Eduard Bertz

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Eduard Bertz (born March 8, 1853 in Potsdam ; † December 10, 1931 there ) was a German writer, philosopher, librarian and translator. He was particularly committed to various emancipation movements of his time ( social democracy , ideal community, homosexual organization and cycling).

Life

Eduard Bertz's first publications were six poems in the magazine Jahreszeiten (1871/72). In 1875 he moved to Leipzig to there cameralism study. In the following year, he did a year of military service as a volunteer. This was followed by further articles in the left-wing socialist Berlin Free Press . In 1878 he moved to Paris; During his stay there he was sentenced in absentia for one of his newspaper articles to five months in prison for insulting the Prussian military. At the end of 1878 he went to London . There he made friends with the socially critical writer George Robert Gissing , with whom he corresponded intensively until his death in 1903.

In 1881 Bertz traveled to the United States to build and run a library for two years in an agricultural colony, a social experiment by the English writer Thomas Hughes , in Rugby , Tennessee . In 1883 he returned to Europe, first to London, then to Germany, within whose borders he moved several times in the following years. In 1888 he became a member of the Berlin Press Association and the German Writers' Association, whose secretary he also became. In its organ Deutsche Presse he published until 1890 a. a. Essays on Ottilie Wildermuth , Walt Whitman , George Gissing , Heinrich Heine and Arthur Schopenhauer . In 1890 he was reinstated in his civil rights.

In 1900 Eduard Bertz published the book Philosophy of the Bicycle , which is still considered a fundamental work on the cultural history of cycling. In it he looked at cycling from the perspective of one of his life themes, the unity between body, mind and nature. In addition, the book contains one of the first analytical comparisons of cycling with locomotion on horseback and the automobile that is just emerging. In this respect, this work is now considered a document of both the history of technology and - for example, with regard to the considerations of the cross-class value of cycling - of social history .

In the last ten years of his life, there were no more texts by Bertz, who never started a family. He died forgotten in Potsdam in 1931.

homosexuality

In 1898 Bertz and more than 800 personalities signed a petition directed against Section 175 of the Reich Penal Code , which made homosexuality a criminal offense, organized by the doctor and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld . From 1898 Bertz worked in the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee of Hirschfeld. In 1905, with an essay on the American naturalistic poet Walt Whitman , he started a public discussion of his homosexuality and professed his own homosexuality in a letter. Bertz criticized Whitman, who died in 1892 and with whom he himself had corresponded, for not only denying his own homosexuality, but even publicly rejecting it. This led to an argument with the German author Johannes Schlaf , who had published a monograph on Whitman and sharply rejected Bertz's remarks about the poet.

Works (selection)

  • The French Prisoners. A Story for Boys , 1884; 2nd A. 1902
  • Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu: Persian letters , Leipzig, translated into German by Eduard Bertz, 1885
  • Luck and Glass , 1891; 2. A. 1893
  • The Sabinergut , Berlin 1896; 2nd A. 1902; 3. A. than America, you're better off! , 1909
  • Philosophy of the bicycle , Dresden 1900. Extended new edition: Georg Olms Verlag Hildesheim 2012, ed. v. Wulfhard Stahl, ISBN 978-3-487-08497-8
  • The blind Eros , Dresden / Leipzig 1901
  • Spemann's golden book of world literature . Edited by Eduard Bertz et.al., Berlin / Stuttgart 1901; extended in 1912
  • The Yankee Savior. A contribution to a modern history of religion , 1906
  • Whitman Mysteries. A settlement with Johannes Schlaf , 1907
  • The world harmony. Monistic considerations , 1908
  • Harmonious education. A book for the time , 1909
  • Theodor Storm in Potsdam . In: Communications from the Association for the History of Potsdam 1910, Potsdam 1910

literature

  • The Letters of George Gissing to Eduard Bertz 1887–1903 . Edited by Arthur Young, London 1961
  • Wulfhard Stahl: “Eduard Bertz: First letters. Approaches to a Bio-Bibliography ". In: Journal for German Studies . New series VI, issue 2/1996, pp. 414–427
  • Wulfhard Stahl: "Eduard Bertz's Correspondence with Macmillan & Co. 1884-1908". In: The Gissing Journal 32 (1996), No. 2, pp. 4-22
  • Wulfhard Stahl: "Bertziana in Victor Ottmann's 'Litterarisches Echo': the Rediscovery of a Rare File". In: The Gissing Journal 41 (2005), No. 2, pp. 1-17
  • Wulfhard Stahl: "His favorite work, - education. The Letters from Eduard Bertz to Heinrich Rehfeldt ”. In: The Gissing Journal 43 (2008), No. 3, pp. 26-53
  • Wulfhard Stahl: "Eduard Bertz - A Confession". In: Capri. Journal for Gay History (Berlin), No. 43, June 2010, pp. 21–28
  • Wulfhard Stahl: "Gras Blätter-Reading, Calamus Cluster: Notes on the new Walt Whitman edition". In: Capri. Journal for Gay History (Berlin), No. 43, June 2010, pp. 45–47.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Grünzweig: Whitman in the German-Speaking Countries on whitmanarchive.org
personal data
SURNAME Bertz, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, philosopher, librarian and translator
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1931
Place of death Potsdam