Ernst Wachler (Author)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinrich Ernst Wachler (born February 18, 1871 in Breslau ; † in the summer (September) 1945 in Theresienstadt ) was a ethnic- religious and - despite his Jewish descent - anti-Semitic writer and publicist.

Life

Wachler was born as the son of the judge and politician Ludwig Wachler and Marie Fürst, a Jew who converted to Protestant Christianity in her youth . He is thus a great-grandson of the literary historian Ludwig Wachler , so he comes from the Prussian line of the Wachler family. He studied German, history and philosophy in Marburg, Munich and Berlin. With a working About Otto Ludwig's aesthetic principles he was of Wilhelm Dilthey doctorate . Wachler was a member of the Germanic Faith Community and a founding and honorary member of the Guido von List Society . In addition, he was involved in numerous other associations and societies in the ethnic environment as a member or functionary. He was one of the founders of the ethnic-religious movement in the Wilhelmine Empire . After studying and doing his doctorate, he gained his first practical theater experience as a dramaturge at the Berlin theater .

Mountain theater Thale

Ernst Wachler founded the Bergtheater Thale in 1903 under the name "Green Stage", one of the oldest natural theaters in Germany. In his magazine Deutsche Volksbühne he previously presented his plan for a “theater of the future”. In a “Declaration by German Authors and Artists”, the Deutsche Volksbühne called for a collection of all like-minded people who stand up for “German and popular aspirations”. With his ideas of renewal, Wachler primarily addressed the representatives of the local art movement . In February 1903, well-known representatives of the local art movement called for financial support for the planned “landscape and folk theater under the open sky” and expressed the hope that the “Harz Festival” would become a model for a network of summer theaters spread across Germany. Wachler sought a model consecration stage in the spirit of Richard Wagner , which was to be the model of a "national renaissance" by reviving the "original" Germanic views and forms of life that had been suppressed by "Judeo-Christian" and "Latin" influences. According to Wachler's view, the “real faith of the Germans” survived despite all the hostility in traditional customs, in fairy tales, legends and myths as well as in the German mother tongue. Therefore, the artist and especially the poet is called to "spread the seeds of a new faith". Accordingly, the theatrical performances were understood as a “act of worship”. At the opening performance on July 8, 1903, Wachler's piece Walpurgis was premiered with music by Peter Gast and Adolf Emge .

As with his literary work, Wachler also tried to popularize ethnic ideas through the mountain theater and to network the various ethnic leaders and groups. The Bergtheater, also conceived as a neo-pagan consecration site, was therefore repeatedly a meeting point for ethnic and ethnic-religious organizations. At a conference in August 1913, the “2. Germanic Religious Community "the" Germanic Faith Community "was founded and in 1914 an" Allthing Germanic Community "took place at which, among others, the Germanic Faith Community , the German Order Otto Sigfrid Reuters , the Great Germanic Lodge , the Germanic Order , the Schafferbund and Wachler's "Gesellschaft Wodan" were involved. On this Allthing Ludwig Fahrenkrog became the Hochwart the selected "Germanic faith community." The neo-pagan place of worship could also be recognized by symbols , including runes . A swastika was carved into the front door ; A stone altar was set up at the foot of the main staircase of the auditorium and at the entrance was an Edda saying: “I command all nobles to worship, high and low from Heimdall's line. I want to announce Walfather's work. Tales of the past that I remember ”.

In 1911 Wachler resigned, which was a major setback for the theater. The theater was closed in 1940 due to the war. According to Uwe Puschner, Ernst Wachler seems to have distanced himself from his theatrical exhaustion, as well as - after initial enthusiasm - to National Socialism . In 1941 he admitted that the Harz mountain theater was "behind me like an ideal dream [...] What will come later [remains] to be seen [...]". In 1942 he moved to Prague and at the end of the war, probably as a survivor of the Czech excesses of violence in the Prague uprising against the Germans, was interned in the former Theresienstadt concentration camp , where he died of starvation in the summer of 1945 .

plant

He ran the magazine Der Kynast. Leaves for folk culture and poetry (1898–1899), German magazine (1899–1905), Iduna (1905–1906) and Die Jahreszeiten. Sheets for Poetry and Folklore (1910–1911). He also wrote in numerous, mostly short-lived völkisch magazines such as the Rechtshort (1905-1910) and also in the magazine Hammer founded by Theodor Fritsch . Sheets for German Sense (1902–1940). Wachler wrote in the radically anti-Semitic monthly The Twentieth Century .

After the end of the Second World War, Wachler's book On the Future of the German Faith (Hubricht, Freiberg i. Sa. 1930) in the Soviet occupation zone and his summer nights by Castagnola (Stolle-Verlag, Dresden 1930) in the German Democratic Republic was on the list of literature to be discarded.

literature

  • Uwe Puschner : German reform stage and folk cult site. Ernst Wachler and the Harz Mountain Theater. In: Handbook for the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Edited by Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz and Justus H. Ulbricht . Munich u. a. 1996, ISBN 3-598-11241-6 , pp. 762-796.
  • Ernst Wachler, Max Wachler: Chronicle of the Wachler family from the end of the 16th century to the present. Costenoble, Jena 1910.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Richard Frank Krummel : Nietzsche and the German spirit. Vol. 1, with co. Evelyn S. Krummel, 2., verb. u. supplementary edition, Berlin / New York 1998, p. 164.
  2. ^ Uwe Puschner : Ernst Wachler . In: Handbook for the "Völkischen Movement" 1871-1918 . Edited by Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz and Justus H. Ulbricht. Munich u. a. 1996, p. 931.
  3. ↑ a b c Uwe Puschner: The national movement in the Wilhelmine empire. Language - race - religion. Darmstadt 2001
  4. ↑ Werner Stegmaier , Daniel Krohabennik : Jüdischer Nietzscheanismus. Walter de Gruyter, 1997, p. 389.
  5. ↑ Ernst Wachler, Max Wachler: Chronicle of the Wachler family from the end of the 16th century to the present. Costenoble, Jena 1910 (Appendix).
  6. ↑ Uwe Puschner: German reform stage and völkisch cult site. In: Handbook on the "Völkische Movement" 1871–1918. Edited by Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz and Justus H. Ulbricht. Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11241-6 , p. 767 f.
  7. ↑ a b Uwe Puschner: The national movement in the Wilhelmine empire. Language - race - religion. Darmstadt 2001, p. 279.
  8. ↑ Uwe Puschner: The national movement in the Wilhelmine empire. Language - race - religion. Darmstadt 2001, p. 233.
  9. ↑ Uwe Puschner: German reform stage and völkisch cult site . In: Handbook on the "Völkische Movement" 1871–1918. Munich 1996, p. 769 ff .; Uwe Puschner: The National Movement in the Wilhelmine Empire , Darmstadt 2001, p. 228 ff.
  10. ↑ Curt Trepte : Harz mountain theater: Tradition and present. For the 60th anniversary of the Harz mountain theater in Thale. Henschel, Berlin 1963, p. 21.
  11. ↑ Uwe Puschner: The national movement in the Wilhelmine empire. Darmstadt 2001, p. 126 f .; Ulrich Nanko: The German Faith Movement. Marburg 1993, p. 41 f.
  12. ↑ Uwe Puschner: The national movement in the Wilhelmine empire. Darmstadt 2001, p. 286 ff.
  13. ↑ a b c Uwe Puschner: German reform stage and völkisch cult site. Ernst Wachler and the Harz Mountain Theater. In: Handbook for the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Edited by Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz and Justus H. Ulbricht. Munich u. a. 1996, pp. 762-796, here: p. 793.
  14. ↑ Stefan Breuer : The Völkische in Germany. Empire and Weimar Republic . Darmstadt 2008, pp. 59, 106, 119 ISBN 978-3-534-21354-2 ; Uwe Puschner: German reform stage and folk cult site . In: Handbook on the "Völkische Movement" 1871–1918. Edited by Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz and Justus H. Ulbricht. Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11241-6 , p. 794.
  15. ↑ Michael Bönisch: The "hammer" movement. In: Handbook on the "Völkische Movement" 1871–1918. Edited by Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz and Justus H. Ulbricht. Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11241-6 , pp. 341-3365.
  16. ↑ Stefan Breuer: The "Twentieth Century" and the Mann Brothers. In: Manfred Dierks u. Ruprecht Wimmer (ed.): Thomas Mann and Judaism. Frankfurt a. M. 2004, pp. 75-95, pp. 83 f.
  17. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-w.html
  18. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-w.html
personal data
SURNAME Wachler, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wachler, Heinrich Ernst (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and dramaturge
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH 1945
Place of death Theresienstadt