Carl Albert Lange

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Carl Albert Lange (born May 2, 1892 in Hamburg ; † December 8, 1952 there ) was a German writer and journalist .

Live and act

Carl Albert Lange was the son of the piano teacher Carl Casper Eduard Lange and his wife Auguste Helene Dorothea, née Schroer. He came from a middle-class background and lived in such a residential area. For this reason he was nicknamed "Eimsbüttel" while attending the Wilhelm-Gymnasium . Long was considered dreamy and was therefore referred to by his Greek teacher as a "cloud walker". After graduating from high school in autumn 1911, when he received an overall grade of “good” in German, he started studying law at the University of Munich at his father's request . Here he found access to literary circles in which Richard Dehmel and Frank Wedekind , among others , frequented. He was also enthusiastic about the city's cultural life. The course itself did not appeal to him, however. Until the outbreak of the First World War , which he experienced in Kiel, he had moved from Munich to the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg , but without changing the subject. Long ended the course without a degree due to the war.

He took part in the First World War as a volunteer. He spent the period from February 1915 to October 1919 in Russian captivity, which he later described in an expressionist volume of poetry entitled "Siberia". He then returned to his hometown, where he married his childhood friend Frieda Dudler in July 1920. In the same year the first son Harald was born, a year later the second son Hartmud was born. In the years that followed, Lange found it difficult to support the family. He was unable to successfully complete a legal clerkship at a primary school in Eppendorf . He then completed an internship at the Neue Hamburger Zeitung . There he was certified as having "remarkable stylistic dexterity", but refrained from making him a job offer. From 1922 to 1933, Lange had a job at the tax office on the Schlump . He also wrote, for example for the cultural magazine Der Kreis .

Since Lange's wife also received state salaries as a teacher, Carl Albert Lange had to give up his position at the tax office during the National Socialist era . Instead, he wrote as a freelancer for various newspapers. He wrote numerous articles that were printed in features. During this time he would have liked to have written more independent works, but only wrote the cycle of poems On the Life and Death of Sunflowers . His financial situation remained precarious. “25 years as a journalist. Balance sheet: a single self-indebtedness "wrote Lange at the end of 1945. A short time later, the journalist Hugo Sieker gave him the opportunity to take over the management of the feature pages of the Hamburger Anzeiger , which Lange refused. The reason he gave for this was that he preferred to write freely.

In the period that followed, Lange wrote numerous works at short intervals. These were published by Curt Brauns' Alsterverlag, Hans Dulk's publishing house, Hammerich & Lesser and the Hamburgische Bücherei publishing house. These were volumes of poetry, adaptations and a collection of prose with the title “The Cabinet of Small Pleasures”, which appeared in 1948. In 1950 he was one of the founding members of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg . During the last year of his life, the cultural authority of the City of Hamburg commissioned him to write a work to honor Alfred Lichtwark and his works on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Lange created an extensive poem honoring Lichtwark, which, however, was not accepted by the client. Instead, they gave him a "birthday present" of 500 marks.

After a nervous breakdown in 1945, Lange suffered a minor heart attack in 1945. A second heart attack led to his death in December 1952. His grave can be found in the cemetery in Niendorf . Hans Henny Jahnn spoke at his funeral . His estate is in the Hamburg State and University Library , which exhibited parts of it in 1982 and 1993.

Appreciation

Even if he saw himself more as a poet, Lange was not very successful with it. Much more important were his personal appearance and the numerous works that he wrote as a publicist. This included Hamburgensien , obituaries and speeches. Long had a great influence on the cultural life of Hamburg and the mediation of contacts between artists. Letters that he exchanged with friends and acquaintances such as Paul Schureck , Hugo Sieker , Ernst Barlach and Wolfgang Borchert bear witness to this . After Lange's death, Hugo Sieker stated that he was one of those rare people in Hamburg who “emanated and created the atmosphere”.

One year after Lange's death, former fellow writers, including Wilhelm Lehmann , Hans Erich Nossack and Tetjus Tügel , paid tribute to Carl Albert Lange with a memorial.

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personal data
SURNAME Lange, Carl Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lange, Carl Albert Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1952
Place of death Hamburg