Franz Held (writer)

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Franz Held (actually Franz Herzfeld ; born May 30, 1862 in Düsseldorf ; † February 4, 1908 in Rankweil ) was a German anarchist poet, playwright and prose writer.

Life

Franz Herzfeld, who later called himself Franz Held, came from one of the leading Rhenish entrepreneurial families. His father Jakob Herzfeld was the son of Jonas Herzfeld , founder of the Herzfeld cotton factory in Neuss am Rhein, later based in Düsseldorf under the name Herzfeld & Sons .

At the age of 14, Franz Herzfeld won the city of Düsseldorf's drama competition in 1876. The play was performed and acclaimed. In 1882 he left high school and studied law in Bonn , later in Leipzig and Munich , and finally in Berlin . He did not finish his studies, instead went on trips to Paris and Italy . From 1887 he published poems and other literary works, henceforth under the pseudonym Franz Held .

At a strike event in the 1880s, Franz Held met his future wife, the textile worker and anarchist Alice Stolzenberg, who appeared there as a speaker. The couple lived in Schmargendorf near Berlin; the first of four children, Helmut, who called himself John Heartfield from 1916 and was an important graphic artist and photo mechanic, was born in 1891.

In 1895 Franz Held was charged with blasphemy . The judgment of the Munich District Court , one year in prison, was pronounced in absentia; Franz Held was already underground at this point. After receiving the court summons, he fled to Switzerland with his wife and now three children. The family lived completely impoverished in Weggis in the canton of Lucerne , where his second son Wieland was born in 1896, who changed his name to Wieland Herzfelde in 1914 and later founded the Malik publishing house .

After Wieland's birth, the family was expelled from Switzerland and from then on lived in an alpine hut on the Gaisberg in Aigen , south of Salzburg . Franz Held's last literary work, the narrative poem Der Würfel Petri , appeared in 1898.

In the summer of 1899, the parents disappeared overnight without a trace and left their four children in the mountain hut. After four days they were found there by the mayor of Aigen, Ignaz Varnschein, who also initially assumed the role of foster parent. The children's guardians were the writer Max Halbe and Franz Held's older brother, the Berlin lawyer and Reichstag member of the SPD, Joseph Herzfeld . The whereabouts of the parents remained unknown to the children for a long time; Only in 1977 did Wieland Herzfelde learn more about the fate of his father.

The reason for the disappearance of the heroes and their further path are largely in the dark. In 1900 Franz Held was picked up in Gries near Bolzano and taken to an insane asylum in Bolzano. He died on February 4, 1908 in the Valduna mental hospital in Rankweil ( Vorarlberg ).

Works

  • Gorgon heads. A realistic romancero . W. Friedrich, Leipzig 1887
  • The adventurous priest Don Juan or: The Marriage Confessions. Novel in rhyme . W. Friedrich, Leipzig 1889 (according to the subtitle supposedly "due to a lost handwriting of Christoffel von Grimmelshausen ")
  • A party on the Bastilla. Prelude to the revolutionary trilogy "Massen" . Rosenbaum & Hart, Berlin 1889 (second edition under the title Ein Fest auf der Bastilla. Prelude in three acts . Rosenbaum & Hart, Berlin 1891)
  • A trip to Africa through the Marsfeld (Paris exhibition 1889) . Rosenbaum & Hart, Berlin 1890 (second edition under the title Tartarin in Paris. Humorous novel . Fresko-Verlag, Berlin 1893)
  • Great nature. Selected poems . Fresko-Verlag, Berlin 1893
  • Manometer to 99! Social drama in 5 acts . Fresko-Verlag, Berlin 1893
  • Tanhusaere recidivus and other forms . Fresko-Verlag, Berlin 1894
  • In spite of all! Some from my treasure house . Fresko-Verlag, Berlin 1894
  • Don Juan's council cellar bars. A boozy Weinmär . Fresko-Verlag, Berlin 1894

Work editions

  • Selected works . Verlag Eberhard Frowein, Berlin 1912 (published by Ernst Kreowski on the occasion of Franz Held's 50th birthday; the book cover was the first published work by John Heartfield)
  • Franz Held - Vordadaist texts from Jenesien , Edition Raetia , Bozen 2012, edited by Hans Hs Winkler , Kurt Lanthaler , Martin Hanni

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Footnotes

  1. ↑ The information on family relationships follows more recent sources, e. B. the article on ngz-online.de., And Stefan Rohrbacher, Juden in Neuss, ibid. 1986, p. 113. Roland März (1981) wrongly gives a version (after Michael Töteberg, rororo, 1978, p. 7) according to which Franz would be the son of Joseph Herzfeld († 1901), the older brother of Jakob Herzfeld. In 1848 Joseph was chairman of the “Democratic Club” in Neuss and co-organizer of the first mass meeting of democrats on the Neusser Rheinwiesen, where speakers like Ferdinand Lassalle appeared in front of thousands of spectators; even Karl Marx frequented Joseph Herzfeld's house.
  2. ↑ The passport for the interior of the "Government-General of the Lower-Rhine" Jonas has peculiarities: The passport holders signed with Jonnas (sic); the officer changed the surname to Hertzfeld by hand . Document dated November 2, 1814, reprint at Lux Rettej: John Heartfield. Book design and photo montage. A collection. Rotes Antiquariat, Berlin 2014. Without ISBN, p. 10

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hero, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herzfeld, Franz (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anarchist poet, playwright and prose writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH 4th February 1908
Place of death Rankweil