Alfred Mombert

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Alfred Mombert 1909, photo by Atelier Gottmann, Heidelberg

Alfred Mombert (born February 6, 1872 in Karlsruhe , † April 8, 1942 in Winterthur ) was a German writer , poet and lyric poet and, because of his Jewish descent , was persecuted by the Nazi regime for racist reasons.

Life

Mombert was a son of the German Jewish businessman Eduard Mombert and his wife Helene Gombertz; the economist Paul Mombert was his cousin. In 1890 he was on humanistic Grand Ducal High School in his hometown of Karlsruhe , the High School and then graduated as a one-year volunteer his military service .

Then he began to study law at the Universities of Heidelberg , Leipzig and Berlin . In 1896 Mombert passed his first state examination in Heidelberg and received his doctorate (without a dissertation ) the following year - also in Heidelberg . After working as a legal intern, unskilled worker and service administrator at various Baden courts and authorities as well as in the legal practice of his brother-in-law Otto Gutman in Karlsruhe, he passed the second state examination in 1899. However, his application for use in the Baden state service was rejected. Between 1899 and 1906 he worked as a lawyer with his own law firm in Heidelberg, where he lived until 1940 with one interruption during the Munich years (1909–1911). In 1906 he finally gave up his profession and devoted himself entirely to writing.

In addition, he studied geography and oriental studies and made numerous trips up to 1939, repeatedly to Italy and Switzerland , but also, at that time still unusual, to numerous other countries, some outside of Europe, such as Egypt , Algeria , Greece , Holland , Croatia , Morocco , Monaco , Norway , Austria , Palestine , Portugal , Spain , Sweden , Syria , Czechoslovakia and Tunisia . In the context of mythological studies he dealt intensively with ancient, Nordic, ancient Near Eastern and Indian myths , on the basis of which he developed a kind of mythological-cosmological under the influence of the intensive discussion with Friedrich Nietzsche and under the impression of a vision experience perceived as a turning point in life (January 1894) Private religion developed, which developed in its mythical-cosmic poetry since The Glowing One .

His mystical-visionary works were highly valued by Friedrich Kurt Benndorf , Richard Benz , Martin Buber , Hans Carossa , Richard Dehmel , Herbert Eulenberg , Oskar Loerke , Alfons Paquet and Stanisław Przybyszewski , who translated parts of his works into Polish. Unmarried and very withdrawn living in great loneliness, often traveling alone, living with his widowed older sister Ella Gutmann since 1939, he was nevertheless on friendly terms with writers and artists such as Carossa, Ida and Richard Dehmel, with Buber, Max Dauthendey , Herbert Eulenberg, Hermann Hesse , Gustav Landauer , Rudolf Pannwitz , Hans Reinhart , Emanuel Lešehrad , who translated parts of his work into Czech, Emil Rudolf Weiß , who portrayed in, and Gustav Wolf , who created drawings for the poet's works. Mombert was also in contact with the visual artists Hermann Haller (portrait bust), Karl Hofer (several portraits) and Arthur Zweiniger (portrait bust). Letters testify to the long-term love relationship with an unknown pianist with the code name Vasanta, which has been cultivated over the spatial distance. He was also in regular correspondence with the singer Gertrud Full, who had settings of his poems in her repertoire . During the First World War, Mombert was deployed as a non-commissioned officer in the Landsturm from 1915, initially in Baden-Baden, and from 1916 in Poland. His use in the administration of the fortress hospital enabled him to continue his literary work during the war.

In 1919 Mombert became a member of the Art and Culture Council for Baden , in the same year renamed the Community of the Porte , which happily praised itself in the program formulated by Richard Benz and published in 1919 in the October issue of the magazine Die Tat , with him "the greatest today in the German language poems [...] to be able to count among us ”. In 1921 he became a member of the Richard Dehmel Society. In 1928 he was accepted into the Prussian Academy of Arts . His sixtieth birthday was celebrated in Heidelberg on February 5 and 6, 1932, and on February 18 in Zurich.

On 5 May 1933 he was appointed by the 13 March 1933 and of Joseph Goebbels led Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda of racial grounds together because of his Jewish ancestry with Alfred Doblin , Leonhard Frank , Ludwig Fulda , Georg Kaiser , Bernhard Kellermann , Thomas Mann , Rudolf Pannwitz , Alfons Paquet , René Schickele , Fritz von Unruh , Jakob Wassermann and Franz Werfel excluded from the academy. His works were banned in 1934. Mombert, who did not prevent his origins from unreservedly identifying himself with the German language, culture and, as an enthusiastic hiker and mountaineer, with the natural beauty of Germany by surrendering the Jewish religion and tradition, therefore remained in Germany and maintained a lively correspondence with his friends. “He couldn't believe that the Germans 'betrayed' their poet because he was of Jewish descent.” In 1935 the Insel Verlag refused to accept Sfaira the old man . The work was then published in 1936 by the Jewish publishing house Salman Schocken . In October 1940 Mombert was deported together with his sister to the Camp de Gurs camp in southern France as part of the Wagner-Bürckel campaign , where he was interned until April 1941. On the initiative of Hans Reinhart and with the support of Carossa and the singer Else Domberger , who acted as courier, he was finally transferred to the internment sanatorium, the Maison de retraite in Idron- par-Pau, where he remained until he left for exile in Switzerland and continued the work on the second part of Sfaira the old that had begun in Heidelberg in spring 1940 and continued under the most difficult conditions in the Gurs camp .

He interpreted his fate, repeatedly citing his own verses, as a fateful repetition of what had already been said and happened in his work. With the support of Hans Carossa and the singer Else Domberger , his friend Hans Reinhart finally succeeded in allowing the seriously ill man and his sister to travel to Switzerland in October 1941 , where he died on April 8, 1942 in Reinhart's Villa Kareol in Winterthur He died while staying in the camp, in whose park he also found his resting place, dignified with the portrait bust of Arthur Zweiniger. After the death of Hans Reinhart in 1963, the bust was placed in the entrance hall of the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe, as the library he saved through the use of Richard Benz is also kept there. Before that, he had been granted the privilege of completing the second part of Sfaira the Elder and seeing it in print as a gift for his 70th birthday thanks to his friend's commitment, and sending dedicatory copies to selected friends, including Ida Dehmel.

Mombert's book collection of around 4600 volumes has been in the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe since 1950. Significant parts of the estate remain in the Moscow State Archives as spoils of war .

Work and reception

Alfred Mombert with Emanuel Lešehrad during his visit to Prague, 1906

With his self-image as a visionary poet and spiritual seer, Mombert stands in the tradition of Friedrich Hölderlin and Friedrich Nietzsche . Despite all the differences, his poetry has in common with those of Stefan Georges and Rainer Maria Rilkes that it breaks with the tradition of naturalism , that, despite references to symbolism and early expressionism, it can not be clearly assigned to any contemporary direction and that, according to its esoteric claim , it starts with the Poetic design based on intuitionistic vision transcends everything real and all lived life . Its meaning, on the other hand, appears to be exhausted only in supplying the raw material for poetry that only creates meaning and thus creates reality in the true sense of the word, but as such it is not regarded as valuable. In the late work of the poet, who belongs to the group of cosmics with Theodor Däubler , Arno Holz , Otto zur Linde , Rudolf Pannwitz , Albert Verwey and Karl Wolfskehl , mythical - cosmological dramas dominate , in which a cyclical view of history , people and the world is manifested.

Among the composers of his time, Mombert's poems were considered particularly suitable text bases for song compositions . From 1908 Alban Berg set texts by him to music in his songs for voice and piano, opus 2. Other settings come from Conrad Ansorge , Hans Ebert , Grzegorz Fitelberg , Friedrich Klose , Armin Knab , Siegfried Kuhn , Joseph Marx , Alois Pachernegg , among others , Albert Segebrecht , Otto Siegl , Karol Szymanowski , Ladislav Vycpálek , Herwarth Walden and Herbert Windt .

After the end of the Nazi dictatorship, friends Richard Benz and Hans Carossa made an effort to maintain the memory of Mombert and to win back readers for his work. The speech that Benz had given at a commemoration ceremony for the fifth anniversary of the poet's death on March 4 in the auditorium of the Old University of Heidelberg appeared in print that same year. But the Insel Verlag was not ready to publish the last work of its former author, Sfaira the Old , in a complete edition of the two parts. Only the selection from his work, Der himmlische Zecher , still prepared by Mombert himself , appeared on the cover in 1951 in Inselverlag with Hans Carossa's advertising preamble. In 1958 the Heidelberg publishing house Lambert Schneider took over the task of a complete edition of Sfaira der Alte . As with other writers and artists of the "lost generation", neither the three-volume critical edition of the complete works by Elisabeth [Höpker-] Herberg, published in 1963 by Köselverlag, nor the various editions of letters or the profound exhibition catalog by Ulrich Weber from 1967 were able to prevent Mombert and his poetic oeuvre, which had fallen out of time, fell more and more into oblivion and the maintenance of memory at most still took place on a local or regional level, for example in Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, where memorial plaques, stumbling blocks and another exhibition in 1993 sought to counteract oblivion . 1992 nor compiled by Höpker-Herberg and Albert von Schirnding selection appeared hundreds of poems from Heavenly Zecher in publishing Langewiesche Brandt , published by the Baden Library Society. Once celebrated by connoisseurs as one of the most important living poets of the German language, who himself had hoped to find more intelligent readers in the distant future than in his own time, since the turning point from 1933 to 1945, he has only played a modest role as a factor of regional importance in the culture of remembrance.

Works (selection)

Emil Rudolf Weiß Title of The Heavenly Drinker
  • Day and night. Poems . J. Hörnig, Heidelberg 1894.
  • The glowing one . A work of poetry, Wilhelm Friedrich, Leipzig 1896.
  • The creation. Wilhelm Friedrich, Leipzig 1897.
  • The Thinker. JCC Bruns, Minden in Westphalia 1901.
  • The sun's spirit . Schuster & Löffler, Berlin 1905.
  • The prime of chaos . JCC Bruns, Minden in Westphalia 1905.
  • Music of the world from my work . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig [1915].
  • The hero of the earth . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1919.
  • The heavenly reveler. Selected poems . Schuster & Löffler, Berlin 1909.
  • Aeon. Dramatic trilogy. Drama : I. Aeon the World Wanted. Schuster & Löffler, Berlin 1907 II: Aeon between women. Schuster & Löffler, Berlin 1910 III. Aeon off Syracuse. Drama . Schuster & Löffler, Berlin 1911.
  • The hero of the earth. Poems . 1919.
  • Atair. Poem work . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
  • The throne of time. Walter Hädecke, Stuttgart 1925.
  • Aigla's Descent. Drama Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1929.
  • Aiglas temple. Drama Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1931.
  • Sfaira, the old man. Myth. Salmann Schocken, Berlin 1936
  • Sfaira, the old man. Myth. Second part private print (Hans Reinhart), Winterthur 1942.
  • The ice. A life story. In: The Buntscheck. A collector's book of hearty art for the ears and eyes of German children , published by Richard Dehmel, Cologne 1904, p. 28f.
  • The dragon chandelier . In: Elisabeth Herberg (Ed.), Alfred Mombert. Seals , Vol. 1–3. Kösel, Munich, 1963, here vol. 2, pp. 602f.
  • Story of my life . In: Friedrich Kurt Benndorf: considerations. First episode. The Aeon Myth by Mombert. With a supplement: Mombert: Story of my life. Dresden, Giesecke, 1917.
  • Incipit creatio . In: The literary world 14/15, 1928.
  • The first memory of the Rhine. In: Friedrich Kurt Benndorf: Mombert. Spirit and work. Wolfgang Jess Verlag, Dresden, 1932, p. 274, note 2.
  • Fragments of life. In: Prussian Academy of the Arts. Yearbook of the Poetry Section 1929, Berlin 1929, pp. 82–84.
  • Rudolf Pannwitz. In: Rudolf Pannwitz fifty years. Carl, Munich Feldafing 1931, p. 48f.

Posthumous honors

In the Heidelberg district of Emmertsgrund , Mombertstrasse and the adjacent Mombertplatz are named after the writer Alfred Mombert. In the inner courtyard of the Mombertplatz residential complex there is also a memorial plaque to the namesake. Another memorial plaque can be found at the Klingenteich house, today Klingenteichstrasse 6, where Mombert lived from November 1922 until his deportation on October 22, 1940. There is also a memorial plaque on the house where he was born at Kaiserstraße 182 in Karlsruhe.

Commemorative plaque Alfred Mombert Klingenteichstrasse 6 in Heidelberg
Photo: Kulturamt Heidelberg
Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

  • Memorial plaque for Alfred Mombert in Mombertplatz Heidelberg

  • Karlsruhe Kaiserstraße 182 where Alfred Mombert was born

Stumbling blocks for Mombert and his sister Ella Gutmann, nee. Mombert, used.

  • Stumbling block for Ella Gutman (Heidelberg)

  • Stumbling block for Alfred Mombert (Heidelberg)

In Karlsruhe there is a Mombertstraße in the east of the city . There is an Alfred Mombert Hall in the basement of the Karlsruhe City Hall.

literature

Issues and letter editions

  • Elisabeth Herberg (Ed.): Alfred Mombert. Seals , Vol. 1–3. Kösel, Munich, 1963
  • Paul Kersten (ed.): Alfred Mombert. Letters to Friedrich Kurt Benndorf from d. Years 1900 - 1940. [With an introduction "Alfred Mombert" by Hans Wolffheim and an afterword by Elsbeth Wolffheim] . Schneider, Heidelberg 1975
  • Benjamin J. Morse (Ed.): Alfred Mombert. Letters to Vasanta 1922 - 1937. Schneider, Heidelberg 1965
  • Hans Wolffheim (Ed.): Alfred Mombert. Letters to Richard and Ida Dehmel. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1956
  • Benjamin J. Morse (Ed.): Alfred Mombert. Letters 1893 - 1942. Schneider, Heidelberg Darmstadt 1961
  • Letters to Alfred Mombert from 1896–1940 . Edited and commented by Marek Fiałek. Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86573-582-9

Secondary literature

  • Friedrich Kurt Benndorf: Alfred Mombert - the poet and mystic. Xenien, Leipzig 1910.
  • Friedrich Kurt Benndorf: The Aeon Myth of Mombert. With a supplement: Mombert: Story of my life. Dresden, Giesecke, 1917.
  • Friedrich Kurt Benndorf: Mombert. Spirit and work. Wolfgang Jess Verlag, Dresden, 1932.
  • Richard Benz : The poet Alfred Mombert. Commemorative speech on the fifth anniversary of the poet's death held in Heidelberg. Pfeffer, Heidelberg 1947.
  • Alfred Behrmann : The work of Alfred Mombert in the mirror of its interpreters and critics, Maschinenschr. Berlin, FU, Philosophical Faculty, Diss. Jan. 9, 1956, III, 89 pp.
  • Ulrich Weber , Alfred Mombert. Exhibition on the 25th anniversary of death. April 10 to July 8, 1967 [Badische Landesbibliothek] . CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1967
  • Joachim Metzner: Destruction of the personality and the end of the world: The relationship between delusion and literary imagination . De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1976 ISBN 9783110932713
  • Ulrich Weber: Mombert, Alfred . In: Baden biographies . New series 1. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-17-007118-1 , pp. 213-215 ( online )
  • Elisabeth Veit: Fiction and Reality in Poetry. Literary world models between 1890 and 1918 in the poetry of Max Dauthendeys, Richard Dehmels and Alfred Momberts . Univ. Diss. Self-published, Munich 1987.
  • Susanne Himmelträger (Ed.): Alfred Mombert (1872-1942). An exhibition by the German-American Institute in collaboration with the City of Heidelberg, Old University of Heidelberg from June 27 to July 31, 1993. Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 1993 ISBN 3-88423-086-7
  • Elisabeth Höpker-Herberg:  Mombert, Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 22 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Furness, Raymond: Zarathustra's Children. A Study of a Lost Generation of German Writers. Camden House, Rochester, NY, 2000, ISBN 1-57113-057-8 , pp. 49-74
  • Marek Fialek: Dehmel , Przybyszewski , Mombert. Three forgotten people in German literature. With previously unpublished documents from the Moscow State Archives . Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86573-448-8 .
  • Mombert, Alfred. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 17: Meid – Phil. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-22697-7 . (with detailed bibliography)
  • Marek Fialek: A cosmologist in Heidelberg. Alfred Mombert. With previously unpublished texts from the Moscow State Archives. In: Heidelberg. Yearbook on the history of the city, published by Heidelberger Geschichtsverein 13, 2009, pp. 165–171
  • Marek Fialek: Alfred Mombert and the music of the world. With numerous documents from the Moscow State Archives . Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86573-541-6 .
  • Hanna Delf von Wolfzüge: Mombert, Alfred. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2., act. and exp. Edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2012 ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 p. 375f.
  • Holger Gehle: Nazi era and literary present with Ingeborg Bachmann. Springer, Berlin 2013 ISBN 9783322851796 pp. 118–128
  • Gabriela Wacker: Poetics of the Prophetic: On the Visionary Understanding of Art in Classical Modernism. de Gruyter, Berlin 2013 ISBN 9783110298628
  • Gereon Becht-Jördens: An unknown letter of condolence from Hans Carossa to Ida Dehmel on the death of the Jewish-German poet from Heidelberg, Alfred Mombert, who died in exile in Switzerland. In: Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter, 33, 2017 (Grit Arnscheidt on her 80th birthday) ISBN 978-3-95505-055-9 pp. 41–46
  • Daniel Hoffmann : Religious Turbulence. Essays on the literary representation of the religious in the 20th century. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2019 (including an essay on Mombert)

Web links

Commons : Alfred Mombert  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Alfred Mombert  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Ulrich Weber, Alfred Mombert. Exhibition on the 25th anniversary of death. April 10 to July 8, 1967 [Badische Landesbibliothek] . CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1967, No. 26, p. 29.
  2. ↑ See Alfred Mombert, Incipit creatio. In: Elisabeth Herberg (Ed.): Alfred Mombert. Seals, Vol. 1–3. Kösel, Munich, 1963, here Volume 2, pp. 607f.
  3. ^ Elisabeth Herberg, "Alfred Mombert February 6, 1872–8. April 1942 ". In: Elisabeth Herberg (Ed.): Alfred Mombert. Seals, Vol. 1–3. Kösel, Munich, 1963, here Volume 3, p. 11f .: “This is how an unusual concept of home gradually emerges, [...]:“ Ancestral home ”. [...] He calls them "India" and "Asia", their landscape "Himalaya" and "Ocean". Yet the earth, restricted to its real and mythical regions, does not yet exhaust the poet's idea of ​​a world in which one can be at home. Mythical over, he had to the Cosmic and Astral to star Canopus and Altair feel the earth to win the actual home altogether. [...] Likewise, for him man, even if only conceivable on earth and here being the essence of all beings and things, could only be grasped in an all-spiritual, mythical reality and formed from all future and past. Mombert's studies, based on Old Testament Jewish since childhood, on Western Greek since school, finally encompassed the religions and philosophies of the European and Asian worlds as well as the history of their peoples; but its center remained what the poet directly experienced: the essence and fate of the German people. Poet of space and the Rhine, independent of time in the worlds as well as time-bound to a people, Mombert identified with the cosmos as well as with Germany. "
  4. ↑ Ulrich Weber, Alfred Mombert. Exhibition on the 25th anniversary of death. April 10 to July 8, 1967 [Badische Landesbibliothek] . CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1967, No. 131, p. 74.
  5. ↑ See JW Aust, Th. Aust, literature and press in: Dossier National Socialism and Second World War, in: Federal Center for Political Education March 17, 2008
  6. ^ Elisabeth Herberg, "Alfred Mombert February 6, 1872–8. April 1942 ". In: Elisabeth Herberg (Ed.): Alfred Mombert. Seals, Vol. 1–3. Kösel, Munich, 1963, here Volume 3, p. 12.
  7. ↑ See Ulrich Weber, Alfred Mombert. Exhibition on the 25th anniversary of death. April 10 to July 8, 1967 [Badische Landesbibliothek] . CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1967, No. 239, p. 120; P. 198; S. [207].
  8. ↑ Estate Libraries . Website of the Baden State Library . Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  9. ↑ See Marek Fialek, Ein Kosmiker in Heidelberg. Alfred Mombert. With previously unpublished texts from the Moscow State Archives. In: Heidelberg. Yearbook on the history of the city, published by Heidelberger Geschichtsverein 13, 2009, pp. 165–171; Marek Fialek, Dehmel, Przybyszewski, Mombert. Three forgotten people in German literature. With previously unpublished documents from the Moscow State Archives. Berlin 2009; Marek Fialek: Alfred Mombert and the music of the world. With numerous documents from the Moscow State Archives . Berlin 2010.
  10. ↑ On the works, their bibliography and other composers cf. Ulrich Weber, Alfred Mombert. Exhibition on the 25th anniversary of death. April 10 to July 8, 1967 [Badische Landesbibliothek] . CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1967, p. 152f.
  11. ↑ Richard Benz, The Poet Alfred Mombert. Commemorative speech on the fifth anniversary of the poet's death held in Heidelberg. Pfeffer, Heidelberg 1947.
  12. ↑ Cf. Gereon Becht-Jördens, An unknown letter of condolence from Hans Carossa to Ida Dehmel on the death of the Jewish-German poet from Heidelberg, Alfred Mombert, who died in exile in Switzerland. In: Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter 33, 2017; Susanne Himmelträger (Ed.): Alfred Mombert (1872-1942). An exhibition by the German-American Institute in collaboration with the City of Heidelberg, Old University of Heidelberg from June 27 to July 31, 1993. Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 1993.
  13. ↑ See Ulrich Weber, Alfred Mombert. Exhibition on the 25th anniversary of death. April 10 to July 8, 1967 [Badische Landesbibliothek] . CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1967, No. 134, pp. 75f.
  14. ↑ Plans of the city hall (PDF) Messe Karlsruhe. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Mombert, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, poet and lyric poet
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1942
Place of death Winterthur