Ernst Moritz Mungenast

Ernst Moritz Mungenast (born November 29, 1898 in Metz ; † September 3, 1964 in Stuttgart ) was a German writer , journalist and translator of Lorraine origin.

“German Gate” of the fortress Metz around 1900

Life

Gravestone in the Prague cemetery

Mungenast was the eleventh of fifteen children of an architect of Austrian descent and his wife from Bitscher Land ; a distant ancestor was the builder Joseph Munggenast .

After completing his school years ( Abitur ) at the high school in Metz , Mungenast took part in full length guards regiments on the Western Front in the First World War. He was wounded several times, lost an eye in the war and was taken to a hospital in Berlin. As a war disabled he was discharged from the military and then studied German, literature and art history at the Humboldt University in Berlin . After graduating in 1924 he got a job as a journalist and editor of the Berliner Tageblatt , which after 1933 by the Nazis into line was Mungenast worked there until 1932. During this time he married Maria Rott with whom he had three children.

From 1935 Mungenast lived and worked as a freelance writer in Stuttgart , between 1946 and 1953 in Metz, later in Murrhardt near Stuttgart and finally returned directly to Stuttgart, where he lived until his death. His grave is in the Pragfriedhof (Dept. 16-4-1) in the north of Stuttgart.

Books

Location of the realm of Alsace-Lorraine in the German Empire

In many of his fiction works he depicts his homeland in Lorraine in a multifaceted way, for example in his first work Christoph Gardar and the novels The Half Sister , The Cavalier and The Magician Muzot .

“... a lot of readers were amazed. They did not know how little they knew about Lorraine, and they have now noticed that it is worth taking a look at that world between Germany and France. "

- Ernst Moritz Mungenast

His first novel, Christoph Gardar , was already well received, as the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung described Mungenast as “a coming epic of high standing” because of this work . His best-known work is the family novel Der Zauberer Muzot , originally published in two volumes , in which he undertakes the career of a family in Metz to portray the main character, the toy dealer Andreas Muzot, and the turbulent history of Lorraine from 1848 to 1939. Lorraine and its history are not used in this novel as a pleasant backdrop or clever accessory to dress up a novel; On the contrary, in many places the novel is designed to bring historical facts and developments closer to the reader. In a short foreword in 1939, the author himself noted the dual nature of the magician Muzot: “[...] next to the novelist, who tells of people and families, the chronicler, who illuminates the context and the background, speaks of in a matter-of-fact, sober tone of voice political things and reported about peoples. ”This novel was banned from 1940 onwards by the occupying power in Alsace-Lorraine because of the political and historical references to autonomy .

His post-war novel Tanzplatz der Winde , which is set in Saarland, was successful .

Mungenast has also published compilations (including bunker stories ), written books for young people (including the whole city is looking for Günther Holk ) and is the author of a non-fiction book about the silent film actress Asta Nielsen , published in 1928 .

The circulation of all of his works totaled more than a million copies. Between 1980 and 1999 three of his novels were translated into French and published by Metzer Verlag Serpenoise ( bibliographical information ).

Mungenast's literary estate has been in the hands of the German Literature Archive in Marbach since November 1984 .

Assessments of his writings

After the Second World War, Mungenast's novels were judged very differently by different people. The polarity of the extreme judgments is closely related to the political and cultural theoretical point of view of the critics. The positive pole: the highest praise, for example, from the literary scholar Heinz Kindermann , who rates Mungenast as a “master of the art of cultural history”. The negative pole: Mungenast is “an ideological preparer for fascist aggression against France”. In addition, in his main work, the magician Muzot, Mungenast himself combined progressive, modern views for his time - about equal rights for women, for example - with passages that are conservative or even seem revisionist, which means that the opposing judgments also result from this the ambiguity or complexity of this 800 page long novel.

In the spirit of the “ stab in the back ” he writes in this novel about the end of the First World War: “The homeland cut off the connection with the front and left the field horror to its fate.” Since Germany “had thrown away its weapons in terrible delusion, it could in the Name of culture being raped ”.

According to the Versailles Treaty, the German Reich is shamelessly plundered by the Allies' “brain-burned financial plans” (p. 428), a point of view which in principle agrees with the analysis of the British diplomat and economist John Maynard Keynes , who therefore subordinated the British delegation to the Versailles treaty negotiations Protest and then, in 1919, warned in a letter that the high reparation claims against the German Reich were economically unreasonable and would have to lead to another war within 20 years. The ascent of the private with the flag with the sun wheel (= swastika flag) is inevitable, according to Mungenast: “And that man named Hitler, who was only known to have been a private during the war, pushed himself into this huge drama from the scene and Scene and from act to act more and more violently in the foreground, dragged the masses away with them more and more irresistibly, talked in every nook and cranny of the empire, ran, already followed by millions, against the three dozen other parties in the Reichstag with ever greater power and finally attached victory to his flag with the sun wheel. "(p. 428)

The German Administration for Popular Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone included the Lorraine novel Zauberer Muzot and the Hindenburg book Die Helden von Tannenberg in the list of literature to be sorted out, published in 1946 , and thus classified these books as politically dangerous in the Soviet Union and the GDR or ideologically undesirable, which led to their being removed from many public libraries. The youth book Die Helden von Tannenberg , in particular, refers to the so-called Battle of Tannenberg , in which Russian troops were defeated by Germans under the military leadership of Paul von Hindenburg in 1914. Because of this topic alone, it is not surprising that the Soviet leadership published the book and its author refused.

Honors

• 1939 or 1940: 3rd prize of the “ Literature Prize of the Reich Capital Berlin ” for the novel “Der Zauberer Muszot”.
• 1940: " People's German Literature Prize " from the city of Stuttgart and the German Foreign Institute for his novel "The Magician Muzot"

literature

Primary literature

Novels

• Christoph Gardar . Christian, Horb 1935. (Later several new editions in various publishers)
• The half sister. Novel . Heyne, Dresden 1937. (Later, among other things, new edition by Schneekluth, Celle 1956).
• The cavalier. Novel . Heyne, Dresden 1938. (Later new edition by Cotta, Stuttgart 1957).
• The Pedant or The Girls in the Au. Novel . Heyne, Dresden 1939.
• The magician Muzot. Novel . Heyne, Dresden 1939; later Schneekluth, Darmstadt (5th edition), most recently Schneekluth, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-7951-0220-0 .
• Celestine . Saar-Verlag, Saarbrücken 1949. (The Comedy of Reason; 1)
• High above the masters of the earth. Novel . West-Ost-Verlag, Saarbrücken 1950.
• The dance floor of the winds. Novel . Cotta, Stuttgart 1957.

Youth books

• The hero of Tannenberg. A Hindenburg book for the youth . Herold-Verlag, Stuttgart 1943. (Later under the title "Die Helden von Tannenberg.")
• The whole city is looking for Günther Holk. Novel. Verlag Deutsches Jugendbuch, Frankfurt / M. 1954.

Stage work

• Welcome or not? A play in 5 acts. Not for sale stage manuscript. Kaupert, Freudenstadt 1941

Monographs / non-fiction books

• Asta Nielsen . Hädecke, Stuttgart 1929.

Dependent writings

• Ernst Moritz Mungenast: The history of Lorraine . In: Minister of State Dr. Otto Meißner (ed.): Alsace and Lorraine, German land. Verlaganstalt Otto Stollberg, Berlin, 1941, pp. 97-109.
• Ernst Moritz Mungenast: That is the land of Lorraine . In: Minister of State Dr. Otto Meißner (ed.): Alsace and Lorraine, German land. Verlaganstalt Otto Stollberg, Berlin, 1941, pp. 177–182.
• Country and people in Lorraine . In: Otto Meissner (Ed.): German Alsace. German Lorraine. A cross-section of history, folklore and culture . Otto Stolberg, Berlin 1941, pp. 86-96

Editing

• The murderer and the state. The death penalty in the judgment of outstanding contemporaries. Hädecke, Stuttgart 1928
• Bunker stories. Compiled and edited by EM Mungenast. Verlag Deutscher Volksbücher, Wiesbaden 1940.

French editions

• Ernst-Moritz Mungenast; Claude Puhl (transl.): Le Magicien Muzot. Éditions Serpenoise, Metz 1986, ISBN 2-901647-82-0 (translation of “The Magician Muzot”).
• Ernst-Moritz Mungenast; Charles-Joseph Becker (translator): La Demi-soeur. Éditions Serpenoise, Metz 1999, ISBN 2-87692-405-6 (translation of "The Half- Sister ").
• Ernst-Moritz Mungenast; Charles-Joseph Becker (translator): Christophe Gardar. Éditions Serpenoise, Metz 1980, ISBN 2-901647-16-2 (translation from “Christoph Gardar”).

See also

• German Lorraine

Secondary literature

• Max Hildebert Boehm : EM Mungenast, the herald of Lorraine . In: Sudetendeutsche Monatshefte , Teplitz 1941.
• Marie-Josèphe Lhote: L'interculturalité de EM Mungenast dans ses romans “Lorrains” . In: Pierre Béhar u. a. (Ed.) Frontières, transferts échanges, transfrontaliers et interculturels . Lang, Bern 2005, ISBN 3-03910-649-X , pp. 195–205.
• Bernhard Zeller: "Meeting in the bar. Memory of Ernst-Moritz Mungenast." In: Doris Rosenstein, Anja Kreutz (Ed.): Encounters. Facets of a century. Helmut Kreuzer on his 70th birthday. Carl Böschen Verlag, Siegen 1997, ISBN 3-932212-07-X , p. 58 f.

Web links

Commons : Ernst Moritz Mungenast  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Ernst Moritz Mungenast  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Ernst Moritz Mungenast in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Walther Killy [Hrsg.]: Literature Lexicon: Authors and works in the German language; Volume 8. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, 1990. ISBN 3-570-04678-8 (therein p. 298)
2. ↑ The stay in a Berlin hospital and the multiple wounds in the war are listed in Wilpert's literary dictionary.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Bernhard Zeller: "Encounter in the bar. Memory of Ernst-Moritz Mungenast." In: Doris Rosenstein, Anja Kreutz (ed.): Encounters. Facets of a century. Helmut Kreuzer on his 70th birthday. Carl Böschen Verlag, Siegen 1997, ISBN 3-932212-07-X , p. 58 f. (Bernhard Zeller was director of the German Literature Archive in Marbach from 1955 to 1985 and states in this text when the writer's estate was transferred to the literary archive, that Mungenast lived temporarily in Murrhardt and briefly mentions the loss of his eye.)
4. ^ "Foreword by the author". In: The Magician Muzot , Gutenberg Book Guild , Berlin 1939
5. ^ ^{A b} Franz Lennartz: German writers of the 20th century in the mirror of criticism. Kröner, Stuttgart undated , ISBN 3-520-82101-X , Volume 2, p. 1257.
6. ↑ German Literature Archive Marbach, archive link ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 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. 
7. ^ Heinz Kindermann, Margarete Dietrich: Pocket dictionary for German literature . Humboldt-Verlag, Stuttgart / Vienna 1953. (Kindermann was close to National Socialist views.)
8. ^ Günter Albrecht [u. a.]: Lexicon of German-speaking writers. From the beginning to the present. Volume 2 / Gö-K . Scriptor, Kronberg Ts. 1972, ISBN 3-589-00062-7 . (GDR license edition)
9. ↑ ^{a b} The Magician Muzot , p. 325
10. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet zone of occupation: List of the literature to be sorted out . Preliminary edition. Zentralverlag, Berlin 1946. Full text on the web at: http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit.html .
11. ^ Reichsschrifttumskammer (Ed.): "Writer Directory." 1942. (In it 1939 is named as the year of the award.)
12. ^ Eva Dambacher: Literature and Culture Awards. 1859-1949. A documentation . German Schillerges., Marbach am Neckar 1996, 292 pp., ISBN 3-929146-43-6 (directories, reports, information / German literature archive ; 19) ( 1940 is named as the year of the award.)
13. ↑ Bernhard Metz: "On your holidays Germania, where you are a priestess". German literature studies in the time of National Socialism. Diploma thesis at the University of Konstanz, 2002. (Published 2003) ub.uni-konstanz.de
14. ^ Kurt Leipner: Chronicle of the city of Stuttgart. 1933-1945. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-608-91096-4 (publications of the Stuttgart City Archives)