Fritz Diettrich

Fritz Diettrich (born January 28, 1902 in Dresden , † March 19, 1964 in Göttingen ) was a German writer .

Life

Origin and youth

Fritz Diettrich was born as the second child of a businessman and grew up as an only child, as his sister died of the consequences of a traffic accident before he was born. At the age of 16 he began to write poems, which he also gave public readings from 1920. Contemporary critics saw in him a growing, hopeful talent. Diettrich himself later distanced himself sharply from these youth brands (as he called them pejoratively from the title of his first volume of poetry).

From 1920 he studied German literature , philosophy and theater studies for a few semesters at the universities of Tübingen , Leipzig and Frankfurt , and at the age of 20 he married his childhood friend Gertrud Stolze, with whom he had a harmonious marriage for decades until her death. Since his marriage, Diettrich was able, thanks to the fortune inherited from his father, to live exclusively as a freelance writer with his literary work.

The young author

In 1925 Diettrich undertook two extended trips, which took him for several months to France on the one hand and to Sicily on the other , and due to their encounter with the cultural heritage of antiquity, they were of great importance for his future work. The previous Sturm und Drang period of his early poems and essays gave way to a critical position on the culture of Europe and America at the time, which he contrasted with the intellectual life of Asia, which culminated in a series of essays under the title Asia's European Mission . Diettrich tends towards religious socialism, the author was also in contact with Martin Buber and Mahatma Gandhi .

The increasing poetic power was recognized from many quarters, Diettrich's poems were included in numerous anthologies and literary journals, in the Paris Revue d'Allemagne also in French translation - Diettrich was considered one of the most promising talents among the younger poets in Germany. In addition to his own poetry, Diettrich regularly wrote extensive poetry reviews for the magazine Die Literatur from 1928 to 1925 and was one of the collaborators of the Revue d'Allemagne and the Cahiers Luxenbourgeois .

The acquaintance with Theodor Däubler , whom he admired and whom he met many times in Dresden, was of decisive importance for Diettrich's literary development. Both poets were united by a deep love for the culture and spiritual world of antiquity, which has left unmistakable traces in both works. Even Rudolf Alexander Schröder and others, about the same age authors such. B. Georg Britting , Günter Eich , Peter Huchel , Horst Lange , Elisabeth Langgässer , Oda Schaefer or Guido Zernatto , whom he got to know through his participation in the magazine Die Kolonne , influenced his work.

As early as 1926, through the mediation of Ernst Hardt , who had recognized Diettrich's important lecturer early on, he was a regular employee of the radio, to which he remained closely associated with countless lectures and readings throughout his life.

The seizure of power by Hitler left no recognizable traces in his work. Diettrich was wrong in the first months of Hitler's chancellorship, like many other German intellectuals, about his goals and ideas, but during the so-called " Röhmputsch " he recognized his mistake and made contact with some representatives of the George circle (including Wolfgang Frommel and Harro Siegel ) on. Because of his essay Greek and Christian Agon , he was attacked in 1935 in the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps and referred to as a " Bolshevik ". Theatrical premieres that had already been scheduled were then canceled, but the author was initially able to continue publishing and was still available on records with poetry readings.

World War II and post-war period

From autumn 1941 a publication ban was imposed on Diettrich and the author was drafted into the Wehrmacht, first as a shooter, then as a medic and wounded sports director. Since he held readings in the military hospitals as part of the military service, he was transferred back to the front as "politically unreliable". Towards the end of the war Diettrich became a Soviet prisoner of war and spent almost three years in Siberian prison camps. On his return in September 1947, Diettrich found his hometown Dresden, as well as his own house and property, largely destroyed and destroyed and learned that in October 1946 his only son had been arrested in Dresden on charges of espionage for the USA later died in a camp in Mühlberg.

After several months in a returning hospital, Diettrich moved to his wife in Kassel in February 1948, from there soon to Ravensburg , where he developed a lively literary and lecturing activity. Returning to Kassel in 1955, he wrote his important adaptations of Properz, Catullus, Tibullus and Ausonius. His wife died in 1958, and Diettrich married Alwine Vorndamme for the second time in 1959, with a daughter from this marriage.

In the last years of his life, he was marked by the signs of Parkinson's disease, and Diettrich died unexpectedly on March 19, 1964 as a result of an embolism after an operation in a Göttingen clinic.

Artistic creation

As early as 1931, Diettrich wrote as a program of his work that the poet would become a seer, the L'art pour l'art of the turn of the century gave way to prophetic poetry. In the middle of the 20th century Diettrich felt obliged to bring the formative forces of the West, antiquity and Christianity, back to life. For him the word was "light bearer of the spirit", his task was "to respect the voice from Sinai and the lightning from Olympus".

In the course of Diettrich's work, ancient affirmation of life and a deeply felt Christianity merge with an emphasis on Lutheran Protestantism, to which the author was closely associated from birth, but without sectarian denominations. Diettrich is a master not only of bound language, but also of prose, in which he is characterized by conceptually and formally concentrated aphorisms.

As a post-poet, he has a special significance that is hardly inferior to Rudolf Alexander Schröder's in this area. For him, the post-poetry is not a timid, schoolmasterly "translation", but a poetic new creation that places meaning and spirit above the letter (which Diettrich has also received criticism from the philologists).

Awards and honors

1929 Honorary gift from the Johannes Fastenrath Foundation, Cologne

Works

• Poems . Dresden, Wolfgang Jess Verlag, 1930.
• Star over the house. Poems and legends . Dresden, Wolfgang Jess Verlag, 1932.
• Paris. A poem of time . Dresden, Wolfgang Jess Verlag, 1933.
• The Attic Arch. Seals . Dresden, Wolfgang Jess Verlag, 1934.
• The blacksmith of Ghent. A game in German rhymes . Berlin, Theaterverlag Langen-Müller, 1935.
• Mythical landscapes. Hymns . Hamburg, H. Ellermann Verlag, 1936.
• The gift. Selected poems . Leipzig, Paul List Verlag, 1937.
• Round dance of the year . Hamburg, H. Ellermann Verlag, 1938.
• The birds of Aristophanes. Re-seal . Frankfurt / Main, Bauersche Foundry, 1940.
• Shepherd's flute. (2nd increased edition of the "Poems") . Kassel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1940.
• Goods of the earth. Odes . Kassel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1940.
• The wing of the Daidalos. Tragedy . Kassel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1941.
• Thermopylae. Dramatic poem . Kassel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, undated, burned in the destruction of Kassel
• Sonnets . Kassel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1948
• From a watchful heart. Poems . Kassel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1948.
• Train of the Muses. Odes . Kassel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1948.
• With foreign strings. Re-seals . Kassel and Basel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1949.
• Songs of Contemplation (from the years 1941-43) . Kassel and Basel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1949.
• Philemon and Baucis. Six chants . Basel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1950.
• The god of light sings. A bow of poems . Düsseldorf-Cologne, E. Diederichs Verlag, 1951
• Memorandum. 555 Aphorisms Kassel and Basel, Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1953
• Properz: the love poems . Düsseldorf-Cologne, E. Diederichs Verlag, 1958
• Adam's descendant. Spiritual poems . Berlin, Protestant Publishing House, 1959
• In happy Dresden . Berlin, Protestant Publishing House, 1962.
• Works in three volumes . Göttingen, Sachse & Pohl Verlag, 1963–65.

literature

• Kurt Werner, Fritz Diettrich, a German poet in: Die Literatur. Monthly for lovers of literature. The literary echo, vol. 36, 1934, 326–330.
• Paul Wegwitz, Fritz Diettrich in: Das Innere Reich, 8th year, 1941, 164–168.
• Gottfried Fischer-Gravelius, Fritz Diettrich in: Welt und Wort, 6th year, 1951, 134-136.
• Erna Gravelius, O wake up, you poets who are still asleep now. Fritz Diettrich on his 50th birthday in: Die Neue Schau, 13th year, 1952, 8–9.

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz Diettrich in the catalog of the German National Library