Friedrich W. Buri

Friedrich W. Buri (born January 18, 1919 in Mainz , † May 29, 1999 in Bilthoven , Netherlands), called Buri, was a German poet and writer. His birth name was Adolf Friedrich Wongtschowski . Together with William Hilsley , he was one of the closest friends around Wolfgang Frommel . Like Hilsley, Buri was a teacher at the Quaker School Eerde after his escape from Germany before he went into hiding after the German troops invaded the Netherlands and survived the war in an Amsterdam hiding place, the Castrum Peregrini .

The Frankfurt years

School education and professional education

Adolf Friedrich Wongtschowski came from a German-Jewish family. His parents were the businessman Max Wongtschowski (* 1877 in Landsberg an der Warthe ; † 1949 in São Paulo ) and his wife Emma, ​​née Seelig, who came from Rheinhessen. In 1921 the family moved to Frankfurt and lived in the old town, in a four-room apartment on Braubachstrasse near the cathedral . The three sons Kurt (* 1909), Hans (* 1914) and Adolf Friedrich (* 1919) were born here.

From 1925 to 1929 Adolf Friedrich Wongtschowski attended elementary school and then, until the big holidays in 1933, the Wöhler Realgymnasium in Frankfurt. While he remembered little of his school days, he described in detail the housing situation and family life - including a suicide attempt that went smoothly. During his high school years he found access to the youth association Die Kameraden through his brother Kurt . Kurt was given the name "Arco" in this environment, and the younger comrades , to whom Adolf Friedrich was still one, were enthusiastic about the names in them, given their reading of the Germanic sagas of gods and heroes:

“My comrades became Odin, Ymir, Thor, Balder, Loki. I chose the name of the Asen god Buri. [..] With my group mates, the proud names disappeared more or less quickly. 'Buri' stuck with me because my brothers persistently called me like that and finally my parents also bowed to the custom, especially since my actual baptismal name Adolf no longer wanted to suit me because it was identical with my famous contemporary . "

The "famous contemporary", who was appointed German Chancellor on January 30, 1933, changed the life of the Wongtschowski family forever. As a “ non-Aryan ”, Buri was no longer allowed to attend grammar school after the summer vacation, and the parents and brothers soon made plans to emigrate. Arco, who worked as an authorized signatory in a trading company, was supposed to go to South America and from there prepare the relocation of the family. In return, the family thought that Buri would benefit from an apprenticeship as a craftsman, which is why after the summer vacation of 1933 he began an apprenticeship with a Jewish master painter from Frankfurt. Buri passed "as one of the last Jewish craftsmen before the Frankfurt painters' guild the journeyman's examination" and "finally received the journeyman's certificate in a solemn ceremony along with many other Frankfurt 'donors'". Buri did not mourn the broken school education and was certain that learning this practical profession had provided a useful basis for his future life and had taught him to use his hands. With regard to the intellectual schooling he was denied, he referred to the happiness he had received through encounters with people "from whom I could see under what conditions and in what way one can gain insights into spiritual connections that are necessary for right action. But there was no one among these people who would have been able to teach me how to use a hammer, a brush, or a tape measure. So I am glad that I have acquired these important skills, and paradoxically precisely through the intervention of a state authority that is hostile to my life. "

Until mid-1937 and when he moved to Berlin, Buri worked as a painter (house painter) in Frankfurt.

Acquaintance with Wolfgang Frommel

On August 5, 1933, Kurt Wongtschowski took his brother Buri with him to a meeting of the “comrades” that was no longer legal at that time. Buri met Hans-Joachim Schoeps here for the first time and - of far greater importance to him - Wolfgang Frommel . A friendship arose from this first encounter, which Buri characterized with a quote from Stefan George : “Friendship between men must be educational and tragic, otherwise it is disgusting. But then it is a break in the middle class. "

A short time later, Buri describes Frommel's Frankfurt office at Westdeutscher Rundfunk as a kind of mystical enlightenment that accompanies his relationship with Frommel:

“I went home, enchanted. I had never met anyone who would turn to me so unreservedly and tell me things that seemed new and at the same time very familiar to me. What captivated me most of all was the mixture of deep seriousness and shining brightness. I was treated like someone who knows the same secrets; I was taken to the full like hardly any brother. It had the effect of forgetting myself; that for the duration of the togetherness, the awareness of my own attitude, the seeing-me-from-outside, had disappeared. In those few minutes, I was overcome with such excitement that I was making my choice with a clear certainty. My view of a person had opened up to whose side I would belong from now on. "

What seems to have happened to the fourteen-year-old Buri here could be dismissed as a youthful crush on a significantly older man, but it was an emotional state that lasted after Frommel's death and that Frommel reinforced again and again, for example during an evening stroll on the Main, during which Buri heard a poem recited by Frommel for the first time:

“We paced up and down under the trees and between the beds of the garden plantings. Suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, a rhythmic sound was heard next to me in a different voice. [..] Before I understood what was happening next to me, the poem was already too far advanced to make me want to understand. But I was at the mercy of the kind of lecture far removed from the tone of speech, the steadily pacing, magical sounding so suddenly, so unarmed that it penetrated my soul center like a hurled lance. It caused a wound where you don't feel immediately where it hit, you just know that it is deep and painful. I started to sob. Wolfgang put his hand on my shoulder and for a long time we walked without a word - only the crunch of gravel could be heard under our steps - back and forth in the facility while tears ran down my cheeks. "

These quotations clearly show “the pseudo-religious combination of eroticism and poetry”, which was characteristic of the circle around Frommel, “a spiritual-erotic society of men” and which also shaped the later years in the Netherlands. And Buri as well as his later friend William Hilsley embody the Frommelian “prey scheme” almost ideally: Both were thirteen and fourteen years old respectively when they came into contact with the older man who gave them the feeling of being there for them completely to recognize them as equals despite the age difference. Frommel, who did have sexual contacts with his “students”, as Claus Victor Bock reported from his own experience, and his friends, however, “never defined themselves as homosexual , just like their role model Stefan George did not define his erotic inclination towards men and boys with him Word "wanted to see":

“The introduction of the term 'homosexuality' into the scientific and emancipatory discourse at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century was made in the circle of George as well as in those currents of the early gay movement that were more oriented towards the Hellenic example [..] than rejected quite vulgar scientific construction, which could not really grasp the complex game and the cultural meaning of erotic and emotional bonds between men. This complex historical identity formation cannot simply be reduced to the term 'homosexuality'. "

If, as stated in the quote, it was only about 'the complex game and the cultural significance of erotic and emotional bonds among men', this argument would not have to be questioned further. But in Frommel's environment it is almost always about erotic and emotional ties between older men and their mostly much younger - often minors - "companions". The fact that a different point of view is mandatory here was made clear by the abuse scandal at the Odenwald School at the latest - and no less by the abuse allegations against Wolfgang Frommel and William Hilsley that became known in 2017 and 2018.

Meanwhile, Buri dreamed of "being alone with Wolfgang, wherever, to feel his attention fully focused on me, to bask in its undivided rays as if there were no one in the world but us". But Frommel avoided this claim to exclusivity, letting Buri know that there were other friends as well. In addition, he was transferred to the radio in Berlin in the middle of 1934, which also added a spatial distance. Wolfgang Frommel's brother Gerhard , who had been teaching at the Frankfurt Hoch Conservatory since the summer of 1933 and whom Wolfgang had instructed “to look after me during his absence, to see to my rights as his deputy, so to speak”, Buri made “with his young friend Melchior [Bengen] known ”. For Buri, who had just set up the attic room of his parents' apartment for himself, “Melchior was the first one I received there and with whom I ceremoniously inaugurated it. We lit the candles, smoked cigarettes on which we placed grains of incense, read each other our poems and praised each other happy to celebrate a friendship that was under a common revered star ”. It is linguistically the "spiritual-erotic male society" already quoted above, which is conjured up here, whereby it remains in the balance where exactly the boundary between "spiritual" and "erotic" runs. But even when Buri confesses that after "the merger with Wolfgang [..] Melchior, who was one and a half decades older, [was] the first friend of my year who fell to me," and that his affection did him immensely good, the spiritual moment seems in to have outweighed this relationship. Because only after meeting Melchior Bengen does Buri report about his first conscious sexual experience with “a blond boy of my caliber”, whom he met by chance on the tram. The fact that this boy turned out to be a Hitler Youth at the agreed meeting and greeted Buri in uniform was ironic, but it did not detract from the common desire:

“Our boyish exuberance drove away my inhibitions and unclear moral obstacles. As if detached from the day-to-day reality of my present, I saw both of us romping around in a sun-drenched meadow landscape from an ancient past and forgot every thought about what was to become of this game. "

At their next meeting, Buri told the story of the Hitler Youth, Frommel, who was more than concerned because there was no information about the boy and his family circumstances. It was reassuring that Buri had not revealed anything about himself to the boy either, and so it was decided to refrain from further encounters. At the same time, however, the incident was also used as an opportunity to deal with it in the Georgian sense. Based on a verse of George's poetry, Frommel explained that the process “belongs in the field of naive bucolic, which healthy young people should be able to access and be granted in all its innocence; however, it has only superficial features in common with the melting power of the god Eros. Where the magic of creative connections between people begins, however, there are laws that are important to clarify. One of these laws, which applies to my [Buris] level, prescribes waiting learning. Perseverance in longing can be acquired through practice. "

Farewell to Frankfurt

The years in Frankfurt were drawing to a close for Buri. He learned here is Percy Gothein know, was the friend of Frommel artists Fritz Kotzenberg and Helmut Baumann Model and spent the summer holidays in 1936 with Wolfgang Frommel in Berlin, at the time at Frida Hildesheim, the mother of William Hilsley , lived, who already as Teacher at the Quaker School Eerde worked.

Buri's family was busy organizing her departure from Germany during these years. Brother Hans had moved to South Africa and Kurt and his wife had established a foothold in Brazil. From there he ran the preparations for the reunification of the rest of the family, in which Buri should also be included. “Our apartment on Braubachstrasse became more and more uncomfortable, furniture that we would not be able to take with us was left empty or was picked up one after the other by friends and relatives of my parents. We ended up living with our suitcases half packed, so to speak on demand. ”Buri couldn't get used to the idea of ​​emigrating. On the one hand, he was tormented by the thoughts of the work life that would await him as a house painter in a foreign country, on the other hand he was reluctant to give up friends and cultural ties. Frommel tried to encourage him to leave the country, referring to the probable danger of war from his point of view and the threatening ruin of the Jews. Vain. Buri informed his parents that he would not travel with them. In June 1937 the Wongtschowski family emigrated to Brazil, Buri moved to Berlin.

Refuge in the Quaker School Eerde

→ Main article : Quaker school Eerde

Paths and detours to Eerde

While still in Frankfurt, Buri had confronted Frommel with the fact that he did not intend to emigrate with his parents. He then immediately wrote a letter to his friend William Hilsley ("Cyril"), who had been working as a music teacher at the Quaker School in Eerde in the Netherlands since 1935 : "Wolfgang implored Cyril to find a way to let me come there."

→ Main article : William Hilsley

Hilsley obtained the promise that Buri could come to the school as assistant to the works teacher. Since Buri had no previous training for this job, Frommel found "in Berlin the people with whom I should learn everything I would need in terms of knowledge and skills for my upcoming position in Eerde in two and a half months' crash courses". That was the decisive factor in moving to Berlin, where Buri also lived with Frida Hildesheimer, the mother of William Hilsley. He acquired bookbinding knowledge and skills, was taught calligraphy , learned how to work with leather from a shoemaker, and sat in on a sculptor. The acquisition of this more practical knowledge and skills experienced its pedagogical and didactic transformation on the weekends. Buri received the instructions for this from the then still young handicraft teacher Kurt Zier (1907–1969), who also introduced him to marionette making.

“I only learned everything from Kurt Zier for two months on the weekends that I later needed in class for four decades. The most important thing, the core substance of his pedagogy, which I received from him, was his enthusiasm, which he not only possessed, but also transmitted, in a precisely dosed mixture with practical fidelity. I learned: if a slumbering picture is to wake up in children, the awakening person must be wide awake himself; if the image is to take shape, the specific means of formation must have been made available and their use must have been taught with care and patience. "

The preparations for the work in Eerde were completed, the passport was released by the authorities in Frankfurt, then the bad news came from the Netherlands: The management of the International Quaker School Eerde withdrew their promise of employment. The Dutch authorities forbade her to hire foreign workers without an official certificate, and the authorities refused to provide this certificate because the influx of German refugees was to be contained. William Hilsley, however, who had conveyed this message, had advice. He knew Kees Boeke , who ran the Quaker-inspired reform school Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap in Bilthoven near Utrecht and was ready to hire Buri.

In August 1937 Buri left Germany and entered the Netherlands. Buri became an assistant to the school carpenter in the “Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap”, with whom he also lived. He was given the opportunity to learn English and Dutch, and was involved in an upcoming opera performance at the school. And he fell in love with a young Dutch woman, Nel, which really messed up his emotional balance, as he confessed in retrospect: “In this period, the first, my whole thinking, feeling and dreaming captivity by a being of the opposite sex, feeling me back , I see my condition back then as sheer helplessness. The ground under my feet, which the forcible distance from home and all the familiar habits of my previous life had already withdrawn from me, was now completely transformed into empty air, into which I sank deeper and more unstable. [..] I wasn't prepared for such a failure. "

William Hilsley von Eerde also came over to the opera. Buri hid his inner conflict from him, had remorse. Percy Gothein's visit a short time later was also frustrating. “Our common world of poetry was hidden from me behind a thick veil. [..] My whipped up bad feeling of hiding the inner alienation from my friends tormented me without ceasing and drove me into the despair of the one who is guilty of unfaithfulness, even betrayal. It couldn't go on like this. "

Buri attempted suicide with white cap mushrooms in the forest one evening. The next day after his disappearance was noticed, he was searched unsuccessfully. Hilsley, who had come over from Eerde, informed Frommel, who was just staying with his parents in Heidelberg. He arrived in Bilthoven the afternoon of the following day and immediately took part in the police-assisted search. He found Buri lying drowsy under a pile of leaves with puffy eyes. “Wolfgang let himself fall with a scream and hugged me like one would hold someone who was frozen to resuscitation. We both sobbed. It wasn't until the keepers of the law rushed up that we rose. People looked at us strange. "

During a meal in a Bilthoven restaurant, the entire story that had led to the suicide attempt was discussed between Frommel and Buri. Frommel insisted (with reference to a George verse) to be released from responsibility for Buri's life, he must henceforth be responsible for his own life decisions. At the same time, he affirmed the friendship. The name of Nel, that "being of the opposite sex", under whose spell Buri fell briefly, came up only once and rather casually.

But Frommel immediately campaigned for Buri to get a job in Eerde, because in Hilsley's proximity he would “be able to free himself from the state of the temporarily uprooted more easily”. Frommel negotiated with Kurt Neuse, who, however, did not want to do anything else for Buri so as not to endanger the school. At least in this way he received the tip that only "Minister Bolkestein as the highest authority in the Ministry of Education" could bring about a satisfactory solution, which prompted Frommel to immediately travel to The Hague, where he succeeded in getting to the minister directly and for a positive one Gain opinion.

With an official work permit, Buri was able to switch to the "International Quaker School Eerde" in September 1937.

Buri's time in Eerde

Buri worked at the Quaker School for almost exactly three years before, as Bock put it, after the German invasion, he 'disappeared' in the south of Holland in September 1940. This time only takes up a small part in his own memories, as he was prevented from continuing to work when it was recorded by the death of Wolfgang Frommel (December 13, 1986). After "three long years of mourning" he was urged to "only continue where Wolfgang appears next to me very close: in the war years 1942 to 1945". Nonetheless, his memories give an insight into everyday school life.

Buri began his memories of Eerde with the reception by Hilsley, who was warm but also served to clarify: “He wanted to admit to me right away that it was not easy for him when he first noticed that I was second , Next in his place at Wolfgang. But now he is heartily happy to have me next to him as a younger brother. I could help him with a lot, which should certainly strengthen his position in Eerde. I would soon see that my worries that I had recently lived through on this island would be quickly forgotten and forgotten. "

Buri moved into a little room in the attic of the castle and was quickly involved in school life. Although he belonged to the teaching staff, at the beginning of his activity at the age of eighteen he hardly differed from the students and in the handicraft class in the group to which he was assigned as a helper he was almost equal among equals. He was also given the responsibility for a four-person room in the boys' wing as a "room father", a kind of tutoring function that also included taking care of the leisure time. He himself received English lessons and continued his education in weaving and pottery.

In the background Hilsley pulled the strings and stood by Buri with help and advice. And together they also cultivated the rituals that, starting from George, they had got to know and internalized around Frommel:

“Every day began for me with a short meditation in Cyril's catacomb: right after breakfast I slipped in for a few minutes. Without a word, we took one of Cyril's blue volumes of George's Complete Edition and read a poem standing, the Star of the Covenant for the first hundred days, later the whole work from beginning to end. So every day got its password. "

The Dutch Quakers already knew or suspected - from where and how it is unclear - that there were homoerotic circles at the school and asked Kurt Neuse, who had been acting headmaster since the beginning of 1938, to intervene. He resisted this request and, possibly because of that, was never confirmed as the official headmaster, as Hans A. Schmitt, formerly a student in Eerde himself and later a German-American historian, suspected:

"One reason may have been his conflict with Dutch Friends resulting from development that began with the arrival of William Hilsley. This talented teacher had a number of friends who belonged to the circle of the poet Stefan George , a group noted not only for its elitist views but also its homoerotic preferences. Some of these men, notably the peripatetic poet Wolfgang Frommel, visited Eerde, and in Frommel's case attracted some of the older students to their brilliant lectures. Piet Kappers and his Dutch confreres had nightmares of Eerde becoming a hangout for homosexual intelletuals, and Kappers asked Kurt Neuse to forbid Frommel access to school grounds. Neuse refused, holding that an individual's sexual preferences, as long as they did not involve students, were his own business. "

Thanks to Newse's "liberal" attitude, Hilsley and Buri were able to stay at the school. It remains open, however, what Neuse and other teachers knew about what the Quakers took for granted. What was their suspicion that Hilsley was gay based on? Did the Reckendorf teachers, with whom Frommel lived in 1941, know nothing of his sexual preferences and therefore did not notice that Claus Victor Bock had his first sexual contact with Frommel in their apartment? Neuse was right when he defended the individual sexual preferences of teachers - as long as this would not affect the students entrusted to them. That this limit was exceeded is shown by the experience reported by Bock with Frommel, who from 1939 onwards gave lectures at the school. Newe's “liberal” stance must therefore be questioned from today's perspective. The cases of abuse at the Odenwald School , which led to its bankruptcy and closure in 2016, show how, under the guise of “pedagogical eros”, a “quasi-intimate teacher-student relationship” was created that ensured “that the true structures of rule between teacher and pupil were blurred ”(interview with Oskar Negt in the Frankfurter Rundschau of March 18, 2010, pp. 20-21). The headline above the interview reads: "You closed your eyes - and wanted it". It is difficult to judge what Neuse knew. What is certain, however, is that Hilsley and his friend Buri were not the only ones who cultivated their “individual's sexual preferences” on Eerde, and that due to the small age difference between them and the students they were entrusted with, there was a particularly lack of distance. Bock reports that Buri gave him his room as a place of retreat several times, and it was precisely this room that became Bock's secret meeting place with friends after Buri's hideaway. What happened at these meetings besides reading George's texts, especially poems, is kept in the balance by Bock, but linguistically he creates precisely that impression of "a spiritual-erotic male society" whose transition from the spiritual to the erotic seems to have been fluid.

In September 1939 Frommel visited Buri and Hilsley in Eerde from Paris. When he was about to board the train to Paris at the end of his vacation stay, the three of them found out about the outbreak of war through an extra sheet sold on the platform. Frommel then stayed in the Netherlands. Hilsley was interned in June 1940 and Buri went into hiding in September. This ended their common history at the “International Quaker School Eerde”, but the friendships that arose with individual students remained of central importance for Buri.

Submerged in the Netherlands

For Frommel, Buri and their friends, a woman became of central importance over the next few years:

→ Main article : Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht

It was she who helped Buri to find his first hiding place with the painter Charles Eyck and his Swedish wife Karin: He had left Ommen in September 1940 and found shelter with artist Charles Eyck in Limburg . When the 'Jewish Star' was introduced on May 1, 1942 it became unsafe there. Frommel visited him and invited him to come to Amsterdam. This was far from easy. Vincent Weijand agreed to travel by taxi past a pre-arranged place near Sittard on his way to the station, and on impulse take Buri along as a hitch-hiker. At the station, Wolfgang Frommel awaited the two young men and took them to Amsterdam. He used a yellow band which he still kept as a German in the Netherlands from his short military service in the Wehrmacht. Meanwhile Charles Eyck had discovered a letter of Buri saying that he planned to commit suicide. Gisèle welcomed the heroes with red roses. It happened on July 8, 1942 , on Frommel's fortieth birthday.

The house Herengracht 401

The aforementioned reception by Gisèle van Waterschoot took place in Amsterdam's Herengracht 401, which Frommel gave the name Castrum Peregrini , which after the Second World War was transferred to the publishing house and then to the foundation. "The hiding place was named after a crusader castle near Haifa called 'Castrum Peregrini' (pilgrims' castle)." Gisèle van Waterschoot rented a floor in this house as a second home for himself in the autumn of 1940. The couple Guido (1917–1979) and Miep (Wilhelmina Benz) Teunissen (1920-), “with whom Gisèle befriended and who subsequently became co-conspirators, lived on the floor above. Guido [..] was a carpenter, organ builder, all-rounder ”. The first to be temporarily accommodated here was Wolfgang Cordan , who was followed a short time later by Frommel. "The apartment on the Herengracht received its first real hiding place when a new address for hiding had to be found for Buri in July 1942." He was followed in February 1943 by Claus Victor Bock .

The permanent residents of Herengracht 401 were joined by a circle of friends, almost all of Eerde's former students, who did not have to go into hiding. The community was structured by different district affiliations. Claus Victor Bock, Manuel Goldschmidt (1926-) and Buri belonged to the inner circle around the charismatic leader Frommel. In the second circle the young Dutchman Vincent Weyand (or Weijand) was the primus inter pares - Frommel's favorite. But he did not live at the Herengracht. He lived in Bergen and later in a room on the Singel. He was a son of the painter Jaap Weyand and his Jewish wife, and therefore half-Jew according to the Nazis. Gisèle was the 'mother' of the circle, also as an artist. She was important because of the help and resources she provided. She was also the one who provided the hiding places. Fellow artists who did not join the Kulturkammer, like Mari Andriessen and Adriaan Roland Holst - Roland Holst later on did join under pressure - supported her with food coupons; as did Adriaans' brother Eep. But neither Gisèle, nor Miep Benz, as women, were allowed in the all-important nightly poetry readings. These readings were the main social activity. Guido, although not an intellectual, was part of them, since he was a man.

Both in Buri's memory book and with Claus Victor Bock there are very detailed descriptions of everyday life in Herengracht 401 and of how they lived together there. Security was always at risk, house searches took place, friends were arrested and deported. Fears and nervousness could easily have made life difficult. “Wolfgang kept them away from us by inciting us to do our own thing and, whenever possible, doing meditation exercises with us: poetry readings and attempts to explain difficult texts, during which time he was eavesdropping solely on the accompanying notes and sidelights of the poet's words was suppressed, even superfluous. The deep secret of survival in great danger lies hidden here, which still seems to me to be the most effective magic today, can only be explained by Wolfgang's wand wielded with wisdom. ”Keilson-Lauritz comes to a similar assessment a little more soberly than Buri:

“Even if Frommel did not take part in the active resistance, a number of people undoubtedly owe their lives to the use of all his means and possibilities, and not least to his survival strategy, with the help of reading, writing, copying poems and other creative activities that threatened , but also to make difficult internal situations viable. "

Gert Hekma (* 1951), lecturer in homosexual and lesbian studies at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, wrote in April 2004 in an article about the beginnings of the Castrum Peregrini: At the Herengracht in Amsterdam, at the corner of the Beulingstraat and across from the Leidsegracht, there is a world-famous house, dubbed by Mattias Duyves 'The gay version of the Anne Frank house'. ... Most of the residents were gay but they never called themselves that. Buri uses the example of his relationship with Gisèle van Waterschoot to describe the fact that the prisoners' sexual self-image was not that clear and that heterosexual relationships were also cultivated. This in turn put a strain on his relationship with Wolfgang Frommel.

“For me, the five years younger and relatively inexperienced, who was mainly caught up in dreams and unrealizable fantasies, the proximity of this agile female being who had broken in from unfamiliar surroundings meant a disturbing and alluring appearance. My long-dammed curiosity and sensual masculinity responded to her spell with considerable shock. From today on it is no longer possible for me to distinguish between what prevailed in this encounter: my eruptive urge or her half-surprised, half-resonant willingness to allow the protégé given in their hats.
For Wolfgang, who had traveled to Bergen for a while and found himself faced with the fait accompli of our connection on his return, this was an unsettling experience in several respects. On the one hand, Gisèle's slight transition from being fascinated by him to the obviously indifferent engagement with me, which had arisen so suddenly without his express consent during his first long absence from the Herengracht, aroused his displeased reaction. Gisèle, as the older of the two of us, he blamed what had happened as a breach of loyalty, which surprised me somewhat, as I could not imagine his relationship with her in terms of property. [..] On the other hand, my attitude was in no way acceptable to him. He tried to make it clear to me that now, as he said, the hereditary substance that had worked in my blood for thousands of years had fled from the bond of male comradeship into the family-based materiality of the physical urge to reproduce. Above all, he prematurely mentioned the fact that our pact of life, which had led him to homelessness and unconditional wandering with me, had not yet expired, the curve had not yet been rounded.
Whatever the case: since Wolfgang was unable and unwilling to cut off Gisèle and me on the path we had once trodden, the more difficult and for him barely bearable task of irreversible developments, once created, fell to him as always To accept realities, to affirm them and finally to make them fruitful for oneself and others. "

Even if Frommel feared that the relationship between Buri and van Waterschoot could endanger the community in the Herengracht 401 from within, it remained stable and survived the end of the war. She was spared the fate of the residents in the rear building at Prinsengracht 263 , but some of her closest friends fell victim to the Nazi terror:

“This is the two years younger poet friend Vincent Weyand (1921–1945) from Bergen, who was arrested by the Germans in July 1944 together with Percy Gothein and Simon van Keulen and died seven months later in Buchenwald concentration camp. Gothein was killed in Neuengamme concentration camp at the end of 1944, only van Keulen survived the arrest by jumping out of the train heading for Germany. [..] Frommel, Hilsley and Weyand are the central figures in Buri's life during his first years in emigration. "

Buri's life after the war

Amsterdam was liberated by Canadian soldiers on May 5, 1945; apart from the few people who were able to survive in hiding places like Herengracht 401, the city was "free of Jews". “On September 13, 1944, the 93rd and last transport train left Westerbork. Of the 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands in 1940, 102,000 had been murdered, almost 90 percent of them in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Sobibor. This gives the Netherlands the most terrible record of any country in Western Europe. "

After the liberation of the city, Buri moved out of the house at 401 Herengracht and started a new life. He trained as a graphologist and then worked in his own practice for several years. After "a being of the opposite sex" (see above) had torn the ground from under his feet in 1937, he married Marianne Strengholt, a Dutch woman of German origin, known as Jannie (1913-1995) in 1948. Buri had already met her shortly after the liberation: "It was Frommel who, without realizing the consequences, brought these two people together." Jannie, whom Frommel had known since 1943, came from an upper-class family and had been in contact since childhood to Max Beckmann , who also lived in Amsterdam during the war and there also met Wolfgang Frommel. In the 1950s, Janine also had a kind of guidance function for the young women who were always treated marginally in the circle around Wolfgang Frommel, as Joke Haverkorn reports: “For us“ girls ”too, there was a party every now and then. The girls' parties were plain and simple. They took place less often and consisted of a solemn reading of one of the books or cycles of George's poetry and a festive meal. Jannie Buri, teacher at the Quaker School and friend of W., was our voorganger on these occasions . In their beautiful, art-decorated rooms at Amsterdam's Oosterpark we came together for a 'reading' and were happy to be together in a small group. ”In 1951 Buri and Jannie, whose daughter Renate was married, drove back to Germany for the first time - on a motorcycle , and in the autumn of the same year they received a visit from Buri's mother Käthe, who lived in Brazil with his brother Kurt ("Arco") and his family. In 1952 things came full circle: Buri and family moved into the “De Esch” house at Schloss Eerde, where the Quaker School had since been re-established and William Hilsley also lived and taught again. Buri no longer worked as a graphologist, but became a drawing teacher and gave handicrafts at the school. Gradually, Buri and Jannie took on other functions and became house parents for a group of boarding school students. In addition, Buri intensified the writing of poetry, which became of ever greater importance for him: "Without poetry, my existence is not complete, not justified."

In 1957, the couple spent a vacation in Spain, which left a deep mark on Buri, which was also reflected in publications. One consequence of the trip was that Janni and Buri moved out of the house "De Esch" to an apartment in Ommen. They moved into the Bargsigt house, which belonged to the banker's widow Selina Pierson (1882–1965). Thanks to its owner, this house had quickly developed into a cultural and literary center in which various authors, philosophers and artists were guests. Regular visitors included the authors Adriaan Roland Holst (1888–1976) and Victor von Vriesland (1892–1974), the poet Jacques Blume (1887–1966) and the sculptor and painter Titus Leeser (1903–1996). Wolfgang Frommel had also been a regular guest here since the early 1950s: “For years after the death of her husband, Selina had lived very withdrawn until friends of W. [Frommel], who were teachers at the Landschulheim, met her. Selina had offered W., the friend of the new friends, her house as a summer residence. And W. immediately accepted the offer and moved in with her then 'neighbors'. "

At the same time as they moved to the Bargsigt house, where Conrad M. Stibbe lived, who taught at the Quaker School from 1958, Buri in Jannie stopped working at the school for a year. They resumed teaching at the Quaker School in 1958, a year before it moved to Beverweerd Castle in 1959. This move of the school prompted the two of them to buy their own house in Driebergen near the new school location. From 1959 to 1969, Buri and his wife taught at the Quaker School, and Buri wrote and published poetry. His brothers came to visit from Sao Paulo and Johannisburg, the friends from the Frommel circle frequented here. In 1964, Selina Pierson, who dedicated a poem to Buri in the same year, moved in and spent the last year of her life here. During the Drieberg period there was also an event that put a heavy strain on the relationship between Buri and his wife Jannie. Buri started a relationship with a friend of Jannie's, Marja, who was 17 years old and therefore about 30 years younger than Buri. This relationship dragged on for 14 years, but Jannie neither separated from her husband, nor did she end her friendship with Marja. In fact, she suffered most painfully, which she clearly expresses in her memories, and yet she and Buri stuck to their relationship and found each other again after long, difficult years.

In the second half of the 1960s, the Quaker School in Beverweerd was integrated into the Dutch school system, which meant that teachers without a Dutch exam were no longer allowed to teach. A school of a completely new character was created, at which Buri no longer felt comfortable, although he was able to catch up on the Dutch drawing teacher examination within three months. The two decided to sell the house in Dreibergen and move to Amsterdam. Buri founded his own drawing school there, the "Ateliers Buri". In addition, he continued to write poetry, but increasingly also worked as a translator. He translated poems by Dutch friends into German, but also volumes of poetry by Stefan George into Dutch (in collaboration with old Castrum Peregrini friends and others).

In 1983 Wolfgang Frommel's health deteriorated, who was still living at 401 Herengracht. Buri looked after him and nursed him until his death in 1986. For Buri this was the first time he returned to the house of his hiding place during the Second World War. As a result of Frommel's death, there were violent quarrels between the old friends from the circle around the Castrum Peregrini, in which Buri became a special target. To escape this tension, he sold his “Atelier Buri” and in February 1989 moved to Munich with Jannie.

Stephan C. Bischoff, physician and editor of Buri's memory report, met Buri around 1979 in Amsterdam and intensified the friendship after Buri's move to Munich. He and Buri set out on an extended trip to Spain in the summer of 1989. The journey was overshadowed by several emotional explosions, “which reveal the deep abysses in Buri's soul”, and came to an end in Lausanne, “where Buri begins to cry late at night in the hotel, speaks of weird visits and repeatedly complains about his failure until he Closes me tightly in his arms, whispering Wolfgang's [Frommel's] name. I have never felt such closeness to the friend. He is leaving me in Bern, where I should start a new job at Inselspital on July 1, 1989. "

In 1990 Buri's last volume of poetry, Altes zum Summen , was published, and in 1992 Buri and Jannie moved back to the Netherlands. They moved into a house in Doorn, which, like their former home in Driebergen, now belongs to the municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug . In 1993 Buri finished his poetic work and appointed Stephan C. Bischoff as his literary heir. In 1995 Jannie died and a few months later his old companion Kurt Meyer ("Enzio") Borchert. Buri's own health deteriorated, home care by his daughter Renate and auxiliary staff was no longer affordable, and so in 1998 he had to move to a nursing home in Bilthoven. “On May 29, 1999, he died in the place where his life in Holland began when he found shelter with Kees and Nel Boeke 62 years earlier. He is 80 years old. ”He was buried next to his wife Jannie in the Zorgvlied cemetery on the border between Amsterdam and Amstelveen.

Works

• Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. WF a reminder report. Edited and with an afterword by Stephan C. Bischoff, Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, 2009, ISBN 978-3-86650-068-6
• Friedrich W. Buri: ¡Gracias, España! , 1958, published in excerpts a) under the title Spanische Erde , in: Castrum Peregrini, XXXIII / 33. Heft, 1957–1958, Amsterdam, 1957, pp. 45–49; b) under the title Spanish Meditations , in: Merkur, August 1958, 12th year, issue 126, pp. 721–737; c) under the title Spanish Poets , in: Castrum Peregrini, XLIII / 43. Heft, Amsterdam, 1960, pp. 29-37
• Friedrich W. Buri: Altes zum Summen , im Selbstverlag, Munich, 1990 (The book is not in the directory of the German National Library; according to an antiquarian bookshop that has a copy on offer, the edition is said to have been 150 copies.)

• Stephan C. Bischoff (ed.): Wolfgang Frommel - Friedrich W. Buri. Correspondence 1933–1984 , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen, 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3023-8 .

References to the following volumes of poetry by Friedrich W. Buri can be found in the catalog of the German National Library:

• The bridges , Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam 1947
• Eisenhans , Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam 1947
• Michael , Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam 1948
• Anheimfall , Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam 1947

literature

• Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - time table - name register to Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in the jump. WF a reminder report. , Pp. 189-262. This part is listed separately in order to be able to make it clear when citing whether Buri is being referred to directly or to his literary and copyright administrator.
• William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire. Diary of an interned musician 1940–1945 , Ulrich Bornemann, Karlhans Kluncker, Rénald Ruiter (eds.), Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam, 1999, ISBN 3-932981-48-0 . There is also a CD for this book with the title Music Behind the Barbed Wire .
• Wolfgang Cordan: The mat. Autobiographical notes , in the appendix: Days with Antonio , MännerschwarmSkript Verlag, Hamburg, 2003, ISBN 3-935596-33-2 . Also a review by Herbert Potthoff in Invertito , 6, 2004
• Marita Keilson-Lauritz : Kentaurenliebe: Sideways of male love in the 20th century , Männerschwarm Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2013, ISBN 3-86300-143-5 . As a Google Book: Kentaurenliebe: Wolfgang Frommel and Billy Hildesheimer . In particular, the chapter The Love of the Centaurs: German Resistance in the Occupied Netherlands around the Castrum Peregrini , pp. 134-164.
• Günter Baumann: Poetry as a way of life. Wolfgang Frommel between George-Kreis and Castrum Peregrini , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, 1995, ISBN 3-8260-1112-0
• Claus Victor Bock: In hiding among friends. A report. Amsterdam 1942–1945 , Castrum-Peregrini-Presse, Amsterdam, several editions, ISBN 90-6034-053-1 . The fifth edition is partially available on the Internet: Claus Victor Bock on Google Books
• Hellmut Becker, Willi Eichler, Gustav Heckman (ed.): Education and politics. Minna Specht on her 80th birthday. Public Life Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main, 1960
• Sylvia Peuckert: Hedwig Fechheimer and the Egyptian art: life and work of a Jewish art scholar in Germany , magazine for Egyptian language and antiquity supplement, volume 2, De Gruyter, 2014, ISBN 3-05-005979-6
• Hans A. Schmitt: Quaker Efforts to Rescue Children from Nazi Education and Discrimination: The International Quakerschool Eerde , in: Quaker History, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 45-57

• Joke Haverkorn van Rijswijk: Distant memories of W. , Daniel Osthoff Verlag, Würzburg, 2013, ISBN 978-3-935998-11-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich W. Buri in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gays and Lesbians in war and resistance: Castrum Peregrini. The pilgrim's castle
• Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
• Submerged to surface This article is a review of Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in the jump. WF a reminder report. ; it was published on November 19, 2010 on the Castrum Peregrini website.
• Stations: Castrum Peregrini
• Second World War: German occupiers driven through Amsterdam

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Unless other sources are given, the biographical information about Wongtschowski / Buri is based on Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Time table - Name register
2. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 12.
3. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 12.
4. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 24
5. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 25
6. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 27-28
7. ↑ Stephan C. Bischoff almost completely passes over the years 1933 to Buri's departure to the Netherlands in August 1937 in the epilogue - chronological table - name register , although these were the decisive years for Buri's coinage. Günter Baumann judges that for Frommel "next to Billy Hildesheimer, whom he still taught as a private tutor in the 1920s, [..] Buri was the most attentive Jewish pupil of that time". (Günter Baumann: Poetry as a way of life , p. 244)
8. ↑ Stefan George, quoted from Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in the jump , p. 11.
9. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 33
10. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 42
11. ^ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe. Pp. 160-161.
12. ^ Claus Victor Bock: Submerged among friends. Pp. 14-15.
13. ↑ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe , pp. 135-136.
14. ↑ See: Julia Encke: Abusive in the name of Stefan Georges. Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , May 13, 2018, and: Joke Haverkorn van Rijsewijk: “It was an incessant drama”. Interview with Joke Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, Die Zeit , No. 22/2018, May 24, 2018. Although Buri was one of the closest circle around Frommel, there are no allegations against him in these articles.
15. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 50.
16. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P.56.
17. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. S. 59. Melchior Bengen (1919–2004), of the same age as Buri, later became an internist and died in Munich. He remembered an encounter with Buri in the fall of 1933 when he met him with his white binder's cart: “We greeted each other happily, but I drove on because I wasn't entirely sure whether he would meet me so suddenly and under these circumstances agreed. In any case, my feeling for him bordered on awe when I, the middle-class high school student, met him, the little apprentice painter with two lives, who had already read at EM ( Ernst Morwitz ) and at the same time worked daily as a painter - that reminded me of Harun al Raschid, a prince disguised as a beggar in 1001 nights. ”(Quoted from Stephan C. Bischoff: epilogue - time table - name register , p. 233.)
18. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 60.
19. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 60.
20. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 61-63. In this context, Buri also suggests earlier sexual contact with a classmate, which he characterizes as a 'hand grip pushed out of memory'.
21. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 63-65.
22. ↑ Buri's presentation is not always clear because he largely avoids dates. William Hilsley started working in Eerde in January 1935. The stay in Berlin could therefore also have taken place in 1935. This is supported by the fact that Buri got to know Ernst Morwitz during this stay in Berlin , who had been forcibly retired from the Nazi state in 1935 due to his Jewish origins and then emigrated to the USA.
23. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 77.
24. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 78. Buri reports that the promise was given by the school principal Kurt Neuse. In 1937, however, Katharina Petersen was still director, Neuse was her deputy.
25. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 78-80.
26. ↑ Kurt Zier studied in Berlin for the artistic teaching post. From 1932 to 1933 he taught at the École Internationale in Geneva. In 1939 he emigrated to Iceland, where he and Ludwig Gudmundson founded and directed the Werkkunstschule in Reykjavík. In 1949 he was appointed to the Odenwald School by Minna Specht , whose successor as headmaster he was from 1951–1962, in order to build up its work-study branch. (Hellmut Becker, Willi Eichler, Gustav Heckman [eds.]: Education and Politics. P. 414.) Zier “worked as a marionette player on Harro Siegel's stage , through whom he may have come into contact with Wolfgang Frommel.” ( Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Timetable - Name Register , p. 261). Hilsley later received puppet heads from Harro Siegel at the Kreuzburg internment camp for a performance in the camp. ( William Hilsley: Music behind the barbed wire , p. 53)
27. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 82
28. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 88.
29. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 89-90.
30. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 90-91.
31. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 91-94. The complexity of the entire process naturally falls by the wayside if, like Sylvia Peuckert, only succinctly points out that Buri came to Eerde through Frommel's mediation as an assistant to the works teacher. (Sylvia Peuckert: Hedwig Fechheimer and Egyptian Art , p. 257.)
32. ^ Claus Victor Bock: Submerged among friends. , P. 10.
33. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 103.
34. ↑ What is strange is that in Buri's memories only Kurt Neuse appears as director of the school, also as Frommel's contact person, that there is talk of his apartment in the castle and so on. But the fact is that until 1938 Katharina Petersen was the undisputed director and Neuse was her deputy. But Petersen is never mentioned by Buri.
35. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 95.
36. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 98. Here again 'the pseudo-religious combination of eroticism and poetry' becomes visible, which was already referred to above based on Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe , p. 160.
37. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Quaker Efforts to Rescue Children from Nazi Education and Discrimination , p. 52. Schmitt's presentation is rather diffuse in terms of time, because at the time of the transition from Petersen to Neuse, at the beginning of 1938, Hilsley and Buri were there School, but not Frommel. He had first met Neuse during his brief visit to Neuse, which was supposed to bring about the hiring of Buri, and did not return to the school until September 1939. (Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Timeline - Name Register , p. 228) Frommel can therefore hardly be used as a factor in Newse's non-appointment.
38. ↑ Claus Victor Bock: Untergetaucht unter Freunde , pp. 14–15.
39. ^ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe , p. 161.
40. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 103-104.
41. ^ Gays and Lesbians in War and Resistance: Castrum Peregrini. The pilgrim's castle '. The presentation corresponds to the more detailed one by Claus Victor Bock: Untergetaucht unter Freunde , pp. 34–37. The escape helper Vincent Weijand (1921–1945), born in Bergen (North Holland) , was one of Frommel's first Dutch friends. In August 1942 he also helped Claus Victor Bock escape from Eerde. At the end of July 1944 he was arrested in Ommen together with Percy Gothein and Simon van Keulen. He died on February 22, 1945 in Buchenwald concentration camp . (Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Timeline - Name Register , p. 260.)
42. ↑ Stations: Castrum Peregrini . Sylvia Peuckert: Hedwig Fechheimer and Egyptian art. P. 258. In the naming she also sees a reference to Frommel's poetry project Templer und Rosenkranz .
43. ^ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe. Pp. 147-148.
44. ↑ Gays and Lesbians in War and Resistance.
45. ↑ The well-researched page Gays and Lesbians in war and resistance is also informative .
46. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. P. 116.
47. ^ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe. P. 158. In an art installation in 2013 in and on the Herengracht 401 house, Ahmet Öğüt made a connection between those who were once 'hidden' there and the current treatment of asylum seekers in the Netherlands and the associated radical change in attitudes towards asylum seekers which has been reflected in both government processes and public opinion over the past decade. Between waiting and hidding.
48. ↑ Quoted from: Gays and Lesbians in war and resistance .
49. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in leaps and bounds. Pp. 138-142.
50. ↑ Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Timetable - Name Register , pp. 202–203. For the arrest of the three see also Claus Victor Bock: Untergetaucht unter Freunde , pp. 112–117. Gothein and van Keulen were arrested in a house on the outskirts of Ommen, Weyand in the 'De Esch' house, where he still lived in a room after the 'International Quaker School Eerde' had closed. On the Gays and Lesbians in war and resistance: Castrum Peregrini site. The pilgrim's castle. on the other hand it is alleged that all three were arrested at Schloss Eerde.
51. ^ Second World War: German occupiers driven through Amsterdam.
52. ↑ Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Timetable - Name Register , pp. 203-206.
53. ↑ Jannie had bought three paintings from Beckmann before living with Buri, one of which remained with her former husband and another had to be sold by Jannie and Buri to finance their living. The third picture, Wadden Sea green and black and yellow from 1946, remained in her possession.
54. ↑ Joke Haverkorn van Rijswijk: distant memories to W. , p. 38. The Dutch word "voorganger", which can also mean predecessor or forerunner, is meant here in its more religious meaning, in which it stands for celebrant .
55. ↑ quoted from Stephan C. Bischoff: Afterword - Timetable - Name Register , p. 207.
56. ↑ De grote stille knecht. Ommen as inspirational bronze.
57. ↑ Joke Haverkorn van Rijswijk: Distant memories of W. , p. 16.
58. ↑ Compare this to the article International Quaker School Eerde
59. ↑ Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Timetable - Name Register , p. 210.
60. ↑ Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Timetable - Name Register , p. 216.
61. ↑ Stephan C. Bischoff: Epilogue - Timetable - Name Register , p. 219.
62. ↑ The title is borrowed from the poem "Die Fackel" by Wolfgang Frommel, it appeared in the series of publications of the Wilhelm Fraenger Institute Potsdam, behind which the Wilhelm Fraenger Society e. V. is under the direction of Prof. Wolfgang Hempel ( Wilhelm Fraenger Institute ). The namesake of this institute or the association, Wilhelm Fraenger , is one of the people named in the imprint of the Castrum Peregrini as their founding godparents , along with August Klein and Lothar Helbing (= Wolfgang Frommel) . Hempel, on the other hand, was “led by his French teacher Willy Hellemann at the Bessel-Oberschule in Minden to a literary encounter with Stefan George and his circle, who from outside has often been given the prejudice 'elitist' and closed. In fact, however, the poetry of Stefan Georges, the extensive literature on the work of the poet and his circle, and in Amsterdam the acquaintance and friendship with Gisèle Waterschoot van der Gracht (d'Ailly), Wolfgang Frommel, Claus Victor Bock, Peter and Manuel R. Goldschmidt, William Hilsley (Billy Hildesheimer), Harrie op het Veld a. a. the knowledge of a deeply humanistically understood national-conservative attitude, enriched by the knowledge of the fate of Jews and German refugees who were 'hiding among friends' in the Netherlands during the Second World War during the German occupation. "(Botho Brachmann: Biographical memories: Thoughts for Wolfgang Hempel ). Against this background, it is certainly no coincidence that the publishing house in which Buri's book was published, the “Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg”, also published William Hinsley's diaries ( music behind the barbed wire ).