Claus Victor Bock

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Claus Victor Bock (born May 7, 1926 in Hamburg , † January 5, 2008 in Amsterdam ) was a German German scholar and writer.

Life

Claus Bock's parents fled because of the racist persecution on September 21, 1938, the father's birthday, from Hamburg via Brussels to the Netherlands . Since the parents went to India for professional reasons , a boarding school had to be found for the son.

“My father was a chemical businessman. He was familiar with the French language from his apprenticeship in Antwerp. He had had relations with Belgian business friends, on whose behalf he was now to travel to India - initially for a year. The mother would of course accompany him, but it was advised against taking the twelve-year-old son into the tropical climate and into a still uncertain existence. "

A Belgian monastery school recommended to the parents did not appeal to the mother, who instead opted for a school where her former classmate Josi Warburg already worked as a housemother:

During the summer vacation of 1939, Claus was in London and visited a school friend there. Here he saw the outbreak of World War II and was evacuated to the countryside with English children. Due to the overlapping of telegrams, he did not stay in England, as his parents had wanted, but followed the school's invitation to return to Eerde. The following time, the time between the outbreak of war and the German invasion of the Netherlands, he describes as the time of “my slow awakening. At school I perceived Cyril Hildesheimer and Buri as two teachers who - each in their own way - impressed me. "

Through the two of them, around whom a group of other students had formed, he came into contact with the writings of Stefan Georges and Wolfgang Frommel , whom he first met in a letter and then personally - during a visit from Frommel's Quaker School in Eerde. This resulted in lifelong relationships and a "love that is called friendship", as Marita Keilson-Lauritz put it.

After the occupation of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht and the decision of the Quakers to give in to the pressure of the occupiers and banish the Jewish children from Eerde Castle to an outbuilding, Frommel and Wolfgang Cordan tried to convince the school management to let the Jewish children go into hiding . When the school management opposed this plan and even threatened to report to the Gestapo, Frommel and Cordan decided to act on their own and help the students who were close to them to escape. Claus Victor Bock, Clemens Michael Brühl, Liselotte Brinitzer and Thomas Maretzki went into hiding, Claus Victor Bock lived, like his former teacher Friedrich W. Buri, from 1942 in hiding in Amsterdam's Herengracht 401, which is known as Castrum Peregrini naturalized. Herengracht 401 also remained a point of reference for the other refugees from the Quaker School in Eerde - even if they were hiding in other places in the Netherlands. They all survived the German occupation - despite the omnipresent threat from the raids by the German occupying forces and their Dutch auxiliary agencies. Claus Victor Bock reports on this in his 1985 book “Untergetaucht unter Freunde” and Buri in his “Life Report” I gave you the torch in the jump .

After the Second World War , Claus Bock lived with his parents in India for a year. He then resumed his studies at the University of Amsterdam, which he then continued in Manchester . In 1955 he received his doctorate in German literature under Walter Muschg in Basel . He then went back to Manchester and London , where he worked as an editor . For eight years he was director of the German Studies Institute at the University of London until he became dean of the “faculty of the arts” in 1980. With his retirement in 1984 he went back to Amsterdam to the house “Castrum Peregrini”. A foundation was established for the publication of the magazine Castrum Peregrini founded by Frommel in 1951 . Until 2001 he was chairman of this foundation. Until 2005 he worked on the magazine.

In Spaarnwoude , the Netherlands , Claus Victor Bock was buried in a small cemetery on January 12, 2008, where Wolfgang Frommel is also buried. At this funeral, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote on January 18, 2008:

“The rituals that he had got to know as a youth also guided him on the last journey. His friends read 20 poems, 3 by Frommel, the rest by Stefan George. Including the verses from the “Seventh Ring”: “Kreuz der Strasse. . / We're finished. / Evening was already sinking. . / This is the end. / Short waves / Who does it make you tired? / Too long for me. . / The pain makes you tired. / Hands beckoned: / What didn't you take? / Sighs stopped: / Didn't you hear? / My street / You don't pull it. / Tears fall / You don't see them. »"

In 1984 Claus Victor Bock received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class and since 1996 he has been a “assigned Fellow of the Queen Mary and Westfield College” at the University of London.

Motto of life

"As long as we poetry and write, nothing happens to us"

literature

  • Claus Victor Bock: In hiding among friends. A report. Amsterdam 1942-1945 , Castrum-Peregrini-Presse, Amsterdam, several editions, ISBN 90-6034-053-1 . The fifth edition is partially available on the Internet: Claus Victor Bock on Google Books
  • Marita Keilson-Lauritz : Kentaurenliebe: Sideways of male love in the 20th century , Männerschwarm Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2013, ISBN 3-86300-143-5 . As a Google Book: Kentaurenliebe: Wolfgang Frommel and Billy Hildesheimer . In particular, the chapter The Love of the Centaurs: German Resistance in the Occupied Netherlands around the Castrum Peregrini , pp. 134-164.
  • Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. WF a reminder report. Edited and with an afterword by Stephan C. Bischoff, Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, 2009, ISBN 978-3-86650-068-6
  • Wolfgang Cordan: The mat. Autobiographical notes , in the appendix: Days with Antonio , MännerschwarmSkript Verlag, Hamburg, 2003, ISBN 3-935596-33-2 . Also a review by Herbert Potthoff in Invertito , 6, 2004
  • "... I miss you very much." The friendship of two young exiles. The correspondence between Manuel Goldschmidt and Claus Victor Bock , ed. by Leo van Santen, Quintus-Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-945256-58-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Claus Victor Bock: Untergetaucht unter Freunde , p. 7
  2. Claus Victor Bock: Untergetaucht unter Freunde , p. 9
  3. ^ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe , p. 159
  4. The latter's role in the young people's escape from Eerde does not play a role in Bock's portrayal, which refers to a dilemma that Manfred Herzer addresses in his afterword to Cordan's book Die Matte : “The friendship between Cordan, which was warm at first, but soon became more complicated and Frommel is represented in the mat ( Die Matte , p. 183 ff.) - of course from Cordan's point of view. And this view is, so to speak, incompatible with the Frommels and his Castrum Peregrini Association. That shouldn't really be a problem; on the contrary, it seems appealing and actually normal when historical events are reconstructed retrospectively by those involved from their subjective memories and perspective. When historians, based on the sources and contradicting contemporary witnesses, come to the conclusion that it cannot be fully explained 'how it really was', then such a result is more the rule and not a rare exception. The desire for clarity is, however, obvious, and especially with those who were still alive at the time, this can lead to attempts to help the historical truth a little. In extreme cases it is even possible to enforce a monopoly on the representation and interpretation of historical events. The Castrum-Peregrini group has succumbed to this understandable but morally questionable tendency towards apologetics to a remarkable extent. The two cases Baumann and Renders are known to me from the research literature. ”(Manfred Herzer: Epilogue to: Wolfgang Cordan: Die Matte , p. 366) Cordan (p. 186)
  5. See also the website Gays and Lesbians in war and resistance: Castrum Peregrini. The pilgrim's castle '
  6. A life in the pilgrim's castle
  7. cit. n. Der Spiegel 4/2008 p. 150
  8. The title is borrowed from the poem "Die Fackel" by Wolfgang Frommel.