Friedrich Hagen

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Friedrich Hagen (born July 24, 1903 in Nuremberg , † February 25, 1979 near Paris ) was a German poet .

Life

Friedrich Hagen was born in Nuremberg in 1903. After attending the teacher training college, he taught German and art at various schools. He wrote poetry, plays and painted. In 1933 he fled to France as a staunch opponent of National Socialism with his wife Marguerite and joined the French resistance during the war . After the war he worked as editor-in-chief for French radio and from 1950 worked as a freelance writer, translator and occasionally as a director. In 1965 he was awarded the City of Nuremberg Prize. He died in 1979 in a clinic in a Paris suburb of complications from long-term cancer.

In addition to the volume of poetry "Weinberg der Zeit", which appeared in 1949, he published the novel "Kelter des Zorns" (1963) after the war and wrote essays on French poetry, for example on Paul Éluard and Jean Cocteau . Translations from French take up a large part of his work; he translated works by Cocteau, Eluard and Jules Supervielle .

Hagen was an atheist and supporter of Ludwig Feuerbach, about whom he gave his first lecture at the age of sixteen. He advocated a " pantheism that puts man in the place of God". Throughout his life he was also close to Marxist ideas. For him poetry has a social task. It should express the unity of humanity ("I say I speak of a thousand others") and anticipate a brighter future: "The poet's vision penetrates the flesh of the present in order to discover the seed of the future in their midst."

Jean Gebser writes about Friedrich Hagen in “Origin and Present”: “His poetry is original, purified poetry, free of all ballast of the past. They are verses of pure statement: a truthfulness, not an evocation; some of a previously barely achieved weightlessness and transparency, which rises to that 'universal consciousness' which Hagen proves for Paul Eluard's poetry. […] Both poets express the eteological moment. For Hagen it will become obvious once all of his poetry volumes have been published. ”(Ursprung und Gegenwart, p. 448)

Works

  • The legend of death. Game. 1923.
  • Vineyard of time. Poems. 1949.
  • Paul Eluard. Poems. Lancelot, Neuwied 1949.
  • The press of anger.
  • Jean Meslier or an atheist in a priestly skirt. Leverkusen and Cologne 1977, revised version of a lecture given by Friedrich Hagen in 1975.
  • Friedrich Hagen. Poems. Edited by Martin Klaußner Fürth 1980, 175 p., Partly translated by Hagen himself in both German and French.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hagen, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet, essayist and translator
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1979
Place of death Paris