Berndt W. Wessling

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Berndt Wilhelm Wessling (born July 25, 1935 in Bremen ; † January 13, 2000 in Hamburg ) was a German journalist and writer .

Life

Berndt W. Wessling was born as the son of the restaurateur Carl Wessling and grew up with his grandparents after his parents divorced. Between 1959 and 1961 he studied history and musicology in Hamburg . Working as a journalist since 1961, he joined NDR television as an editor in 1965 . From 1970 he lived in Hamburg as a freelance journalist and writer.

Wessling was best known as the author of artist biographies and as the editor of the (alleged) literary estate of his great-aunt Julie Schrader . He has also published poems, short stories, essays, satires and novels, plays, radio and television programs and the autobiography On the Street of Anne Frank .

In autumn 1999, a few months before his death, Wessling handed over his literary estate to the Hamburg State Archives .

Criticism of Wessling's work and person

Falsification allegations were raised against Wessling for several decades .

Since the mid-1970s, the majority of his great-aunt Julie Schrader's works have been falsified by critics . The Brockhaus Encyclopedia agreed with this judgment in 1981 and has since attributed the majority of Schrader’s works to Wessling.

The quality of his biographical work is also highly controversial. The lexicographer Gert Woerner examined five biographies written by Wessling (including Gustav Mahler , Carl von Ossietzky and Kurt Tucholsky ) and found that most of the sources cited by the author did not exist, “which suggested that Wessling often not only used invented the sources of his quotations , but also the quotations themselves. "The literary scholar Viktor Otto, who also examined a biography, summarized:" Whatever you call Wessling's methods, they have little to do with science. "

Until his death, Wessling took legal action and verbal attacks against his critics, in which he lost all sense of proportion over the years.

Works

Book publications

  • Do not despise the masters for me (1963)
  • Astrid Varnay (1965)
  • Hans Hotter (1966)
  • Wolfgang Windgassen (1967)
  • Bayreuth mon amour (1968)
  • Leopold Ludwig (1968)
  • Franz Liszt. A virtuoso life (1968)
  • Lotte Lehmann. More Than a Singer (1969)
  • Max Brod. A Portrait (1969)
  • Sparrows in a cannon barrel (1972)
  • Gustav Mahler (1974)
  • Narciß & Goldpepperl. 12 satires about Ludwig II. Kini of Bavaria (1974)
  • Toscanini in Bayreuth (1976)
  • Beethoven. Genius Unleashed (1977)
  • The Daughters of Zion (1978)
  • The great Fritz Reuter book (1978) (Ed.)
  • Mathilde L. A German Panopticon (1981)
  • ... and the gods smile. The New Bayreuth in Anecdote and Bonmot (1982)
  • Sigurd Beyer. Pictures from 1969–1982 (1982) (Mithrsg.)
  • Alma - companion of Gustav Mahler, Oskar Kokoschka, Walter Gropius, Franz Werfel. List Taschenbuch, Düsseldorf 1983. ISBN 3-612-65095-5 (Wessling was exposed as a forger in Spiegel magazine in 1989. His meetings and interviews with Alma Mahler never took place)
  • Bayreuth in the Third Reich. Richard Wagner's Political Heirs (1983) (Ed.)
  • Meyerbeer. Wagner's Prey - Heine's Geisel (1984)
  • Tucholsky. A German Nuisance (1985)
  • The station pigeons are my gray siblings (1985)
  • Furtwangler. A Critical Biography (1985)
  • Carl von Ossietzky: Martyrs for Peace (1989)
  • It blows softly across the country. A North German Winter and Christmas Book (1989)
  • Wilhelm Busch. Philosopher with a Pointy Pen (1993)
  • Herbert von Karajan. A Critical Biography (1994)
  • On the street of Anne Frank. An Autobiography (1995)
  • Wieland Wagner - The Grandson (1997)
  • A Live Dog Is Better Than a Dead Lion (2000)

items

  • Arno Breker can do that ...! In: nmz 47 (2) 1998, p. 13.
  • Grotesque sputum? In: nmz 47 (6), 1998, p. 11.

See also: Works by Julie Schrader .

literature

  • Karl Corino : Wagner and no end. In: nmz Neue Musikzeitung , 47 (3) 1998, p. 11.
  • Werner Fuld : Julie Schrader . In: Ders .: The Lexicon of Forgeries. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-8218-1444-6 , pp. 234-237.
  • Klaus Pokatzky: The wrong swan . In: Die Zeit , No. 43, October 20, 1989, p. 77.
  • Gabriele Stadler: Julchen Schrader, the Guelph swan who was a duck . In: Karl Corino (Ed.): Forged. Fraud in politics, literature, science and music. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-499-18864-3 , pp. 330–341.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interesting addition for the State Archives (press release of the City of Hamburg from October 20, 1999)
  2. ↑ Aunt Julchen and the striker . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1989, pp. 220-230 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Gert Woerner: Nothing invented, nothing faked? In: Die Zeit , No. 43, October 20, 1989.
  4. ↑ Fuld 1999, p. 236
  5. ↑ Viktor Otto: In search of the meaning of nothing . In: nmz 47 (4) 1998, p. 11.
  6. ↑ He described his critics as "envious and obernazis" (quoted in Stadler 1992, p. 336). The HR culture editor Corino is a "vain, know-it-all and lying denouncer of Freisler's doggedness" (Wessling 6/1998, p. 11). The theater maker Peter P. Pachl behaves “mischievously and disparagingly” (Wessling 2/1998, p. 13, see also Peter P. Pachl: Klatsch und Tratsch and this and that . In: nmz 46 (11) 1997, p. 45 )
  7. ↑ Aunt Julchen and the striker . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1989, pp. 220-230 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Wessling, Berndt W.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wessling, Berndt Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 2000
Place of death Hamburg