Friedrich Muck-Lamberty

Friedrich Muck-Lamberty (idealizing drawing)

Friedrich Muck-Lamberty , actually Friedrich Lamberty (born July 14, 1891 in Strasbourg ; † January 7, 1984 in Oberlahr ), was a German artisan , representative of the German life reform and youth movement and one of the most famous so-called inflation saints of the 1920s .

Life

youth

Friedrich Lamberty grew up in a merchant family of fourteen in the then German Alsace and in the Dutch Simpelveld . Rather compact and with a large head, he was given the nickname Muck as a child after the title character of a fairy tale by Wilhelm Hauff , which he would carry his entire life.

In 1904 Muck ran away from home and came into contact with life reform circles at the age of fourteen. He worked in a health food store in Stuttgart and later managed a branch of the company in Brno, then Austria . In Stuttgart around 1907 he met the poet and nature apostle Gusto Gräser , who became a role model for him. From then on, he repeatedly interrupted his professional activity to wander through Germany, Austria and Switzerland . In 1909, the convinced vegetarian first came into contact with the Wandervogel movement and with the magazine “Der Vorrupp” published by Hans Paasche and Hermann Popert, in the vicinity of which he stayed until 1913. Since 1912, Muck planned to set up an alternative artisanal settlement community. However, he was unable to implement the project before the outbreak of the First World War . After the First Freideutschen Jugendtag on the Hohe Meißner in 1913, he and Hans Paasche and others founded a “Friends for Gusto Grasses”.

War and November Revolution

Like many others, Muck volunteered in 1914. With him and about 30 other migratory birds, a group of marines stationed on Heligoland was formed as an experiment , which was fed vegetarian. In 1917 he joined the right-wing nationalist German Fatherland Party , which called for a national community and the continuation of the war by all means. He experienced the outbreak of the German Revolution in November 1918 in a military hospital.

Muck was not an opponent of the revolution, but interpreted it as an opportunity on the way to the “ national rebirth” of Germany. For him, this “renewal” did not focus on a political transformation of Germany, but on the “spiritual” inner development of the individual: “Revolution of the soul”. His program, which he distributed in numerous leaflets and in the programmatic publication Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft from 1919, combined basic convictions of life reform and the influences of the youth movement of the people with religious expectations of salvation. For him, revolution was "the fight of the young against the old, [...] between young nature and old nature, between living people who are divine people, and the proletariat, that is, people who can be bought, the people of convenience." the dominion of the soul over matter.

Classification of his world of thought

Muck-Lamberty's ideas were by no means new, but essentially went back to his encounter with Gusto Gräser , who, together with his brother Karl, was a co-founder of the reformed Monte Verità near Ascona . Grass probably gathered a group of young people in Stuttgart in 1907, including the painter Willo Rall , the poet Georg Stammler and the journalist Theodor Heuss in addition to the businessman's apprentice Muck-Lamberty . Since then, Lamberty Gräser's vision of a wandering association of friends has been trying to advertise, especially in the circles of the wandering bird. In 1913 he invited from the Esslingen homestead colony with poems by Gusto Gräser to the youth meeting on the Meissner. At this meeting, Lamberty set up a "Circle of Friends for Gusto Grasses." Since then, at the latest, he has signed his letters, essays and drawings with Gräser's house symbol, the pentagram . This is also the case in his appeal "To the living preachers" from January 1919. His texts often contain direct or indirect quotations from poems by Gusto Graesser, which he printed together with his essays. In November 1918 he had formulated his own vision of revolution based on grasses: "Go into the woods and call the seekers of God to prayer ... Build strongholds of the spirit throughout the country ... Overthrow the rotten, the wicked" (reprinted in: Weltwende, 2nd year, No. 9/12, October 1921, p. 5). First in Hannoversch-Münden , then in Hartenstein and Kronach , he gathered young people from the Wandervogel around him. He called the hiking federation, which after Whitsun 1920 danced and singing through northern Bavaria and Thuringia, the "Neue Schar", based on the font "Words to a Schar" by Georg Stammler. In 1913, taking up the intentions of Gusto Grassers, he called for a "holy crowd" to break out. After Grasses had also joined the group of friends, his slogans fluttered ahead of the crowd on leaflets. Grasses spoke in their meetings and at their campfires, then lived with Muck with the factory gang in Naumburg, where he was arrested in November 1921 and from there sent to a deportation camp for unwanted foreigners.

Muck-Lamberty tried to combine life reform and cultural-philosophical ideas not only from Gusto Gräser with his own, partly Catholic, but also German-ethnic ideas. He wanted to practically try out an ecological way of life in today's sense and justify it poetically and religiously, without, however , speaking the word of an apocalypse : "Preservation of natural monuments, revitalization of the village and townscape by preservation and planting of trees, protection of the native flora and fauna from complete extinction and protection of domestic waters from pollution ".

For his followers, Muck-Lamberty was a new "Jesus", the "Messiah of Thuringia". He described himself as a “pioneer of a new era” and a “preacher in the desert”. In addition there was a cult of Mary rooted in his Catholic upbringing, albeit quirky , which, in a masculine way, placed the woman at the center of his doctrine of salvation, as a quasi secularized "Mary". Through them the rebirth of the völkisch Christ should take place, begotten by the prophet, that is, by Muck-Lamberty himself. The fatal implementation of these ideas would later lead to Lamberty's "fall into sin" and the decline of his movement.

The "new crowd"

In May 1920, under the leadership of Muck-Lamberty, a group of young people from the town of Hartenstein in the Ore Mountains began a train through Franconia and Thuringia . The first goal was the Whitsun meeting of the hiking birds in Kronach in Upper Franconia. There Muck called for the founding of the “Neue Schar” and then moved with the group via Coburg , Sonneberg , Saalfeld , Rudolstadt , Jena , Weimar , Erfurt and Gotha to Eisenach and the Wartburg . Muck described the "purpose of the hike: gathering all young people and fighting for the national community against everything common, against exploitation."

The “new crowd” went singing, dancing and preaching through the country and proclaimed the “revolution of the soul”. They strived for a state of "floating" and practiced self-awareness in group dynamic "thing" sessions. Gusto Gräser spoke at their campfires, his poems adorned their leaflets. They slept in the great outdoors, celebrated in churches, which they decorated with flowers and branches, and spread a true dance euphoria on their way. Like the legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin , Muck-Lamberty's group first cast a spell over hundreds and then thousands of people. The highlight of the procession was Erfurt, on whose Domplatz more than 10,000 people danced in an intoxicating communal experience. As a contemporary witness, the writer Lisa Tetzner describes the train as follows: “An innumerable crowd is rolling up the mountain. It seems that everyone in the city is on the march. A small group of strangely dressed boys and girls strode ahead. [...] Numerous children hold on to their sides and hands, which prevent them from striding and who push each other to one side. But, it's not just children, it's a whole, colorful people that follows. "

Announcement from Sonneberg

The public assessed Muck's train very ambiguously. While some Protestant pastors of the crowd opened their churches and the Altenburg regional council was positive about them, the Catholic Church rejected the company. Criticism also came from the workers' parties , who accused Muck of dumbing down the youth and dissuading them from the class struggle. For the conservative German Nationals, however, Muck himself was a “ Bolshevik ”. The historian Walter Laqueur sums up Muck's impression in public as follows: “Students, intellectuals and the trade unionists observed Muck with the greatest suspicion; they called him a class enemy, others thought he was a foreign agent. But Muck's appeal was not directed at them. Everything was completely innocent and touching. "

The train also found its way into literature. Hermann Hesse did not travel with them himself, but transfigured this “children's crusade” in his story Die Morgenlandfahrt : “Our people were shaken by the war, desperate by hardship and hunger, deeply disappointed by the apparently useless sacrifices of blood and property accessible to some fantasies, but also to some real elevations of the soul, there were bacchante dance communities and anabaptist fighting groups, there was this and that which seemed to point to the afterlife and the miracle ”.

In October 1920 the "Neue Schar" moved back to Hartenstein. The winter was spent with official toleration on the Leuchtenburg near Kahla , where a youth hostel was established in 1920. It was also here that Muck realized his old plans for a small-scale community for the first time. Turning, carving and carpentry work were produced to supply the crowd. The plan was to move to northern Germany and Berlin in the spring, preaching and dancing. But it shouldn't come to that.

Emergency money from the city of Kahla (1921) with motifs for Muck's "Fall of Man"

Muck's "Fall of Man"

A female member of the crowd turned to the authorities and accused Muck of running a “harem economy”. An interrogation took place in which Muck openly confirmed the allegations made against him and justified them with "the sexual plight of women". Erfurt Pastor Adam Ritzhaupt, who was very positive about Muck, was not surprised: “The strong erotic mood was clearly evident. [...] You don't think that these songs and these movements are anything other than erotic. ”In February 1921, Muck and his crowd had to leave the Leuchtenburg. The public and many former sympathizers turned their backs on him. In the magazine Der Türmer, Friedrich Lienhard accused Muck and his group of having “confused fervor with heat”. Some former members of the crowd also recognized in retrospect that the path they had chosen was wrong and doomed to failure: “If we are honest, we have to admit it to ourselves and also tell those who still believe in us or this path. Our calls were calls for intoxication and our calls for depth resulted in superficial emotional whimsy. It was our own fault. "

Muck and the “Neue Schar” disappeared from the public, but did not separate. In Naumburg he founded a wood turning workshop under the name "Naumburger Werkschar", which soon became known throughout Germany. From then on Muck had taken care of the economy. In 1922 he married, the missionary zeal of the crowd had meanwhile died down. Slowly grass grew over the "scandal".

Great Depression and National Socialism

During the Great Depression, Muck experienced - like many other "inflation saints" - a renaissance. In April 1930 he spoke at the “Religious Week” organized by Max Schulze-Sölde on the subject of “The Will of the Young” and made new contacts with the Bündische Jugend , with the German believers and with the left wing of the National Socialists . In October 1930 he took part alongside Ernst Niekisch as a guest at the first Reich Congress of the National Socialist Combat Association of Germany founded by Otto Strasser , but without developing any activities within this NSDAP dissenting group.

Although Muck can certainly be called an opponent of the Weimar Republic , on the other hand he also had reservations about National Socialism. He was particularly bothered by the fact that “power over spirit” is being placed there and that the talents and hopes of the youth are ignored (“because the essential things of the young people are too little emphasized”). He also had a deep aversion to any form of mass organization that contradicted his understanding of elitist leadership. Nevertheless, he looked for similarities in a letter to the NSDAP Reichstag deputy Ernst Graf zu Reventlow : “I want leaders of the NSDAP to come to an understanding with the young leaders of the German youth movement, not through kitschy communication stuff, but rather by getting to the bottom of where the common root or cavity is [...]. The Joint has to be worked out. "For the Nazis it was in dealing with the youth movement but only the DC circuit . And so Muck decided to preserve “inner cleanliness through distance”.

After 1945

In 1947 Muck founded a successor company to the earlier “Werkschar” in Naumburg called “Holzwaren für Haus und Wirtschaft”, which soon employed around 100 workers and was awarded in 1948 by the Minister of Economics. After problems with the Soviet occupying forces , Muck relocated his company to the western occupation zones, first to Königswinter , then to Oberlahr in the Westerwald . In the Federal Republic of Germany , too , he continued to represent his Christian philosophy of redemption. He welcomed the political developments in socialist and communist countries such as Cuba and China as a sign of growing national communities, as well as the revolt of the student movement at the end of the 1960s as a reawakening of the rebellious spirit of the youth.

His handicraft business was continued as a family business by his sons.

The city of Naumburg commemorates its former resident with the Muck-Lamberty-Weg. Part of the exhibition on the castle history of the “Burg Leuchtenberg” museum is dedicated to Muck-Lamberty and the “Neue Schar”.

Publications

• New territory in sight! To the friends and leaders of the youth. Homesteads . Pamphlet, Eßlingen a N. 1913.
• To the living in the nobility. From a letter. Pamphlet, 1918.
• To the free Germans! Rejuvenation of political life. Pamphlet, [Bramwalde an der Weser] 1918.
• To the living preachers. Pamphlet, Rehlingen near Amelinghausen 1918.
• German Volksgemeinschaft 1919. Pamphlet, together with Theodora Schulze and Hermann Thümmel, Hannoversch-Münden 1919.
• The crowd of craftsmen from the Leuchtenburg . Flyer, Jena: Dürer's House, 1921.
• Under the linden tree. Dance games and folk tunes, played and sung by the "Neue Schar" in Thuringia. Foreword, Duncker Verlag, Weimer 1921 u.ö.
• Youth movement, craft and folk festival. Something about masters, wandering brothers, pens, customs, folk festivals, kitsch and junk, but also about the workmanship. Naumburg (Saale): Werkschar 1929 u.ö.

Literary processing

• In his story Morgenlandfahrt , published in 1932, Hermann Hesse a . a. the procession of the "new crowd" through northern Bavaria and Thuringia in 1920.
• In his memoirs Via vitae (Kassel 1968) the theologian Wilhelm Stählin describes his encounter with Muck-Lamberty , as does the pedagogue Wilhelm Flitner in memoirs 1889-1945 (Paderborn 1986).
• Hugo Hartung has also incorporated the train of the "new crowd" in his novels Aber Anne was called Marie (Berlin 1952) and The silent adventures (Berlin 1963).
• Muck-Lamberty already played a role in Walter Kramer's (1892–1956) novel Dammed Flood (Stuttgart / Berlin 1941) .

literature

• Gertrud Prellwitz : My commitment to Muck-Lamberty . Oberhof im Thür. Wald: Maien-Verlag [1921].
• Adam Ritzhaupt: The "new crowd" in Thuringia . Tat-Flugschrift 38, Jena: Eugen Diederichs Verlag 1921.
• Emil Engelhardt : Against Muck and Muckertum. An argument about the higher free love with Muck-Lamberty and Gertrud Prellwitz . Rudolstadt i. Thür .: Greifenverlag 1921.
• Lisa Tetzner : In the blue car through Germany: thoughts and Chats about the landscape and People . Berlin: Bühnenvolksbundverlag / Leipzig: KF Koehler 1926.
• Ulrich Linse : Wandering Prophet of the Twenties , in: Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Ed.): Residence: Nirgendwo . Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann 1982, pp. 191-208 ISBN 3-88725-070-2 .
• Ulrich Linse : Barefoot prophets. Savior of the twenties . Berlin: Siedler-Verlag 1983 ISBN 3-88680-088-1 .
• Ulrich Linse : "Walpurgis-Taumel": dance ecstasy, sexual revolution and physical culture . In: Cornelia Nowak; Kai Uwe Schierz; Justus H. Ulbricht Ed. Expressionism in Thuringia. Facets of a cultural awakening . Galerie am Fischmarkt, Erfurt 1999, ISBN 978-3-931743-26-0 , pp. 200-209.
• Hermann Müller: Gusto grasses. From life and work . Vaihingen an d. Enz: Melchior 1987; now in Umbruch Verlag, Recklinghausen. ISBN 3-924275-16-5 .
• Werner Helwig : The blue flower of the wandering bird . About the rise, splendor and purpose of a youth movement . Revised new edition with a picture attachment, editor: Walter Sauer . Deutscher Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 1998, ISBN 3-88778-208-9 .
• Rüdiger Safranski : Romanticism. A German affair. Munich u. a .: Hanser 2007, ISBN 3-446-20944-1 .
• Michael Wübken: Back from Montsalvatsch - Friedrich Muck-Lamberty and Naumburg . In: Saale-Unstrut Association for Cultural History and Natural History eV (Ed.): Saale-Unstrut Yearbook. Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Vol. 19.2014, pp. 66–86.
• Patricia Viallet: You good-for-nothing à la "Neue Schar" de Friedrich Muck-Lamberty in the années 20. In: Cécilia Fernandez, Olivier Hanse (ed.), A contre-courant - Against the current. Resistances souterraines à l'autorité et construction de contrecultures dans les pays germanophones au XXe siècle. Bern: Peter Lang 2014, ISBN 978-3-0343-1493-0
• Michael Wübken: Friedrich Muck-Lamberty - Final phase and family life of the Naumburg period . In: Saale-Unstrut Association for Cultural History and Natural History eV (Ed.): Saale-Unstrut Yearbook. Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Vol. 20.2015, pp. 52–69.
• Pamela Kort, Max Hollein (ed.), Artist and prophet. A Secret History of Modernity 1872-1972 ; [on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, Schirn-Kunsthalle Frankfurt March 6 - June 14, 2015; National Gallery, Prague June 30 - October 4, 2015]. Cologne: Snoeck 2015, ISBN 978-3-86442-116-7 .
• Michael Wübken: Friedrich Muck-Lamberty - his life with the Naumburgers . In: Saale-Unstrut Association for Cultural History and Natural History eV (Ed.): Saale-Unstrut Yearbook. Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Vol. 21.2016, pp. 67–78.
• Michael Wübken: Friedrich Muck-Lamberty - aftermath of the Naumburg period . In: Saale-Unstrut Association for Cultural History and Natural History eV (Ed.): Saale-Unstrut Yearbook. Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Vol. 22.2017, pp. 58–70.
• Felix Linzner: "Free love or discipline" - Friedrich Lamberty between self-motivated and völkisch cultivation. In: Karl Braun, Felix Linzner a. John Khairi-Taraki (ed.): Avant-garde of biopolitics. Youth movement, life reform and strategies of biological "armament". Göttingen: V & R unipress 2017, ISBN 978-3-8471-0740-8 , pp. 95-108.

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Muck-Lamberty in the catalog of the German National Library
• Photos, posters and writings by Muck-Lamberty
• Friedrich Muck-Lamberty and the play and dance company  Neue Schar

Remarks

1. ↑ The biographical information follows, unless otherwise stated: Ulrich Linse: Barfüßige Propheten. Savior of the twenties . Berlin 1983.
2. ↑ cit. n. Ulrich Linse: Barefoot prophets. Savior of the twenties. Berlin 1983, p. 114.
3. ↑ (in: Wanderscharen. Issue 1/3, Jan. – March 1919, p. 10)
4. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Linse: Barefoot Prophets. Savior of the twenties. Berlin 1983, p. 108.
5. ↑ see also Erich Patz: Muck Lamberty 1920 in Rudolstadt. In: District of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt Yearbook 1995; Willibald Gutsche: History of the city of Erfurt. Erfurt: City Council 1986, p. 394.
6. ^ Friedrich Muck-Lamberty: Wanderbuch. o. O. 1920, o. Pag.
7. ↑ see also Reinhard Barth, Klaus-Jürgen Scherer: Youth on the move: The revolt of young against old in Germany in the 20th century. Berlin 2006, p. 61; George L. Mosse: The Volkish Revolution: About the spiritual roots of National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 289.
8. ↑ cit. n. Rüdiger Safranski: Romanticism. A German affair. Munich u. a .: Hanser 2007, p. 335.
9. ↑ Walther Laqueur: The German youth movement . Cologne 1983, p. 133; see also Adam Ritzhaupt: The "New Schar" in Thuringia . Jena 1921 (Tat-Flugchriften; 38).
10. ^ Hermann Hesse: Die Morgenlandfahrt . Frankfurt / M. 1957, p. 14.
11. ↑ Adam Ritzhaupt: The "new crowd" in Thuringia . Jena 1921 (Tat-Flugchriften; 38).
12. ↑ Quotations: Muck: Ulrich Linse: Barefoot Prophets. Savior of the twenties. Berlin 1983, p. 120; Ritzhaupt: Ibid., P. 105; Lienhard: Ibid., P. 122.
13. ↑ Newsletter v. September 1923, cit. in: Ulrich Linse: Barefoot Prophets. Savior of the twenties. Berlin 1983, p. 243 note 38.
14. ↑ s. Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf : National Bolshevism in Germany. 1918-1933 . Frankfurt / M., Berlin, Vienna 1972, p. 329.
15. ↑ Both quotations in: Ulrich Linse: Barefoot Prophets. Savior of the twenties. Berlin 1983, p. 127.
16. ↑ s. Museum website  ( page can no longer be accessed , 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. .