Friedrich Bethge

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Friedrich Bethge (born May 24, 1891 in Berlin ; † September 17, 1963 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe ) was a German, National Socialist poet , playwright and dramaturge .

Life

In his youth Friedrich Bethge, the son of the Germanist Rudolf Bethge, attended the Berlinische Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster and the Friedrichwerder Gymnasium .

When the First World War broke out , Bethge volunteered. In the course of the war he was wounded several times and promoted to lieutenant . Bethge served as a company commander towards the end of the war.

In 1930, Bethge contributed to the collection Das Antlitz des Weltkriek published by Ernst Jünger . Front experiences of German soldiers . In 1932 he joined the NSDAP , for which he worked as a block warden . In the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (KfdK) he headed the book and stage authors department. In addition, he wrote articles for magazines such as the Ostdeutsche Monatshefte, in which he published and reviewed poems from the estate of the West Prussian writer Elisabeth Siewert in 1933 .

Career in the Nazi state

Bethge owed both the leading position in the KFdK and the subsequent offices in the cultural sector of the “Third Reich” to her friendship with Hans Hinkel . It was he who appointed Bethge as chief dramaturge at the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt in June 1933 , which was supposed to guarantee that the plays at the Frankfurt theater corresponded to Nazi ideology. Bethge was also Gauschrifttumswart, Reichsschesswart, Councilor and Vice Chairman of the Free German Hochstift and curator for the Frankfurt Goethe Prize . From 1935 he was the Reich Senator for Culture and Presidential Councilor of the Reich Theater Chamber . Bethge, a member of the SS since 1936 , appeared in the Frankfurt theater in SS uniform; In 1941 he had achieved the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer .

In 1937 he received the National Book Prize, one of the highest literary awards in the German Reich for his drama The March of the Veterans (1935), in which he addressed the political wrestling of soldiers after the World War. The literary scholar Julius Petersen explains in his work " The Science of Poetry " (1939/1944) the various sources and suggestions that served the poet as material for the drama The March of the Veterans : the experience as a multiple wounded front soldier and war returnee, the "Hunger March" by American war veterans on Washington in 1932, " The Dead Souls " by Nikolai Gogol and " War and Peace " by Leo Tolstoy . Regarding the thematic parallels to the wing struggles within the National Socialist Party in the early 1930s, Bethge-Bonk (2011) states that The March of the Veterans “is, as it were, a state-official, euphemizing piece of propaganda that transfigured historical events against better knowledge and falsifying light ”, unmasked. Bethge was informed personally about the upcoming award for his drama in March 1937 at a meeting with Hitler and Goebbels . The latter celebrated the playwright in his laudation as the man of

“Old guard of the party. He actively led the movement to victory. As a fighter at the front, he was wounded four times. His award-winning poetry is determined by the concept of national honor. The march of the veterans is a song of Prussian discipline and military obedience [...] [and] may be regarded as the first happy fulfillment of the stage poetry hoped for by National Socialist cultural policy. "

After the attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, Bethge immediately volunteered. The reason for this may lie in particular in the fact that Bethge saw Poland as the ultimate enemy - a fact that also emerges in his dramas Rebellion around Prussia (1938) and Anke von Skoepen (1940). In keeping with the National Socialist ideology, the Anke drama defends the fatherland by all means against the “external enemy”, Poland. In a deeply racist and aggressive tone, it says here about the Polish people:

“Pierce the plague bumps, the festering ones in the country! - let the sword be the scalpel! - Throw all the black pack, all Polish, all Ermland into the Vistula! - the black death then gives way by itself in no time! "

The first performance of the piece took place on September 27, 1940 in Frankfurt. There were a total of 21 productions.

On his 50th birthday in 1941, Bethge received many congratulations from respected personalities of the Nazi state as well as a book with handwritten dedications in which Bethge's outstanding position “in the series of intellectual heralds and interpreters of the National Socialist worldview” is emphasized.

Until the last phase of World War II to entertain the soldiers at the front in the so-called soldiers leaves for holidays and leisure of Bethge as head of the KDF published -Schachgemeinschaft chess problems with a description in the military jargon.

After 1945

From December 1945 to February 1947 Friedrich Bethge was an American prisoner of war. He then lived as a freelance writer in Bad Homburg. In the course of the denazification proceedings initiated against him in 1948, he claimed to have joined the NSDAP to support the moderate wing of the party against the radical, anti-Semitic forces within the Nazi movement. He also referred to numerous so-called Persilscheine , which attested him a distance from the Nazi ideology. In fact, Bethge had campaigned for a few artists (e.g. Ernst Barlach , Hermann Reuter ) whose works were defamed as "degenerate". The fact that Bethge was able to oppose the party line in these individual cases is due to his high position in cultural policy and, not least, to his friendly relationship with Hans Hinkel , whom he specifically asked to stand up for him. Despite folkish and racist ideas in Bethge since 1930, one could not find anything in his works in the context of the judicial chamber proceedings that could be interpreted as typically National Socialist, for example in the sense of racial idolatry, anti-Semitism or the expansion of living space. "Bethge was finally in the Group of the less burdened and fined 200 RM . Following the announcement of the verdict, he told those present that it was Hans Hinkel who “stood behind everything” “who held him. [...] Hinkel proposed him for the Reich Culture Senate. Hinkel obtained the presidential council. "

Bethge wrote some dramas in the post-war period, but they were never published. At the meetings of the DKEG, founded in 1950, he continued to meet his fellow writers from the Nazi era.

Friedrich Bethge died on September 17, 1963 in Bad Homburg.

Others

In the Soviet occupation zone , his writings, Marsch der Veteranen (1935) and Rebellion um Preußen (1941) , published by the Berlin theater publisher Langen / Müller, were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out.

Awards

Works

  • Parish Peder , tragedy, 1924
  • Pierre and Jeannette , novella, 1926
  • Reims , Drama, 1929/30 (premiere on February 27, 1930 at the Osnabrück City Theater )
  • The face of the world war. Experiences at the front of German soldiers , eds. Ernst Jünger and F. Bethge, 1930/31
  • The Blood Test , Comedy, 1934
  • The Veteran's March , drama, 1935
  • The Triumphant Heart , novella, 1937
  • Rebellion around Prussia , tragedy, 1939
  • Anke von Skoepen , tragedy, 1940
  • Copernicus , 1942

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 49.
  2. ^ Friedrich Bethge: The sad Prussian woman ( Elisabeth Siewert ) . In: Ostdeutsche Monatshefte, 13th year, 1933, pp. 221–227 (with poems from the estate).
  3. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, pp. 42, 51.
  4. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 59f.
  5. ↑ Julius Petersen: The science of poetry. System and methodology of literary studies. 2nd Edition. Vol. 1. with corrections and additions and introduction to vol. 2. Edited and edited by Erich Trunz. Berlin 1944, page 115.
  6. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 57.
  7. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, pp. 54, 57.
  8. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 58.
  9. ↑ Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger of May 2, 1937. Quoted from Günther Rühle: Zeit und Theater. Vol. 3. Dictatorship and Exile 1933-1945 . Berlin: Propylaeen 1974, p. 762.
  10. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 62.
  11. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 66f.
  12. ^ Friedrich Bethge: Anke von Skoepen . Berlin: Theaterverlag Langen / Müller 1941, p. 15. Quoted from Bethge-Bonk (2011), p. 71.
  13. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 72.
  14. ^ Book with handwritten dedications for Bethge's 50th birthday. IfStGF, NL Bethge, Mappe 8. Quoted from Bethge-Bonk (2011), p. 63.
  15. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 63.
  16. ↑ Edmund Bruns: The game of chess as a phenomenon of the cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries . Munster 2003.
  17. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, pp. 57, 72f.
  18. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 65.
  19. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, pp. 66, 74.
  20. ↑ reasoning of the Court of 25./26.05.1948. HHW, De, Magazin, Dept. 520, republication 91. Quoted from Bethge-Bonk (2011), p. 73.
  21. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 74.
  22. ↑ Minutes of the hearing for the pronouncement of the verdict of 1948. HHW, De, Magazin, Abt. 520, repositioned 91. Quoted in Bethge-Bonk (2011), p. 74.
  23. ↑ Ines Bethge-Bonk: Friedrich Bethge - the "species-appropriate" playwright . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 74f.
  24. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-b.html
  25. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-b.html
personal data
SURNAME Bethge, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German, National Socialist poet, playwright and dramaturge
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 17th September 1963
Place of death Bad Homburg vor der Höhe