Friedrich Wilhelm Mader

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Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm Mader (born September 1, 1866 in Nice , † March 30, 1945 in Bönnigheim ) was a German Protestant pastor and writer of future and adventure novels, plays, fairy tales, poems and songs. He is called the Swabian Karl May .

Life

Friedrich Wilhelm Mader grew up in the Protestant parsonage of the German-speaking community in Nice, of which his father, Philipp Friedrich Mader, was the leader for many years . Mader was a good student and finished his school career in 1884 with the Abitur in Heilbronn . He then studied Protestant theology at the University of Tübingen and entered the Württemberg church service in 1889. From 1890 to 1894 he was vicar in various places, including in Nice and from 1897 to 1917 pastor in Eschelbach and Kesselfeld in Hohenlohe .

During the years in Hohenlohe he began to publish books for young people (until 1942), which are mainly set in other continents. Mader also worked for various newspapers, including a. for the Münchner Fliegende Blätter , active. His real calling was writing. From 1917 he worked as a freelance writer . Mader was permeated by Christian-Evangelical ideas about life and morals and had a German national stance. His African novels made him a particularly richly illustrated and verbose representative of the colonial literature of the Weimar Republic and some of them were published until the Nazi era . In 1929 he built his own house at Otto-Reiniger-Straße 65 in Stuttgart .

Part of Friedrich Wilhelm Mader's estate is kept in the district archive of the Hohenlohekreis .

The painter Fritz Mader is one of his children .

Works

Adventure literature

The focus of his work is in the field of adventure novels . At the beginning of the last century his works were extremely popular among adults and young people interested in distant lands. During this time, the myth of the adventure in strange, unknown worlds, the resulting battles and dangers, was of great interest.

Novels set in Africa (selection)

  • In the land of the dwarfs (adventures and battles in inner Africa with dwarf races)
  • After the moon mountains (adventure in the interior of Africa, to the sources of the Nile), later title "Into dark Africa"
  • Oranjehof (adventure in South Africa with natives and Boers, on farms and in diamond and gold mines)
  • Escape from Sudan (Mahdi uprising in North Africa, Germans flee from captivity and violence and the clutches of Kalifa)
  • The heroes of East Africa (consisting of 3 volumes: "Am Kilimandjaro", "Vom Pangani zum Rowuma" and "In unknown far away", about Lettow-Vorbeck in the East African war and adventures in the jungle and steppe)
  • In the struggle for justice and freedom (experiences in the Boer War)
  • The Foreign Legionnaires ( Foreign Legionnaires' adventure, escape and fighting in the desert)
  • The brass city (adventure around a mysterious city in the Sahara, with German researchers and their battles in the desert), later title "The secret of the Sahara"
  • Ophir (adventure in the kingdom of the Queen of Sheba and in the gold country Ophir), later title "The treasure of Halim Pascha"

Novels set in South America (selection)

  • El Dorado (travels and adventures of two boys in the primeval forests of South America, flora and fauna as well as inhabitants are vividly described), later title "In the footsteps of the Incas"

Novels set in Australia, Oceania and the South Pole (selection)

  • The king of the unapproachable mountains (adventure trip by German researchers in a car into the interior of Australia)
  • Lost in the ocean (adventure, dangers and horror of two German girls on a South Sea island with hurricanes, sharks and pirates)
  • In the ice of the South Pole (adventures and dangers of a Swedish expedition from 1901 to 1903)

Fairy tales (selection)

After the defeat of Germany in World War I and the subsequent political and social changes, which also affected Mader and his family painfully, he took refuge in the realm of fantasy and wrote fairy tales .

  • Kronenmärchen (published by Aue-Verlag in 1924)

Songs (selection)

Throughout his life, Mader was very connected to his homeland, Swabia. This is also expressed in his songs, which were popular in Swabia.

  • Songs from Swabia (self-published in 1932)

Science fiction

A work by Wilhelm Mader falls outside the scope of his usual adventure novels. It is the book "Wunderwelten" (1911). With this novel he is entering new literary territory, it belongs to the genre of future literature. Alongside Kurd Lasswitz and Hans Dominik, Mader is one of the first writers of this genre in Germany. In addition to “Wunderwelten”, he wrote two other novels that form a coherent story. These novels, which can be assigned to future literature to a certain extent, are called “The Dead City” (Part 1, 1923) and “The Last Atlantide” (Part 2, 1923). Both novels are set at the South Pole , where an area with strange prehistoric animals ( dinosaurs ) exists, wrapped in ice.

  • Wonder Worlds (1911)
  • The Dead City (Part 1, 1923)
  • The Last Atlantide (Part 2, 1923)

Reissued novels

These were mostly published in abbreviated form after the Second World War . Especially religious and instructive passages have been deleted.

  • Escape from Sudan (the novel of the same title was published in 1925)
  • The treasure of Helim Pascha (the novel was published in 1911 under the title "Ophir")
  • The secret of the Sahara (the novel was published in 1924 under the title "The Brass City")
  • Into dark Africa (the novel was published in 1911 under the title "After the Moon Mountains")
  • In the footsteps of the Incas (the novel was published in 1904 under the title "El Dorado")
  • Under the spell of the golden dragon (the novel was published in 1930 under the title "From Hankou to Kukunor")
  • Wunderwelten (this novel was published in 1987 by Wilhelm Heyne Verlag in full as a paperback edition)

New editions for the 150th birthday of Friedrich Wilhelm Mader, edited by Detlef Münch. synergen Verlag, Dortmund 2016:

literature

  • Ernst Schlagenhauf: The knights of the spirit and their traces in the Württemberg lowlands ( Christian von Massenbach , Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländer , Wilhelm Ganzhorn , Friedrich Wilhelm Mader). Wüstenrot 1993.
  • Christoph F. Lorenz: Adventure with limited liability. The adventurous world of Friedrich Wilhelm Mader. In: (ders.): Art pieces. Critical hikes through the adventurous and fantastic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries (= German studies in the Blue Owl. 17). The blue owl, Essen 1994, ISBN 3-89206-120-3 , pp. 75-100.
  • Hans Dieter Haller: Friedrich Wilhelm Mader (1886 to 1945) . In: Pegasus in the country. Writer in Hohenlohe , Baier-Verlag, Crailsheim 2006, ISBN 3-929233-62-2 , pp. 62-69.
  • Wolfgang Günter Lerch : Friedrich Wilhelm Maders wonder worlds . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 27, 2016, p. 18.
  • Henning Franke: Mader, Friedrich Wlhelm . In: Lexicon of Science Fiction Literature since 1900. With a look at Eastern Europe , edited by Christoph F. Lorenz, Peter Lang, Frankfurt / Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-63167-236-5 , pp. 441–448

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ It is also incorrectly named September 16, 1947 as the date of death; so Kürschner's German Literature Calendar. Nekrolog 1936-1970. 1973.
  2. ↑ Tim Opitz: Swabia: The colonial revisionist "East Africa" ​​novels by Friedrich Wilhelm Mader, in: Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller (eds.): Colonialism here in Germany - A search for traces in Germany . Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-86680-269-8 , pp. 375-380.
  3. ^ Wolfgang Günter Lerch: Friedrich Wilhelm Maders Wunderwelten . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 27, 2016, p. 18 (detailed review).
personal data
SURNAME Mader, Friedrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Nice
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1945
Place of death Bönnigheim