Fred von Hoerschelmann

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Fred von Hoerschelmann (born November 16, 1901 in Hapsal , Estonia , † June 2, 1976 in Tübingen ) was a German writer and radio play author .

Life

Fred von Hoerschelmann was the second child of the married couple Elisabeth (née Sevecke) and Martin von Hoerschelmann. The father was a doctor. After attending the cathedral school in Reval (Tallinn), he studied from 1921 to 1925 at the Universities of Dorpat (Tartu) and Munich, initially chemistry, later philosophy, art history and literary studies.

His writing career began in 1927 with the publication of numerous stories in the Vossische Zeitung , the Berliner Tageblatt , the Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Zeitung .

In Hapsal, Hoerschelmann's first radio play Flucht vor der Freiheit was created , which was a success across Germany and is still one of the classics from the early days of radio play. There are four versions of the radio play: the first version from 1928/29, a revised second version from 1932, an arrangement by Arnolt Bronnen , which was published under the title Der Weg in die Freiheit on January 3, 1933 at the Berliner Funkstunde (with Heinrich George in the role of machinist Rauk) and a fourth version based on the Bronnen version on the occasion of a new production by Norddeutscher Rundfunk Hamburg in 1959.

The announcement of his second radio play Urwald , broadcast in 1933, made the then 15-year-old Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann , who later founded the Institute for Demoscopy in Allensbach , aware of Fred von Hoerschelmann. She wrote him a letter in which she did not - as would have been expected - ask for an autograph, but wanted to get to know the author. This process marked the beginning of more than 40 years of correspondence and close friendship with the fifteen years older author.

In the same year, his radio play The Real Innocence, based on a comedy by Musset, was rejected because of its French subject, after it was initially accepted by Westdeutsche Rundfunk AG (WERAG). When the work for various magazines and radio became more and more difficult in view of the political and structural changes, Hoerschelmann, who lived temporarily in Berlin until 1936, finally decided to return to Estonia , where the National Socialist power politics caught up with him in 1939. In the same year he was relocated to Hohensalza (Inowrocław) in the Polish Wartheland , which had been occupied by German troops a short time before . There he was employed by a school board. In the following years the two dramas The Tenth Symphony (world premiere in Aussig / Ústí nad Labem 1941) and Wendische Nacht (world premiere in Hamburg 1942) were created.

Despite being indispensable , Hoerschelmann was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1942. After the end of the Second World War , Hoerschelmann settled down as a freelance writer in Tübingen. Here he met his long-time girlfriend, the actress Helen von Münchhofen , who later inherited his estate. She handed it over to the German Literature Archive in Marbach .

In 1950, Fred von Hoerschelmann's short story book Die Stadt Tondi was published . The stories collected in it take place in the imaginary Estonian city of Tondi, based on Hapsal. In the mostly monological or one-character narratives, dissociated people are portrayed. These stories focus on existential questions of human life and conflicts that revolve around guilt, responsibility and conscience. Hoerschelmann can be recognized here as an inventive narrator with a keen eye for human abysses.

From 1949 until his death in 1976 he produced more than 20 radio plays and around 30 radio adaptations of literary models. His most famous original radio plays include The Locked Door (1952), The Ship Esperanza (1953) and Dichter Nebel (1961). Measured by the number of translations and productions at home and abroad, Das Schiff Esperanza is considered the most successful German radio play.

In his radio work, Fred von Hoerschelmann made use of modern radio techniques and developed new forms of literary representation that are only possible in radio plays . This connection between tradition and innovation is characteristic of Fred von Hoerschelmann's radio play. The wealth of forms in his radio plays is evident from the abundance of literary, structural and dramaturgical design options and, last but not least, the diversity of content and themes. His radio-acoustic oeuvre ranges from “realistic problematic radio play” to comedy and grotesque , from real to absurd to fictional plot and from historical to futuristic material. It was Fred von Hoerschelmann's claim to counteract the “crisis of storytelling” through innovative radio play poetics.

Fred von Hoerschelmann's radio plays paint a detailed picture of German post-war society and at the same time hold up a mirror to it. The characters, left to their own devices, have to make decisions in a situation that is threatening or incomprehensible to them. The novelistic narration with a mostly dramatically pointed open ending that prompts the listener to look for a solution, and dealing with existential questions of human life characterize Hoerschelmann as a "master of audio drama" ( Heinz Schwitzke ) and as a "novelist of the radio" (Hans-Ulrich Wagner).

Works

stories

  • The city of Tondi , 1950
  • Seven days, seven nights , 1963

Plays

  • The red doublet , comedy, 1935
  • The X Symphony , Drama, 1941
  • Wendish Night , drama, 1942

Radio plays

  • The escape from freedom (1928/29/1932/1933/1959)
  • Primeval Forest (1932)
  • The real innocence (1932/33), not broadcast
  • Bailiff Enders (1949)
  • What shall we do? (1950)
  • The Locked Door (1952)
  • An hour stay (1952)
  • The stag beetle (1952)
  • Sabab and Illah (1952)
  • I'm not there anymore (1952)
  • Das Schiff Esperanza (1953) (parallel broadcasts on March 25 and 26, 1953 on SDR / NWDR)
  • Rendezvous of the Machines (1953), together with Walter Jens , unsent fragment
  • I hear names (1954)
  • Caro (1954)
  • A Path of Eight Minutes (1955)
  • Timbuktu (1955)
  • Surrender of Siena (1955)
  • Happy Awakening (1955)
  • The Palace of the Poor (1956)
  • The salt works (1958)
  • Thick Fog (1961)
  • The cage (1962)
  • Sicilian Spring (1967)
  • The blue coast (1970)

Radio processing

literature

  • Carola L. Gottzmann , Petra Hörner: Lexicon of the German-language literature of the Baltic States and St. Petersburg . De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019338-1 , p. 595-598 .
  • Hagen Schäfer: Fred von Hoerschelmann's radio play. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-14095-4 .
  • Hagen Schäfer: Historiography of an imaginary Baltic region and psychogram of human dissociation. The prose work Fred von Hoerschelmanns. In: Yearbook of the Baltic Germans 2012, Lüneburg 2011, pp. 142–164.
  • Hagen Schäfer: A strange outbreak of the freakish. The correspondence between Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Fred von Hoerschelmann. In: FAZ August 16, 2010 ( faz.net ).
  • Heinz Schwitzke : The radio play. Dramaturgy and story. Kiepenheuer u. Witsch, Cologne a. a. 1963, DNB 454625359 ( full text online PDF, free of charge, 376 pages, 1.8 MB, at: mediaculture online).
  • Heinz Schwitzke (Ed.): Reclam's radio play guide. Stuttgart 1969. lmz-bw.de (PDF)
  • House of the home of the state of Baden-Württemberg (ed.): Fred von Hoerschelmann (1901–1976). Approaches to a radio play author. An almost forgotten chapter of German broadcasting history. hdhbw.de
  • Hans-Ulrich Wagner: Fred von Hoerschelmann. A novelist from the radio mediaculture-online.de (mp3 file).
  • Hans-Ulrich Wagner: Radio novelist: Fred von Hoerschelmann and the creation of the radio play “Das Schiff Esperanza” sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de (PDF).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hoerschelmann, Fred von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German radio play author
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Hapsal , Estonia
DATE OF DEATH June 2nd 1976
Place of death Tübingen