Friedrich Castelle

Friedrich Castelle ( pseudonyms : Hans Dietmar , Fritz von Schonebeck , Hans Uhlenbrock ), born April 30, 1879 in Appelhülsen ; † January 15, 1954 in Welbergen (Steinfurt district), was a völkisch German journalist and writer and partisan of the Nazi regime.

The grave of Friedrich Castelle in the old St. Mauritz cemetery in Munster.

Life

Friedrich Castelle was the son of a merchant who came from a French emigrant family. Castelle attended grammar school in Münster and then studied philosophy at the University of Münster . From 1900 to 1904 he worked as a journalist in Aschaffenburg , Aachen and other places. From 1904 to 1911 he was a member of the feature section of the Munsterischer Anzeiger . In 1906 he received his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Münster with a thesis on Joseph von Eichendorff . In addition to his journalistic work , he wrote novels , stories , biographies , poems and radio plays and edited Westphalian and Low German authors .

From 1912 to 1915 Castelle headed the magazine Germany . During the First World War , Castelle was head of the press and news department at the Deputy General Commander of the VII Army Corps . From 1916 he was the managing director of the ethnically oriented Westphalian Heimatbund coordinate whose magazine of the Red Rocks Heimatblätter he and Karl Wagenfeld 1919 published . After 1918 Castelle was one of the initiators of the Niederdeutsche Heimatbühne in Münster, and until 1921 he held lectures as a lecturer at the University of Münster. In addition, as he did before 1914, he undertook extensive lecture tours through Germany . From 1921 Castelle was a lecturer at the Düsseldorf Academy and head of the broadcasting station in Düsseldorf . From 1922 he headed the monthly magazine Die Bergstadt, founded by Paul Keller and published in Breslau .

Even before 1933 Castelle provided the National Socialists with journalistic support. From 1930 he was appointed editor of the magazine Der Türmer . Monthly for Mind and Spirit the journalistic guideline of the paper, the successor to Die Bergstadt . In a book show in the Türmer from 1932, he mainly advertised National Socialist authors. He saw the increase in National Socialist literature as a "recovery process". “He praised Horst Wessel's biography by Horst Ewers, which made a significant contribution to glorifying the SA man: 'Ewers picked out this suggestion and now [tells] in the form of Horst, who died a martyr for the young German freedom movement Wessel the fate of our days and the German youth. '"

After the " seizure of power " by the NSDAP and its allies, Castelle, who had joined the NSDAP in 1933, took on important functions in the cultural bureaucracy of the new regime. He “glorified not only Hitler, but also the party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg”, who - unlike Goebbels - closely adhered to “ blood and soil ” and “healthy public sentiment” in questions of art and art politics, and at the same time defended the Weimar “ art of decay”. took an aligned attitude, as it was established in 1937 with the exhibition "Degenerate Art". After Castelle was already chairman of the Nazi cultural community for the Steinfurt district, he was appointed a member of the advisory board of the Gaus Westfalen-Nord and a leading employee of the Reich Chamber of Literature. In 1937 he became a clerk in a main department in the Reichsender Cologne , to whose deputy director he later moved up. During the war he was head of a press and news department and of the radio station in occupied Luxembourg . He belonged to the Reichsschrifttumskammer and at times to the Reichsrundfunkkammer .

In the Türmer he was “more and more offensive” for National Socialism. In future, “everything” will be “subordinated to the service of the people and fatherland” in the magazine. ... The struggle for spiritual freedom in the sense of the Führer has always been our first and last goal for 35 years, it will remain our last and first goal in the future. "The point is," with this tremendous departure from a wonderful Renewal of the people, to collect the valuable and essential achievements of the new age and to make them usable for the overall culture of the people ”. As a prerequisite for this he saw the “extermination” of “subhumanity, which has its most dangerous emanations in communism and Bolshevism”, but he also used the Türmer for anti-Semitic propaganda .

In 1935 he tried to integrate the Annette von Droste-Hülshoff Society into a National Socialist organization. He was an early sponsor of Hermann Löns, with whom he was personally acquainted. When a National Socialist Löns cult was established in Germany, he “earned” as a member of the Löns Memorial Foundation “inglorious merits”. “In a political-symbolic farce that could hardly be surpassed in terms of embarrassment and mishaps,” he directed the transfer of the supposed remains of Hermann Löns to the Lüneburg Heath in 1935.

In 1938, the writer, who was considered a very Catholic, left the Church.

After the end of National Socialism , Castelle was arrested by the British military government and interned because of his Nazi burden . In the denazification process he was judged to be "a strong Nazi" (1946). “Because I was very positive for the NSDAP”, the “rehabilitation was rejected” (1946). Castelle presented himself as a victim of the conditions that were considered "politically unreliable". For the years 1933 to 1937 no one could prove that he had “active work in the political sense”. In the following phases of denazification, the assessments improved: "Working as a poet and freelance artist is not only without hesitation, but urgently desired" (1947). Under these conditions he was able to work again for the radio , now mainly as a writer of Low German radio plays . With lectures and recitations, he continued to appear in front of a smaller audience. He remained closely connected to the home milieu. He was a board member of the home and tourist association of his home municipality. In an obituary, the Steinfurter Heimatbote described him as a “personality with a unique character”. “He and we” formed “a single unity”, just as there was also a “unity of the poet with his audience”.

Honor, criticism and withdrawal

• 1903: Literature Prize of the Literary Society in Cologne
• 1925: Literature Prize of the Deutschlandbund
• until 1990: Castelle bust in the old town hall of Steinfurt, which was removed during renovation work
• 1954: burial with the participation of "high-ranking representatives of public life"
• 1958: A street in Münster is named "Castelleweg"
• 1987/1988: Restoration of his grave in the Mauritz cemetery .

In 2010 at the latest, a public discussion about the “Castelleweg” began in Münster, the focus of which was the National Socialist burden on the namesake. In Steinfurt, too, the uncovering of the buried knowledge about Castelle's National Socialist activities was followed in 2010 by a council discussion on the renaming of the "Castelleweg", which the culture committee had recommended. The proposal did not have a majority until the end of 2011. Then the council decided in a transitional period from the beginning of 2012 to mid-2013 to put the future sign “Thomas-Mann-Weg” under the street sign “Friedr.-Castelle-Weg”, which will subsequently be removed.

In June 2011, the “Street Names” commission recommended the city of Münster unanimously and the city council to rename it “because of the parallel to Karl Wagenfeld ”. The Council then took a corresponding decision.

In Rheine-Mesum, Castelle-Strasse was also renamed after Thomas Mann in November 2012 .

In Ochtrup (Kr. Steinfurt) a decision to rename “Castellestrasse” was passed at the end of 2012 by the council. A large minority spoke against it. The CDU parliamentary group introduced the - rejected - proposal to keep the name, but to attach an additional label with a QR code. So "everyone has the opportunity to find out about the National Socialist connections of Friedrich Castelle and Karl Wagenfeld [the second case of renaming]."

In August 2014, the city archives in Dortmund approved the renaming of Castellestrasse. The renaming took place in February 2016.

Fonts

• About life and love. Cologne 1903
• Eichendorff's unprinted seals. Münster iW 1906
• Gustav Falke. Leipzig 1909
• Charlotte Niese. Leipzig 1914
• Late larks in the air. Cologne 1917
• The house on Dreizehnmännergasse. Hanover 1919
• Hermann Loens. Hanover 1920
• In and around Recklinghausen. Recklinghausen 1920 (together with Karl Boblenz)
• Charon. Hanover 1921
• Wanderer in space. Warendorf 1921
• Holy earth. Wroclaw 1922
• The beautiful Bibernell. Wroclaw 1923
• The guards of the city of Münster i. W. Münster iW 1924
• The Heuscheuer Mountains. Wroclaw 1925
• In the magic of the Lönsland. Berlin 1925
• The bird Holdermund. Hildesheim 1925
• Castelle - Droste-Hülshoff - Löns. Recklinghausen 1929
• "Fleesk up'n Disk!". Münster iW 1930
• People I love… . Sponholtz, Hanover 1934. Was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone .
• The beautiful County of Glatz. Glatz 1936
• Karl Wagenfeld. Munster 1939
• Münster, the beautiful capital of Westphalia. Münster (Westphalia) 1939
• The Ahnenerbe in Hermann Löns. Munster 1941
• Jeremiah's worm of God. Essen 1941
• Heidideldum. Horstmar [u. a.] 1949
• Min Mönsterland. Münster / Westf. 1949
• The young doctor orre He stretches up't land. 1950

Editing

• The Heliand. Cassel 1915
• Löns memorial book. Hanover 1917. From the 1936 edition (Gersbach, Bad Pyrmont) was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the GDR.
• Annette von Droste-Hülshoff : Seals of Droste. M. Gladbach 1920
• Levin Schücking : Paul Bronckhorst or The New Men. Münster in Westphalia. 1920
• Levin Schücking : The Sutler from Cologne. Munster i. W. 1921
• Ferdinand Zumbroock : Selected Low German Poems. Munster 1921
• Hermann Löns : Complete Works. 8 volumes, Leipzig 1923
• Hermann Löns and his heath. Berlin 1924
• Hermann Löns : Young leaves. Bad Pyrmont 1925
• Annette von Droste-Hülshoff : Because I greet you from the stars. Munster 1938
• Max von Spießen : Stories from the "snail shell". Dülmen i. Westf. 1940
• A millennium chronicle for the 600th anniversary of the city of Burgsteinfurt. Burgsteinfurt 1947
• Karl Wagenfeld : Collected Works. 2 volumes, Münster 1954 and 1956

Translations

• Andreas Haukland : Helge the Wiking. Hanover 1927 (translated together with Luise Wolf )
• Voltaire : Merope. Munster i. W. 1912

literature

• Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 , p. 265.
• Steffen town house, Friedrich Castelle. A local political writer, in: Matthias Frese (Ed.), Questionable Honors !? Street names as an instrument of history politics and remembrance culture, Münster 2012, pp. 233–250

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Castelle in the catalog of the German National Library
• Friedrich Castelle in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
• Entry in the MünsterWiki
• Bernd Schlusemann: Discussion about street names: Historians: "Castelle was a Nazi functionary". ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Münstersche Zeitung , December 9, 2010.

Individual evidence

1. ^ According to: Wolf Stegmann, Friedrich Castelle: Journalist and poet in the service of the party. He always remained connected to the city of Dorsten, see: [1] .
2. ↑ ^{a b} All information, unless otherwise stated, from: Friedrich Castelle in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
3. ^ Wolf Stegmann, Friedrich Castelle: Journalist and poet in the service of the party. He always remained connected to the city of Dorsten, see: [2] .
4. ↑ So in: Friedrich Castelle, Deutsche Wandlung - Deutschlands Rettung, in: Der Türmer. Monthly for Mind and Spirit, 35.7 (April 1933), pp. 10-11, see: [3] .
5. ^ Sigrid Nieberle, literary historical film biographies. Authorship and literary history in the cinema, Berlin 2008, pp. 133f.
6. ^ City of Münster, street names under discussion, Castelleweg, see: [4] ; Landesarchiv NRW, Dept. Rhineland, based on the denazification file.
7. ↑ According to the state archive of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland Department, based on the denazification file.
8. ^ All information: City of Münster, street names under discussion, Castelleweg, see: [5] ; Landesarchiv NRW, Dept. Rhineland, based on the denazification file.
9. ^ Wolf Stegmann, Friedrich Castelle: Journalist and poet in the service of the party. He always remained connected to the city of Dorsten, see: [6] .
10. ↑ Steinfurter Heimatbote, February 8, 1954, cited above. after: Wolf Stegmann, Friedrich Castelle: Journalist and poet in the service of the party. He always remained connected to the city of Dorsten, see: [7] .
11. ^ City of Münster, street names under discussion, Castelleweg, see: [8] .
12. ↑ Bernd Schlusemann: "Castelle was a Nazi functionary", in: Münstersche Zeitung, December 9, 2010, according to: Wolf Stegmann, Friedrich Castelle: Journalist and poet in the service of the party. He always remained connected to the city of Dorsten, see: [9] .
13. ↑ Rupert Joemann, discussion of street names. The name "Castelle" should disappear, in: Münstersche Zeitung, June 30, 2010, see: [10] .
14. ↑ Gerald Meier-Tasche, “Dichterstreit” decided. Friedrich-Castelle-Weg with a new street name, in: Münstersche Zeitung, January 9, 2012, see: [11] .
15. ^ City of Münster, street names under discussion, Castelleweg, see: [12] .
16. ↑ Castelle- and Wagenfeld-Straße renamed unanimously. "Names have no business being on the city's street signs", in: Münsterländische Volkszeitung, November 28, 2012, see: Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
17. ↑ Anne Eckrodt, the City Council decided Ochtrup renaming. Castellestrasse and Wagenfeldstrasse get new names, in: Tageblatt for the Steinfurt district, December 14, 2012, see: [13] .
18. ^ Statement from the Dortmund City Archives , August 13, 2014
19. ↑ Official Journal of the City of Dortmund  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , February 19, 2016  
20. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-c.html
21. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-l.html