) she expresses her national literary understanding by saying that art is

“Really rooted and with strong roots, comes from the earth, often grows quietly and unnoticed through generations [...]. Art can never be international, because it is the deepest outflow of folkish nature "

The artist feel

“That his revelations come to him from the unconscious. These can only be the secret juices of the breed. Because one is born to be a citizen of a people "

Harder joined the German National People's Party and became a member of the German Association of Women Writers . Her East Prussian novel Neue Kinder alten Erde ( New Children of Old Earth) , which was published in advance in Daheim before 1933 , shows numerous Nazi ideologems (e.g. glorification of blood and soil , the cult of the Führer, hostility towards Poland and anti-Semitism ). After the seizure of power by the Nazis , she signed in October 1933, along with other 87 writers, the vow faithful allegiance to Adolf Hitler . The NSDAP they did not join. In 1937 she became a member of the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK). Not only the Nazi novel New Children of the Old World , but also their other texts enjoyed great popularity in the “ Third Reich ”. Many texts found their way into the German reading book for elementary schools (1935ff.). Harder's last novel, Der Erbe von Rauschnicken , came out in 1939.

Agnes Harder was buried in the Wilmersdorf cemetery in Berlin.

Various of her works, such as Die kleine Stadt (1927), were reprinted after the Second World War.

After 1945, great interest in the person and work in West Germany came from the expellee associations Landsmannschaft Westpreußen and Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen and similar institutions. Junge (2018) describes the "principle of Harder reception" pursued by these associations for a long time as follows: "Withholding their National Socialist attitude and enthusiasm for their texts that transfigured their homeland."

See also : List of East Prussian writers

Works

• Schlumski . Perthes, Gotha 1916
• Everyday life. Novel. Max Seyfert publishing house, Dresden 1916
• New old earth children. An East Prussian novel . Flöttman, Gütersloh 1933
• The heir to Rauschniken . Scherl, Berlin 1939
• The darling of the gods . Rothbarth, Leipzig 1938
• The small town. From my childhood days . Graefe and Unzer, Königsberg / Prussia 1927, reprints 1966 and 1988
• The blonde forelock and his suitors . Reissner, Dresden 1913
• Against the yellow dragon. Adventure and rides by two young German men in the land of the boxers . 1900
• Doctor Eisenbart . Published by Otto Janke, Berlin. o. J., 1897 (based on the surgeon Johann Andreas Eisenbarth )

literature

• Harder, Miss Agnes . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 312 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Manuel Junge: Agnes Harder - the "Nordic" East Prussian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, pp. 247 - 271.
• Gertraude Wilhelm:  Harder, Agnes Marie Luise Gabrielle. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 664 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Agnes Harder in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Agnes Harder in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Photo from Reclam Universum-Jahrbuch 1914. Leipzig 1914, p. 112

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Manuel Junge: Agnes Harder - the "Nordic" East Prussian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, pp. 259f.
2. ↑ Manuel Junge: Agnes Harder - the "Nordic" East Prussian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, p. 250ff.
3. ↑ Agnes Harder: “Is art international?”. In: Hanns Fechner (Ed.): Confessions of German Artists . Leipzig: Vieweg 1920, p. 16, 19th quote from Junge (2018), p. 253.
4. ↑ Agnes Harder: “Is art international?”. In: Hanns Fechner (Ed.): Confessions of German Artists . Leipzig: Vieweg 1920, p. 16. Quoted from Junge (2018), p. 253.
5. ↑ Petra Budke, Jutta Schulze: Writers in Berlin 1871-1945, Orlanda Frauenverlag 1995, p. 161
6. ↑ Manuel Junge: Agnes Harder - the "Nordic" East Prussian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, pp. 256-259.
7. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 216.
8. ↑ Manuel Junge: Agnes Harder - the "Nordic" East Prussian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, p. 255.
9. ↑ Manuel Junge: Agnes Harder - the "Nordic" East Prussian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, p. 260.
10. ↑ Manuel Junge: Agnes Harder - the "Nordic" East Prussian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, p. 263f.