Edgar Steiger

Edgar Steiger (born November 13, 1858 in Egelshofen ; † October 23/24 , 1919 in Munich ) was a German-Swiss writer and journalist .

Life

Family and studies in Basel and Leipzig (1858–1883)

Edgar Steiger was born as the 12th child of a renowned Protestant pastor. Given these prerequisites, his path in church service seemed already mapped out. After graduating from Heinrich-Suso-Gymnasium in Constance in 1877 , he began his theological studies at the University of Basel . Soon he switched to the philosophical faculty, where he also heard the lectures of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jakob Burckhardt . When the pressure of expectations of his strictly conservative-theologically oriented family became too great for the gifted, he fled to Leipzig in 1879 without their knowledge . Freer studies awaited him at the University of Leipzig there . Nevertheless, Steiger finally broke this off in 1883.

Leipzig: Naturalism and Social Democracy (1884–1898)

From 1884 onwards he tried his hand at working as a freelance writer and theater critic. He became an employee of critical literary magazines such as Die Gesellschaft or “The magazine for literature at home and abroad”. Both sheets dealt with the newly emerging literature of naturalism . Steiger's first publication on this was published in 1889 under the title “The fight for the new poetry”.

He had a combative nature and found a home in the young social democrats . Edgar Steiger became acquainted with the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany such as August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht . Through his one-year activity in 1893/94 as the second editor of Vorwärts in Basel, he was also in contact with the social democrats there such as Herman Greulich or Nikolai Wassilieff . Back in Leipzig, Steiger became editor of the feature pages of the Leipziger Volkszeitung in 1895 , where he wrote critical articles on political issues under the pseudonym Cri-Cri for many years . In 1896 he became editor of the " Neue Welt ", the culturally oriented Sunday supplement for the social democratic newspapers. Here Steiger found a platform for the literary direction of naturalism. This commitment made him the focus of the largest literary debate of the era at the Gotha Party Congress in 1896.

Shortly afterwards he had to deal with the public prosecutor's office. In particular because of a novella published in the New World , which had to put up with the charge of blasphemy, Steiger was indicted in 1896 as the responsible editor in the so-called "Nazarenes trial" and sentenced in March 1897 to imprisonment for four and a half months in Zwickau . Steiger used this time to write his extensive, widely acclaimed work on the dramatic literature of naturalism: "The Becoming of the New Drama".

Munich: Theater critic and contributor to important magazines (1898–1919)

Edgar Steiger left Leipzig in March 1898 to settle in Munich , the city which at the time promised writers a freer creative work compared to other large cities. There he became a busy employee, especially for the renowned magazines Jugend and Simplicissimus . For the latter magazine, he delivered more than 400 texts until his death, whose satirical sharpness and brilliance made him like Ludwig Thoma et al. a. made one of the four 'house poets'.

As a theater reviewer he worked for the daily newspapers Münchner Latest Nachrichten , Hamburger Fremdblatt or Der Tag (Berlin) and others as well as for the cultural magazines Münchner Salonblatt and Freistatt or Das literäre Echo (Stuttgart, Berlin) and others. v. a.

Through his work in Munich's cultural life, he was in close contact with the literary and theater world. Among them were Michael Georg Conrad , Otto Falckenberg , Hanns von Gumppenberg , Karl Henckell , Josef Ruederer , Ludwig Thoma and Frank Wedekind .

During the First World War, Steiger's collection of poems “Weltwirbel” was published. During this time he turned increasingly to social democratic papers such as the daily newspapers Münchener Post or Frankfurter Zeitung as well as the magazines Die Glocke and, after the end of the war, Die Neue Zeit .

The situation for journalists had deteriorated to such an extent - also due to a shortage of paper - that Edgar Steiger, who had been a member of the “Protection Association of German Writers” (SDS) since 1913, was only able to achieve a slight improvement in the situation with his fight for higher line fees. War, impoverishment and hunger had exhausted Edgar Steiger's vital strength. He died on the night of October 23-24, 1919 of acute pneumonia.

Works

• A German pamphlet against Switzerland. A word about protection and defiance . (1885)
• The struggle for the new poetry. Critical contributions to the history of contemporary German literature . (1889)
• The becoming of the new drama. Part I: Henrik Ibsen and the dramatic social criticism. Part II: From Hauptmann to Maeterlinck . (1898)
• World vortex. Poems . Fleischel, Berlin (1916)

Further:

• Articles in numerous newspapers and magazines
• Poems in magazines and leaflets

literature

• Gerhard J. Bellinger and Brigitte Regel-Bellinger : Schwabings Ainmillerstrasse and its most important residents. A representative example of Munich's city history from 1888 to today. Norderstedt 2003, pages 397-407 - ISBN 3-8330-0747-8 ; 2nd edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-8482-2883-6 ; E-Book 2013, ISBN 978-3-8482-6264-9 .
• Brigitte Regel-Bellinger : Edgar Steiger 1858 - 1919. Life and work of the German-Swiss writer . Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1738-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ German Pseudonym Lexicon by Michael Holzmann, page 57.

Web links

Wikisource: Edgar Steiger  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Edgar Steiger in the catalog of the German National Library