Friedrich Sieburg

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Grave of Friedrich Sieburg

Friedrich Carl Maria Sieburg (born May 18, 1893 in Altena ; † July 19, 1964 in Gärtringen ) was a German journalist , writer and literary critic .

Life

origin

Friedrich Sieburg came from a merchant family. He first attended the Realgymnasium in Altena, then a humanistic grammar school in Düsseldorf . At the age of 16 he published his first poems in the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten .

Education

In 1912 Sieburg began studying philosophy , history , literature and economics in Heidelberg . In 1919 he received his doctorate in literature in Münster (subject: The degrees of lyrical formation. Contributions to the aesthetics of the lyrical style ). His university teachers included Max Weber and Friedrich Gundolf . He was connected to the George Circle . During the First World War , he was initially employed as an infantryman and from 1916 as an air officer.

Weimar Republic

From 1919 to 1923 Sieburg lived as a freelance writer in Berlin , was a supporter of the revolution and wrote primarily film reviews during this time. From 1923 he worked, initially in loose form, for the Frankfurter Zeitung in Copenhagen . In May 1926 he became her foreign correspondent in Paris . It was there that his most famous book, God in France? (1929). From 1930 to 1932 he was a foreign correspondent in London , then again in Paris.

In 1929 Sieburg published an article in the young conservative monthly Die Tat , which can be seen as a departure from the bourgeois-liberal general line that distinguished the Frankfurter Zeitung . In 1932 he also published some articles in the Täliche Rundschau , which, like Die Tat , was headed by Hans Zehrer , whose work towards a cross-front alliance between "left" National Socialists around Gregor Strasser , trade unionists and social democrats to prevent a Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler was supported by Sieburg. In his book Es wird Deutschland , which he completed in November 1932, but which could only appear after Hitler came to power, he moved, as his friend Carl Zuckmayer judged in his secret report in 1944 , on a “very dangerous and very blurred line - between nationalism "Critique of 'Liberal Thought' and Political Progressivity". However, this also included the resolute rejection of anti-Semitism , which is why the book was banned in 1936.

time of the nationalsocialism

Sieburg had not yet committed himself to party politics in the pamphlet Let Germany be part of Germany , but in the English translation that appeared after the handover of power to the Nazis , Sieburg confessed to National Socialism and promoted the "new Germany" in daily journalism abroad, which he did with the former Companions Kurt Tucholsky or the emigrant Lion Feuchtwanger appeared as the herald of the Nazi regime and incurred the contempt of the German emigrants. On the other hand, he disapproved of the seizure of power in letters to the publisher Heinrich Simon , for whose Frankfurter Zeitung he worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris from 1932 to 1939 . He found words of appreciation for authoritarian regimes such as in Portugal and Japan in the books New Portugal (1937) and The Steel Flower (1939). The biography Robespierre , written by him in 1935, can only be attributed to Inner Emigration with restrictions .

In 1939 Sieburg was appointed to the German Foreign Service . According to Longerich, who cites Max W. Clauss, around two dozen journalists close to the Nazis were brought to Ribbentrop in Fuschl am See in the summer and there, Friedrich Berber , who acted as boss, was ultimately asked to work abroad as Nazi propagandist. Clauss claims to have refused, while Sieburg, Hans Georg von Studnitz and Karl Megerle immediately agreed. From February 1940, Sieburg worked at the German Embassy in Brussels as a "special representative" of the Foreign Office. He received the rank of embassy counselor. From 1940 to 1942 he stayed in occupied France. In a speech that was later also printed in March 1941 France d'hier et de demain before the "Groupe Collaboration", the aim of which was precisely this collaboration with the Nazis, Sieburg declared that he had been brought up to be a fighter and a National Socialist through life in France. been. In the register of members of the NSDAP his application for admission from April 9, 1941 is available, he in Paris during the Nazi foreign organization asked and was granted on 1 September 1,941th In the questionnaire of the French military government after the Second World War he stated that he was not a member of the NSDAP.

Sieburg returned to Germany in 1942 and worked again for the Frankfurter Zeitung until it was banned in 1943. He then switched to the Börsenzeitung and was Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain's “honorary companion” for the Foreign Office .

post war period

Sieburg saw the end of the war in Bebenhausen , which belonged to the French occupation zone , and was banned from publication (1945-1948) by the French occupying power.

Sieburg's writings Neues Portugal (1937) and Die Rote Arktis (1932) were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone and in the German Democratic Republic, respectively .

In 1948 he became an employee, and in 1949 also co-editor of the weekly newspaper Die Gegenwart . In his books about France he now distanced himself strongly from National Socialism, distanced himself from a special German consciousness and extolled modern French literature . Working for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since 1956 , he was one of the most important contemporary and literary critics in Germany until his death. In particular, Sieburg's content rendering, in which he anticipates the criticism and thus makes any concluding argumentation superfluous, are considered unsurpassed.

In 1953 the state of Baden-Württemberg appointed him professor. Since 1956 he was a full member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts .

Friedrich Sieburg supported the Adenauer government , was an opponent of post-war literature and criticized Group 47 several times in harsh and polemical forms. As a conservative , he judged art and life on the basis of the subjectivist standard, which only allows the extraordinary to count.

From 1963 until his death in 1964 Sieburg lived in the Villa Schwalbenhof in Gärtringen. His nephew Heinz-Otto Sieburg , as a university professor for modern history in Saarbrücken, also wrote several works on Franco-German relations.

plant

The background of Sieburg's literary criticism was the basic diagnosis of a lack of German national identity. His work saw itself primarily as a contribution to national identity . It represents the attempt to draft an intellectual national history with literary essays and critical reviews, to sound out sensitivities and in this way to operate a time criticism .

Literature should enable Germans to make sure of themselves; with it as a “national cause” Sieburg wanted to work out the outlines of the complex, elusive nature of German culture.

Since Germany seemed politically disqualified by National Socialism, the reconstruction work , which Sieburg's literary criticism must be regarded as up to the 1950s, should only start from the “spiritual”.

Thomas Mann's interpretation of the German national character can be seen as the intellectual coordinate system for Sieburg's time and literary criticism . For Mann, the German relationship to the world was “abstract and mystical”, to a certain extent “musical” and at the same time determined by the haughty awareness of “being superior to the world in depth.” These explanatory models that were expressed in Doctor Faustus and the German speech and Bringing National Socialism into connection with German inwardness , Sieburg enriched with specifically French elements. In contrast to the French, he described the Germans as a people who failed to face life.

reception

Sieburg's work as a man of letters and literary critic was judged controversially. While members of Group 47 rejected him and Alfred Andersch insulted him, there were judgments that, despite all the criticism of his behavior during the National Socialist era, also highlighted achievements and tried to understand and appreciate the aesthetic standards of the critic Sieburg.

Thomas Mann, for example, was deeply impressed by a review of Felix Krull , which Sieburg extensively praised in the essay Kultur ist Parodie 1954 and spoke of the unspeakable intellectual pleasure that this work, the great parodied successor of Wilhelm Meister , gave. It is unthinkable "that a writing mortal could use language more perfectly, more refined and more meaningful than Thomas Mann in this picaresque novel ."

Compared to Erika Mann , he described Sieburg, who had shown himself “amazingly enthusiastic”, as a “strange head”. In Sieburg's book Die Lust am Untergang you can find clever and stylistically superior things, even if under the “un-German perspective, literature is criticism”. Thomas Mann confided in his diary that he saw similarities with the considerations of an apolitical , but that need not be praise, since Mann later clearly distanced himself from his early, anti-democratic work. A few years earlier Sieburg had described Thomas Mann's work as the “greatest cultural critical achievement” “produced by the German spirit” in the article Peace with Thomas Mann , which was published in the magazine Die Gegenwart . The starting point of this essay was the political problem of the double honoring of Thomas Mann on this side and on the other side of the Iron Curtain with the Goethe Prize in Frankfurt and the honorary citizenship in Weimar . The Iron Curtain goes “right through the fragile world of our spiritual values”.

Gottfried Benn praised Sieburg's Only for Readers - Years and Books and called it a “Brockhaus of literary events.” Sieburg also proves conciliatory towards authors who are not close to his heart. The author wrote a popular book of “instructive foresight and exquisite literary structure” with a great sense of style and sensitivity.

According to Klaus Harpprecht , Sieburg demonstratively and defiantly renounced Heinrich Heine as if from a secret mentor in a “shameful failure” . His demonstrative patriotism during the time of National Socialism was marked by self-pity and an expression of the “suffering opportunism of a German bourgeois soul”. One could speak of a “pathos of adaptation”. For Sieburg in post-war Germany, the looming barbarism in the decline of the language had announced. The German bourgeoisie could discover many truths in their ingenious writings and find themselves in them.

The publicist Wolf Jobst Siedler described Sieburg as a "left-wing writer " and praised him as a great stylist. He did not correspond to the cliché according to which conservatism had to be blunt or of upright honesty, while wit and witty irony were left to the left. Friedrich Sieburg had "stolen the joke" from the writers who hated him, which made him the counter-figure of German post-war literature. He is a leftist writer who writes on the right what bourgeois supporters overlook. The dull polemics against him attack him in a “right, that is, in a strong-minded way”. On the other side there is no critic of his rank, which only increases the anger of the opponents against him.

Even Fritz J. Raddatz called Sieburg the most influential critic of the post-war period. His backward-looking judgment, however, was accidental; Although he discovered Alexander Kluge , he had not seen Paul Celan . His conservatism forced him to use the past to build an unattainable standard in order to condemn the present. His conspicuous ignorance of literary theory led to ignoring the contemporary debates on the history of ideas and not "knowing" Theodor W. Adorno , Georg Lukács and Max Horkheimer . The taste was the only criterion, so his judgment was sure of taste, but poor in the world.

Marcel Reich-Ranicki praises the stylist Sieburg, emphasizing his comprehensive education as well as his acuteness and literary taste. He wrote melodically and precisely and had an unusual predilection for the casual style as well as for the dignified, somewhat antiquated manner of expression, which heightened the effect of his diction. However, Sieburg later tolerated him rather than encouraged him. After Reich-Ranicki had published a series of articles about GDR writers in the world , Sieburg arranged for the collaboration with him and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to be terminated in 1960 . He feared that the competition wanted to create a counter-figure.

Sieburg, however, had succeeded in "making National Socialist slavery unusually comfortable for himself without making any special concessions to the regime". Compared to publications by other German journalists, the fatal Paris lecture of 1941 is not a pleasant, but rather mild-looking document. Sieburg's genius was expressed above all in the social-critical feature pages, and he was the first to register many phenomena of everyday life in West Germany. In spite of all stylistic and literary advantages, Sieburg's late reviews were characterized by irritable self-esteem, which had been hurt time and again since 1945. He mainly dealt with his own sensitivities and presented his wounds to the public without self-pity. The description of some works tends to be self-defense; his complaint about the injustice that happened to him in post-war Germany is not free from lewdness. Nevertheless, he is "probably the most witty, indeed the best German columnist of the early post-war period".

Works (in selection)

  • The redemption of the road. Poems. Kiepenheuer, Potsdam 1920
  • God in France? Societäts-Verlag , Frankfurt 1929 (French translation Dieu est-il français? 1930)
  • France's red children . Societäts-Verlag, 1931; 2nd edition. Wunderlich, Tübingen 1949
  • The red arctic, 'Malygins' sensitive journey . Societäts-Verlag 1932
  • Let it be Germany . Societäts-Verlag 1933
  • Poland, legend and reality . Societäts-Verlag 1934
  • Robespierre . Societäts-Verlag 1935
  • New Portugal. Portrait of an old country. , Societäts-Verlag 1937
  • African spring. A trip . Societäts-Verlag 1938
  • Look through the window. From 10 years in France and England . Societäts-Verlag 1939
  • The steel flower. A trip to Japan . Societäts-Verlag 1939
  • La fleur d'acier (Voyage au Japon). Grasset, Paris 1942
  • Black and white magic. On freedom of the press , Wunderlich, Tübingen 1949
  • Our best years. A life with Paris . Wunderlich 1950
  • What never falls silent. Encounters . Wunderlich 1951
  • Beloved distance. The other part of the best years . Wunderlich 1952
  • The lust for doom . Self-talk at the federal level . Rowohlt 1954; again: Eichborn 2010 ISBN 3-8218-6229-7
  • Napoleon. The hundred days. German publishing house DVA, Stuttgart 1956
  • Chateaubriand. Romance and politics . DVA 1959
  • The king's money. A study on Colbert . German publishing house, Stuttgart 1960
  • Heroes and victims. Five historical miniatures . Insel-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1960
  • Lots of last days. Prose from ten years. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1961
  • Napoleon: The 100 days . Ullstein 1987, ISBN 3-548-37054-3
  • March into barbarism. Thoughts about Germany. Edited by Klaus Harpprecht , DVA 1983
  • On literature: 1924–1956 . Edited by Fritz Raddatz , Ullstein 1987 ISBN 3-548-37061-6
  • On literature: 1957–1963 . Edited by Fritz Raddatz, Ullstein 1987 ISBN 3-548-37062-4

literature

(Newest first)

  • Harro Zimmermann: Friedrich Sieburg - esthete and provocateur. A biography . Wallstein, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1722-2 .
  • Klaus Deinet: Friedrich Sieburg (1893–1964). A life between France and Germany. NoRa Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86557-337-7 .
  • Gunther Nickel :  Sieburg, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 331-333 ( digitized version ).
  • Gunther Nickel: On the difficulties of political hermeneutics using the example of Friedrich Sieburg. In: Michael Braun, Georg Guntermann (ed.): Saved and at the same time devoured by shame. New approaches to the literature of "Inner Emigration". (= Trier studies on literature, vol. 48). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-631-56740-1 , pp. 39-58.
  • Hans-Cristof Kraus: As a conservative intellectual in the early Federal Republic. The example of Friedrich Sieburg. In: Frank-Lothar Kroll (Ed.): The cropped alternative . Conservatism in Germany after 1945 (= studies and texts for the study of conservatism, volume 6). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-428-11781-9 .
  • Cecilia von Buddenbrock: Friedrich Sieburg 1893–1964. A German journalist facing the challenge of a century. Societät, Frankfurt 2007. ISBN 978-3-7973-1031-6 .
    • First version in French: FS 1893–1964. Un journalist allemand à l'épreuve du siècle. Éditions de Paris, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-85162-023-1 .
  • Gunther Nickel: The devil's publicist. A "most complicated and almost tragic case". Friedrich Sieburg, Carl Zuckmayer and National Socialism. With the correspondence between S. and Z. In: Ulrike Weiß (Red.): For discussion: Zuckmayer's "Secret Report" and other contributions to Zuckmayer research. (= Zuckmayer yearbook, vol. 5). Wallstein, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 978-3-89244-608-8 , pp. 247-295.
  • Joachim Kersten : “Nobody is lucky with Germany.” 33 building blocks for a portrait of FS In: Angelika Ebbinghaus , Karl Heinz Roth (Ed.): Grenzzüge. German history of the 20th century in the mirror of journalism, jurisprudence and historical research. Festschrift for Heinrich Senfft on his 70th birthday. Zu Klampen, Lüneburg 1999, ISBN 3-924245-77-0 , pp. 51-93 (Friedrich Sieburg was Heinrich Senfft's second stepfather).
  • Marcel Reich-Ranicki : Friedrich Sieburg - The columnist as a critic . In: Ders .: The lawyers of literature . dtv, Munich 1996, pp. 237–245.
  • Hermann Uhrig:  Sieburg, Friedrich. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 10, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-062-X , Sp. 43-56.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • "The swallows fly high". Memories of Friedrich Sieburg on his 100th birthday . Published by the municipality of Gärtringen. Ibid. 1994.
  • Tilman Krause : With France against the German special consciousness. Friedrich Sieburg's ways and changes in this century. Academy, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-002385-6 .
  • Margot Taureck: Friedrich Sieburg in France. His literary and journalistic statements between the world wars in comparison with the positions of Ernst Jünger . Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1987, ISBN 3-533-03900-5 .
  • Peter Longerich : Propagandists at War. The press department of the Foreign Office under Ribbentrop. Oldenbourg, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-486-54111-0 .
  • Hans Georg von Studnitz : People from my world . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-550-07197-3 .
  • Joachim Fest : Friedrich Sieburg. A portrait without a reason . In: Ders .: Past canceled. Portraits and reflections . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-421-06085-1 , pp. 70-95.
  • Monika Miehlnickel: Columnist language and attitude in Friedrich Sieburg and Sigismund von Radecki . Dissertation Free University of Berlin 1962.

Web links

Wikiquote: Friedrich Sieburg  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Killy: Innere Emigration , Vol. 13, p. 437
  2. ↑ Longerich, see Lit., p. 51. Clauss' records are not published and are stored in the estate of his widow Inge.
  3. ↑ Differences between different Nazi authorities, because of the confusion of offices between Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, which already had people on site, and the AA, about his appointment there in Longerich, p. 196, there also the archive source at the AA
  4. ^ 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. 569.
  5. ^ Pierre Philippe Lambert, Gérard Le Marec: Partis et mouvements de la Collaboration . Paris: Grancher 1993
  6. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , p. 582. The entire speech for the first time in German by Franz Schonauer, German Literature in the Third Reich. Attempt to present a presentation with a polemical-didactic intention. Walter, Olten 1961, pp. 168-175
  7. ↑ According to a letter handed down in Sieburg's estate, this application was not submitted until April 9, 1942 and was rejected on November 28, 1942. So far it has not been possible to clear up this discrepancy. Possibly a forgery made by Sieburg himself from the post-war period. An official table of the NSDAP (see Longerich p. 195) also gives 1941.
  8. ↑ polunbi.de
  9. ↑ polunbi.de
  10. ^ Friedrich Sieburg . In: Walther Killy: Literaturlexikon , Vol. 11, p. 29
  11. ^ Tilman Krause: With France against the German special consciousness. Friedrich Sieburg's ways and changes in this century . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 191
  12. ^ Tilman Krause: With France against the German special consciousness, Friedrich Sieburg's ways and changes in this century . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, pp. 203-204
  13. ↑ Thomas Mann: Essays , Volume 5, Germany and the Germans . Fischer, Frankfurt, 1996, p. 265
  14. ↑ Friedrich Sieburg: Culture is parody, on literature 1924-1956 . P. 381, DVA, Stuttgart 1981
  15. ↑ Klaus Harpprecht: Thomas Mann, A Biography . Rowohlt, 1995, Chapter 110, p. 2006
  16. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Collected Works 3 , Two Books, Mixed Writings, Autobiographical Writings. Frankfurt, October 2003, p. 1811
  17. ↑ Klaus Harpprecht in: Friedrich Sieburg, Abmarsch in die Barbarei , Der Bürger am Abgrund. DVA, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 24-31
  18. ^ Plea for a right-wing writer to write left . In: Die Zeit , No. 20/1963
  19. ^ Fritz J. Raddatz: Writing is life . Foreword in: Friedrich Sieburg, On Literature 1924–1956 . DVA, Stuttgart 1981, p. 13
  20. ↑ a b Marcel Reich-Ranicki: My Life , Part Four, Recognized as a German. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2000, p. 397
  21. ↑ A desperate connoisseur of life
  22. ↑ Essay by Kai Küchler on this book ( Memento of the original from December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / tu-dresden.de
personal data
SURNAME Sieburg, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sieburg, Friedrich Carl Maria (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary critic, journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Altena
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1964
Place of death Gärtringen , Württemberg