Ernst Schulte Strathaus

Ernst Schulte Strathaus , frequent misspellings Schulte-Strathaus (born July 9, 1881 in Bövinghausen ; † February 10, 1968 in Munich ), was a German literary and book scholar and antiquarian . From 1935 to 1941 he worked as chief officer for art and cultural issues staff of Rudolf Hess .

Life

Origin, education

Schulte Strathaus was born as the seventh of nine children of farmer Schulte Strathaus on the Haackenhof in Bövinghausen near Lütgendortmund ( district of Dortmund ). He acquired a higher education at grammar schools in Dortmund and Münster , but "unfortunate economic circumstances after the early death of his father" prevented regular university studies. By 1901 he learned the antiquarian bookshop in the Osnabrück operation of the Ferdinand Schöningh publishing house .

Early Munich years: 1901–1934

In April 1901 he went to Munich, whose cultural atmosphere and bohemianism impressed him greatly. There he first worked in the South German antiquarian bookshop of H. Lüneburg, where he processed the library of Joseph Görres , which had been sold by his descendants, antiquarian. In April 1904 he moved to the Julius Halle (1864–1927) antiquarian bookshop, which specialized in incunabula , early prints, woodcut books, and medieval text and picture manuscripts. In 1907 Schulte Strathaus was - together with Karl Wolfskehl , Carl Georg von Maassen , Hans von Weber , Franz Blei and Emil Hirsch - founder of the Society of Munich Bibliophiles , which fell apart again in 1913. Alexander von Bernus , Oskar Piloty , Carl Graf von Klinckowström , Curt von Faber du Faur and Victor Manheimer also frequented this circle . At that time, Hans von Weber commissioned him to look after books in his Hundertdrucke series . Schulte Strathaus earned a place in Goethe research when he identified the so-called Wachsmuth vignettes as part of Goethe's family table in his work Die Bildnisse Goethees . Schulte Strathaus was forced to turn away from his bibliophile areas of interest when he was drafted at the beginning of the First World War and served as a gunner in the 1st Royal Bavarian Field Artillery Brigade .

After the war, he started the bibliophile magazine Die Bücherstube with Horst Stobbe . He also belonged to the Gesellschaft der Münchner Bücherfreunde , founded in 1923 and chaired by the book designer Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke , as well as Carl Georg von Maassen , the painter Rolf von Hoerschelmann , Carl Graf von Klinckowström, Hanns Floerke , Heinrich Ehlers , Gunther Hildebrandt and Willy Wiegand . At the Julius Halle antiquarian bookshop he met the Germanist and library scientist Ilse Pröhl , who worked there from 1921 to 1924. Pröhl had already joined the NSDAP in 1921 . 1933 married Schulte Strathaus Heilwig Seidel, the daughter of the writer Ina Seidel , in the era of National Socialism by their most faithful followers vow (1933) for Adolf Hitler and Nazi interwoven texts 1944 in the gottbegnadeten list was taken. Since 1932 she had been enthusiastic about National Socialism - probably also through Schulte Strathaus.

In the Brown House: 1934–1941

NSDAP headquarters in Braunes Haus , Schulte Strathaus's office from 1934 to 1941

In April / May 1934 Rudolf Heß , Hitler's deputy and “Reich Minister without portfolio”, gave Schulte Strathaus a position as “clerk for literature and science” on his staff in the Brown House in Munich. Schulte Strathaus had met Hess years ago through Ilse Pröhl, who had become Hess' wife in 1927. Since the second-hand bookshop Julius Halle (successor Isaak and David Halle) had to close in 1933/34, Schulte Strathaus came up with this offer, which Hess had made him through a telephone call at the end of 1933, very well. In order to be able to hold the position, he had to become a member of the NSDAP. Hess made sure that an exception was made to an existing ban on membership and that it was entered in the NSDAP's list of members with retroactive effect from January 1, 1934. Although Schulte Strathaus in Hess' staff was a newcomer to the party and appeared to Reich and staff leader Martin Bormann as "Catholic", he rose in 1935 with the title of "clerk for art and culture" as the successor to Philipp Bouhler to head of office .

His functions, which in some cases overlapped with the tasks of other departments of the Nazi state, particularly with the areas of activity of Philipp Bouhler, Karl Heinz Hederich and Alfred Rosenberg , included exercising the right of first refusal for confiscated Jewish art property . In this context, it was his concern to acquire works by the painter Rudolf von Alt, who was particularly valued by Hitler . He also worked for Hess on various questions of school and cultural policy, for example by asking the Minister of Education Bernhard Rust in March 1935 to exempt Waldorf schools from the student admission ban for private schools by asking young journalist Henri Nannen to cancel a speech in 1935 - and conveyed the prohibition of writing by using a memorandum in favor of Gustav Pezold as director of the Langen Müller Verlag in 1936 or by directing the research and acquisition of all Hitler memorabilia and especially the watercolors painted by Hitler during his time in Vienna . He also played a role in the establishment of an institute for research into the Jewish question . In his official role as "Reichsamtsleiter" he was also on the board of the Society "German Literature" eV Leipzig, without official function he was an assessor of the Society of Bibliophiles , Weimar. In 1935, Schulte Strathaus arranged for the architect Roderich Fick to build the Reichsiedlung Rudolf Heß in Pullach through the garden architect Alwin Seifert, whom he knew . After its completion, Ernst and Heilwig Schulte Strathaus and their four children lived there at Sonnenweg 16 - in the neighborhood of Bormann and other Nazi leaders - from 1937 onwards as a company apartment.

Arrest, prisons, concentration camps: 1941–1943

In the middle of the Second World War , on May 10, 1941, Rudolf Hess took off in a fighter plane on a flight to the Scottish part of the war opponent Great Britain, which surprised the Reich leadership . Hitler, who had not commissioned him to do this, assessed this as treason or as the deed of a mentally ill person. He ordered that anyone who knew about it should be arrested. Schulte Strathaus, who had named Hess in a horoscope from January 1941, “as a promising day for a journey in the interests of peace” also quickly came under suspicion of complicity . In March, Schulte Strathaus had this confirmed again by a Munich astrologer . On the morning of May 14, Schulte Strathaus was arrested and taken to the Gestapo office in the Wittelsbacher Palais for questioning . His home and office were searched for evidence. In the course of the investigation, the parapsychologist Gerda Walther was arrested and interrogated about her correspondence with Schulte Strathaus, which was found during the searches. During the interrogation she explained that she had experienced Schulte Strathaus as an "enthusiastic supporter of Schrenck" during her time as secretary to the Munich doctor and parapsychologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1927–1929). Two weeks later, Schulte Strathaus was transferred with other suspects to the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin and held in solitary confinement for eleven months. Ina Seidel tried in vain to get his release; The mother-in-law was not allowed to visit either. He was then transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Shortly after his arrest, his office, official residence and party membership had already been withdrawn; Probably out of consideration for the writer Ina Seidel, who was highly regarded by Hitler, her daughter and her grandchildren were allowed to stay in the building at Sonnenweg 16 of the Reichsiedlung in Pullach until autumn 1942.

Late Munich years: 1943–1968

After his imprisonment in the concentration camp, which ended on March 3, 1943, Schulte Strathaus was not allowed to leave Munich. From April 1943 to autumn 1945 he was given a position as a "scientific assistant" at the Bavarian State Library . In the course of 1944 the State Library lost part of its holdings due to bombing raids . On January 7, 1945, Schulte Strathaus' new apartment in Munich's Schönfeldstrasse was also hit by an air raid, with around 1,500 volumes in his private library being lost.

According to his own account, he spent the “hunger and cold years” after the war as a “vegetable gardener, wood chopper, peat cutter, stoker, plumber, material exchanger”. Then came the “lighter years” in which he could turn to the “work of applied and advisory book studies” as a private scholar . On February 4, 1968, Schulte Strathaus suffered serious injuries in a traffic accident in Munich, to which he died on February 10.

Fonts (selection)

• With Karl Wolfskehl : The drunken mette through four german centuries . 1909
• The portraits of Goethe. In: First supplement to the Propylaea edition of Goethe's complete works. Georg Müller, Munich 1910, p. 35ff.
• The books of the hundred. Pressure for the hundred . Hyperion-Verlag, Munich 1911.
• (Ed.): Paul van der Aelst : Blumm and Ausbund Allerhandt Ausserlesener Secular, Chaste Songs and Reymen . Munich 1912 ( Strathaus% 2C + Ernst & l = en digitalisat ).
• Bibliography of the original editions of German poetry in the age of Goethe . Georg Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1913.
• Thoughts on the illustrated beautiful beech. In: The book room. Munich 1923.
• Catalog J. Halle, Antiquariat Munich . Munich 1928.
• The Wittenberg Shrine Books from 1509 with woodcuts by Lucas Cranach. In: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1930, pp. 175–186.
• Goethe's Faust fragment 1790. A book research . Writings of Corona XXVI, Munich: Verlag R. Oldenburg, Zurich: Verlag corona, 1940, first in 1932 as a private edition under the title The real issues of Goethe's Faust published
• The publications of the Society of Munich Bibliophiles . Munich 1961.
• The Socratic Philolog. Cross and transverse lines of a Hamann anthology. In: Yearbook of the Kippenberg Collection. New series, Volume 1, Düsseldorf 1963, pp. 139–149.
• Kippiana. Friendly encounters with Anton Kippenberg in Munich 1908–1949 . Society of Bibliophiles (among others), Munich-Solln 1969

Web links

• Biographical documents on Ernst Schulte Strathaus (PDF) in the archive of the Institute for Contemporary History , ZS number 2089,
• Schulte Strathaus, Ernst in the portal dla-marbach.de ( German Literature Archive Marbach )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eberhard Köstler: books books books books. From the heyday of Munich bibliophilia. Pp. 264, 272; autographs.de (PDF) accessed on December 28, 2014.
2. ^ Friedrich Voit: Karl Wolfskehl. Life and work in exile . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-857-4 , p. 51 ( Google Books ).
3. ↑ Eberhard Köstler, p. 282.
4. ↑ In the literature, the position is taken that Seidel's National Socialist commitment can be ascribed to the influence of her son-in-law, who repeatedly portrayed Hitler as “an inspired statesman of peace”. - See Christian Ferber: The Seidels. History of a Bourgeois Family 1811–1977 . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1979, p. 251. Quoted from: Esther Dür: A monument to the best worldwide Prussia - on the 30th anniversary of the death of the German writer Ina Seidel on October 2, 2004. In: The literary wren. No. 3/2004; erika-mitterer.org (PDF) Erika Mitterer ; accessed on December 27, 2014.
5. ^ Jan-Pieter Barbian: Literary politics in the Nazi state. From "synchronization" to ruin . S. Fischer Verlag (Fischer e-books), Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-10-400813-4 , chap. 3.3 ( Google Books ). Rainer Sieb: The NSDAP's access to music. To set up organizational structures for music work in the divisions of the party . Dissertation University of Osnabrück 2007, p. 14 f. ( Digitized version ).
6. ↑ See National Socialist Yearbook . Verlag der NSDAP, p. 168 ( Google Books ). Archive for the history of the book industry , Volume 40, Verlag der Buchhandler-Vereinigung, Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 138.
7. ↑ Birgit Schwarz: Geniewahn: Hitler and the art . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78307-7 , p. 227 ( Strathaus & f = false Google Books )
8. ↑ Ilse von zur Mühlen: Overtaken by the present, but not in vain. In: AKMB -news , Volume 19, 2/2013, p. 58.
9. ↑ Peter Staudenmaier: The German Spirit at the Crossroads: Anthroposophists in Confrontation with Völkischer Movement and National Socialism. In: Uwe Puschner, Clemens Vollnhals (ed.): The ethnic-religious movement in National Socialism. A relationship and conflict story . Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-525-36996-8 , p. 482 ( Google Books )
10. ↑ Stephanie Nannen: Henri Nannen. A star and its cosmos . C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-641-10612-6 , p. ( Google Books )
11. ^ Verlag Albert Langen , website in the portal polunbi.de , accessed on December 28, 2014.
12. ↑ Franz Joseph Mayer Gangel: The party archives of the Nazi Party. Attempt to reconstruct the Gau archive of the NSDAP Vienna . Dissertation University of Vienna, Vienna 2010, p. 85; univie.ac.at (PDF).
13. ↑ Gerd Simon: German Studies in the Simulation Games of the Security Service of the SS . Verlag der Gesellschaft für interdisciplinary Research Tübingen, first published in 1998, slightly changed edition 2010, ISBN 978-3-932613-06-7 , pp. 221, 223; uni-tuebingen.de (PDF).
14. ^ Susanne Meinl, Bodo Hechelhammer: Secret object Pullach . Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86153-792-2 , p. 28 ff. ( Google Books ).
15. ↑ Susanne Meinl, Bodo Hechelhammer, p. 55. - Astrologers who consulted Hess or Schulte Strathaus are named: Ludwig Schmitt , Edouard Hofweber, Ernst Issberner-Haldane , F. G. Goerner and Karl Ernst Krafft . - Cf. Joseph Howard Tyson: The Surreal Reich . Bloomington / Indiana 2010, ISBN 978-1-4502-4019-2 , pp. 279, 281, 285 ( Google Books ).
16. ↑ Gerda Walther : To the other bank. From Marxism and Atheism to Christianity . Reichl Verlag, St. Goar 1960, pp. 473f., 591 ( Google Books ).
17. ↑ Jan-Pieter Barbian: “I can't stand it long without Germany”. The correspondence between Annemarie and Ina Seidel in the years 1933 to 1947. In: Monika Estermann, Ernst Fischer, Ute Schneider (Eds.): Book cultures. Festschrift for Reinhard Wittmann . Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-447-05260-0 , p. 368 ( Strathaus & f = false Google Books ).
18. ↑ Susanne Meinl, Bodo Hechelhammer, p. 55 ff.
19. ↑ Susanne Meinl, Bodo Hechelhammer, p. 57.
20. ^ Obituary in Das Antiquariat Volume 18, 1968, p. 64.
21. ↑ Karl Wolfskehl: "Jewish, Roman, German at the same time ...". Correspondence from Italy 1933–1938 . Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-630-80014-9 , p. 311 ( Google Books )