Alfred Walter Heymel

Alfred Walter Heymel

Society song , handwriting by Alfred Walter Heymel

Alfred Walter Heymel (born March 6, 1878 in Dresden ; † November 26, 1914 in Berlin ; actually Walter Hayes Misch ) was a German writer and publisher who also published under the pseudonyms Spectator Germanicus and Alfred Demel . Heymel was raised to the Bavarian nobility in 1907. He emerged primarily as a poet and was one of the editors of the bibliophile magazine Die Insel .

Life

Heymel was allegedly the son of a high Saxon civil servant and a German-American, the Dresden merchant widow Charlotte Elisbeth Dwyer, nee. Mixed. The rumors about his origin, however, refer to the Portuguese King Ludwig I (Portugal) , who came from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . Alfred Heymel, born as Walter Hayes, was adopted as a small child by the Bremen merchant and consul in Bremen and Dresden, Adolph Heymel (1822–1890); the change of first name to Alfred took place according to the resolution of the Bremen Senate of June 21, 1907. Heymel first grew up in Dresden-Loschwitz and came to Bremen in 1890 with his widowed adoptive father, where he died soon afterwards. Heymel moved to his guardian, the lawyer Gustav Nagel in Bremen , where he made a lifelong friendship with his cousin Rudolf Alexander Schröder . Heymel followed him in 1898 after graduating from high school to study law in Munich, where he distinguished himself as a writer and poet. Hugo von Hofmannsthal , with whom he was in regular correspondence, wrote the introduction to his translation of Christopher Marlowe's Eduard II (1912) .

Heymel inherited the million dollar fortune of his adoptive father and was a patron of the artistic circles around Schröder and Otto Julius Bierbaum , with whom he had been the editor in charge of the aesthetic and fiction magazine Die Insel since 1899 . The bibliophile Insel Verlag of the same name emerged from it (Leipzig 1901). In 1900 Heymel moved into the house at Leopoldstrasse 4 in Munich, the interior of which was lavishly restored by the architects Martin Dülfer and Paul Ludwig Troost under the artistic direction of Rudolf Alexander Schröder and with the collaboration of Heinrich Vogeler , who also illustrated books for Inselverlag and to which the wealthy bon vivant and racing stable owner, who was a great horse lover all his life, invited to exclusive evening parties.

In 1903 Heymel succeeded Karl Gustav Vollmoeller , although he was contractually bound as an author to S. Fischer Verlag, as a translator for Insel Verlag. In order not to provoke a legal dispute with S. Fischer Verlag, Vollmoeller's older sister Mathilde acted as a "straw man" by officially being responsible for the translation of love letters from an English lady , although the translation was done by Karl Vollmoeller. From this first collaboration, an intense, close friendship developed between Heymel and Vollmoeller, which was particularly intense between 1908 and 1912, as was the case with Heymel's various correspondence. B. identify with Hugo von Hofmannsthal . During the First World War , Vollmoeller and Heymel's brother-in-law Richard von Kühlmann worked closely together as part of the German Society in 1914 .

In 1904 Heymel went back to Bremen. He bought a house on Riensberger Strasse in Horn, which he had Rudolf Alexander Schröder furnish. Many meetings of the artists' association Goldene Wolke took place in his country house . As a collector and art patron, he developed an important activity. So he supported u. a. the writer Paul Scheerbart and financed numerous purchases by Gustav Pauli for the Kunsthalle Bremen . In 1904 Heymel married Gitta von Kühlmann, the sister of the later State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Richard von Kühlmann . From then on Heymel took over the family's business obligations himself and, as he was economically very inexperienced, lost a significant part of his fortune.

On June 2, 1907 Heymel was ennobled by Prince Regent Luitpold , but made no use of it. He undertook numerous world trips, so in 1908/09 and 1910 to the USA and in 1912 and 1913 to Africa; He reported on his impressions in the Süddeutsche Monatshefte . In 1909 and 1910, he was responsible for the photo editing in Munich for the Hyperion magazine published by Carl Sternheim and Franz Blei and published by Hans von Weber Verlag . In 1910 he moved back to Munich. The following year plunged him into a private, professional and economic crisis - Heymel did not find the social recognition he wanted. In 1912 he moved to Berlin.

Although he contracted tuberculosis in 1913 , Heymel was a first lieutenant in the reserve with the Oldenburg Dragoons in 1914 and participated in the First World War. The author and publisher died on November 26, 1914 in Berlin in the arms of his friend, the architect Henry van de Velde. He is buried in the Riensberg cemetery in Bremen.

In the year of his death, his Gesammelte Gedichte appeared 1895–1914. Rudolf Alexander Schröder published his last literary works posthumously in the Insel-Bücherei (Poems / Der Tag von Charleroi / Feldpostbriefe, 1925). His estate is in the German literature archive in Marbach.

Otto Julius Bierbaum caricatured Prince Kuckuck Heymel and his way of life in his key novel. Heymel was parodied again in the literary character of Claude Marehn in Heinrich Mann's novel The Hunt for Love , which appeared in 1903.

Honors

• The Heymelstraße in Bremen- Horn-Lehe was named after him.

Works (selection)

• Early in the morning. Poems and sayings , published by Johannes Storm, Bremen 1898.
• The Death of Narcissus , one-act play (1898), Felix Mottl wrote the music for the stage work .
• The fishermen and other poems . Schuster & Loeffler for Insel-Verlag, Berlin 1899.
• Knight impetuosity . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1900.
• Twelve songs . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1905.
• Spiegel - Friendship - Games , Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1908.
• Collected poems 1895–1914 . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1914.

literature

• Gerhard Hay:  Heymel, Alfred Walter von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 91 ( digitized version ).
• Theo Neteler: publisher and gentleman rider. The restless life of Alfred Walter Heymel . Edition Peperkorn, Göttingen 1995. ISBN 978-3-929181-05-0 .
• Frederik D. Tunnat: Karl Vollmoeller - poet and cultural manager. A biography , Tredition Verlag, Hamburg 2008. ISBN 978-3-86850-000-4 .
• Rudolf Alexander Schröder: Heymel , in: Bremische Biographie 1912–1962. Edited by Hist. Ges. Bremen to Bremen a. a., Bremen, Hauschild 1969, p. 232 f.

Web links

Wikisource: Alfred Walter Heymel  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Alfred Walter Heymel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Chronicle Horn-Lehe

Individual evidence

1. ^ Dushan Stankovich: Otto Julius Bierbaum - a work monograph . Herbert Lang publishing house, Bern / Frankfurt a. M. 1971, p. 131.
2. ^ Gustav Pauli: Memories from seven decades, Wunderlich Verlag, Tübingen 1936, p. 216.
3. ^ Rudolf Alexander Schröder: Heymel, in: Bremische Biographie 1912–1962. Edited by Hist. Ges. Bremen to Bremen a. a., Bremen, Hauschild 1969, p. 232 f.
4. ↑ cf. on this Theo Neteler: Publisher and Herrenreiter. The restless life of Alfred Walter Heymel. Edition Peperkorn, Göttingen 1995. ISBN 978-3-929181-05-0 .
5. ^ J. Meier-Graefe: Ein Modernes Milieu, in: Dekorative Kunst , 4, 1901, pp. 249–264, illus. Pp. 268–275 ( digitized version ).
6. ↑ KulturGeschichtsPfad - District 12: Schwabing-Freimann .
7. ↑ Henry van de Velde: History of my life, Piper 1962, p. 380. In: https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/veld006gesc01_01/index.php . Retrieved December 19, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Otto Julius Bierbaum : Prince Cuckoo. Life, deeds, opinions and descent into hell of a voluptuary . Munich 1906/07. See . Real Lexicon of German Literary Studies . 2nd Edition. 1955-1965, p. 382.
9. ↑ Erika von Watzdorf-Bachoff: In the change and in the transformation of time. A life from 1878 to (1963) , ed. Reinhard R. v. Doerries. Steiner-Verlag Stuttgart 1997, p. 135.