Ernst Bacmeister

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the Prussian officer Ernst von Bacmeister see here .

Ernst Bacmeister, around 1938

Ernst Bacmeister - pseudonym: Felix Montanus - (born November 12, 1874 in Bielefeld , † March 11, 1971 in Singen (Hohentwiel) ) was a German writer , poet and playwright .

Life

The son of the publishing house book dealer Johann Bacmeister (* 1841) and the writer, painter and teacher Lucie Juliane Müller (1843–1904) grew up in a large family that often had to move. Ernst Bacmeister attended schools in Eisenach and Bernburg and graduated from high school in Erfurt in 1893 . He then studied philology at the University of Leipzig, financially supported by a family foundation, and received his doctorate there in 1896.

He then traveled to Europe for several years. He worked temporarily as a tutor . During this time his first publications fall. His attempt, at the suggestion of Friedrich Nietzsche , to complete his habilitation at the University of Munich and pursue a university career failed. In 1911, Bacmeister was finally appointed by his brother Hans Ernst August Bacmeister (1872–1935), who was the director of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Volkstheater in Essen , as a dramaturge at the theater. Only two years later it stopped playing due to a lack of funds, and Bacmeister went back to his family, who now lived at the Marbach Castle and Homestead in Wangen on the Höri peninsula .

After his assignment as a Landwehr officer in Alsace during the First World War, he published numerous essays and dramas from 1920 onwards , which were performed in various theaters.

During the Nazi era, Bacmeister had no problem continuing to publish. The Rosenberg office recommended his drama Barbara Stossin from 1922. In his 1938 essay The tragic stage as a playing field for the heroic spirit , he supported the identity-creating Nazi myth of the inner act of self-liberation propagandistically as salto vitale . In the lecture The Tragedy Without Guilt and Atonement , given less than a month after the German invasion of Poland in November 1939, Bacmeister spoke out in favor of the abolition of individual tragedy , which was characteristic of the topos of classical humanistic idealism, “to take precaution against the Germans to free them from all remorse ”, as the war that had begun could have suggested. Ernst Klee evaluates his memories, published in 1939 under the title Wuchs und Werk , in 2007 as a pseudo-religious transfiguration of Hitler .

For Julius Petersen as a leading National Socialist Germanist and theater scholar, the “purposeful cultural policy of the Third Reich” with Ernst Bacmeister and Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer had produced the best representatives of a new poetry .

After the end of National Socialism, Bacmeister turned to nature and animal descriptions. His new works as well as new editions of old dramas were no longer read. He was able to keep himself and his family afloat by selling wood from his garden and, from 1950, with timeless radio essays and individual dramas. Nevertheless, in 1965 he was honored with the Bielefeld City Literature Prize for his life's work. He died at the age of 97 on March 11, 1971 and was buried in the cemetery in Öhningen .

Ernst Bacmeister was married to the painter Marie Sophie Elsbeth Bosselmann (1873–1960). His son Arno Bacmeister, who died in the Soviet Union during World War II, became a botanist and was married to Judith Brigitte Finckh, daughter of the doctor and writer Ludwig Finckh . Both had the daughter Hadamut Ulrike Bacmeister.

Awards

• 1930: Prize of the Bühnenvolksbund for his drama: Maheli against Moses
• 1930: Donation from the German Schiller Foundation
• 1940: Culture Prize of the City of Düsseldorf
• 1942: Gau culture prize of the NSDAP - Gaus Westfalen-Nord , awarded by Gauleiter and Reich Governor Alfred Meyer
• 1965: Bielefeld City Literature Prize
• 1969: Humboldt plaque from the Humboldt Society as an honorary gift

Works (selection)

• The Rhine daughter . A dramatic half-fairy tale, 1897
• The count of equals . Tragedy, 1898
• The primus . School drama, 1903
• Internal powers . Four plays, 1922
• Barbara Stossin , 1922
• Problems overcome . Essays, 1923
• Arete. Tragedy . 1925
• Experiences of Silence , 1927
• Maheli against Moses . Tragedy, 1932
• Captain Geutebrück . 1933
• The emperor and his antichrist . Tragedy, 1934
• Emperor Constantine's baptism . Religious tragedy, 1937
• Creative world view . Essays, 1938
• Growth u. Plant. The shape of my life . 1939
• Theseus. Tragedy , 1940
• The track. Collected Poems , 1942
• The German type of tragedy . Dramaturgical foundation, 1943
• The Indian Emperor , 1944
• Intuitions . 1947 (complete works of seven pieces)
• Essays . 1948 (complete works of eight essays)
• Lionardo da Vinci . Tragedy, 1959
• The clear victory . A breviary, 1964 (together with Julius Bahle ),
• The emergence of the tragedy Andrew and the Queen . 1984, (posthumously, together with J. Bahle)

literature

• Manfred Bosch: Art. Bacmeister, Ernst. In: Baden-Württemberg biographies. Vol. IV. Ed. By Fred Ludwig Sepaintner. W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 6-8 ( online as PDF ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Bacmeister in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ernst Bacmeister in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Ernst Bacmeister in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
• Short biography on Leo-bw.de
• Literature in the common union catalog

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In: Ernst Bacmeister, Schöpferische Weltansicht, Markkleeberg 1938.
2. ↑ Gaetano Billari: Refuge of the Spirit? Conservative-revolutionary, fascist and National Socialist theater discourses in Germany and Italy 1900–1944 , Tübingen 2001, p. 249.
3. ↑ Gaetano Billari: Refuge of the Spirit? Conservative-revolutionary, fascist and National Socialist theater discourses in Germany and Italy 1900–1944 , Tübingen 2001, p. 249.
4. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 25.
5. ↑ Gaetano Billari: Refuge of the Spirit? Conservative-revolutionary, fascist and National Socialist theater discourses in Germany and Italy 1900–1944 , Tübingen 2001, pp. 82, 89.
6. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 25.
7. ↑ Genealogical information at geneanet.org
8. ^ Wilhelm Vernekohl: Painting from a völkisch essence. Large exhibition of the relief organization for German fine arts in Paderborn. In: Deutsche Zeitung in the Netherlands, vol. 2. No. 309 of April 16, 1942, o. S. ( online at Delpher ).
9. ↑ Humboldt badge as an honorary gift ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.