Fritz Gerhard Lottmann

Fritz Gerhard Lottmann (born October 7, 1880 in Emden ; † September 2, 1918 in Oldenburg ) was an East Frisian writer and local poet.

Live and act

Fritz Gerhard Lottmann was born in Emden on October 7, 1880, the third of seven children of auctioneer Christoffer Hinderks Lottmann and his wife Sophie Marie, née Lüpkes. The father came from an old Frisian family, and the mother's ancestors were Huguenots .

Lottmann attended grammar school in Emden, which he left a year before graduating from high school, and trained as a surveyor in Münster and Bonn .

In 1903 he worked in Witten and a year later in Sonderburg on Als . Here he met his wife Elisabeth Forster, whom he married in June 1906 when he returned to Emden.

In 1907 their son Gerhard was born, their daughter Nora in 1908.

Lottmann became a partner in a surveying office in Witten. In 1910 he did the Abitur in Harburg (Elbe) and matriculated in Gießen for agriculture, physics and geology, in 1911 he received his doctorate. When he was offered a professorship in Montevideo , he gave up his existence in Germany in 1911, but the offer was withdrawn in early 1912; Lottmann got into financial distress as a result.

After a short transition period as an agricultural insurance agent, he and his wife opened a private tutoring institute in Oldenburg in February 1913.

After the outbreak of war , the convinced pacifist managed to evade military service until the summer of 1916 - during this time he wrote the Low German novel "Dat Hus sünner Lücht" - and was then drafted. He came to Rastede via Geneva because of a weak heart . In 1918 he succeeded in getting a publisher enthusiastic about his novel. In August 1918 he fell ill with the Spanish flu, which was raging on mainland Europe, and died on September 2 in his home in Oldenburg.

Lottmann wrote the first major novel in East Frisian Low German and caused a sensation in northwest Germany. The plot of "Dat Hus sünner Lücht" is based on the life and work of his grandfather Fritz Wiarda Lüpkes, who worked as the main teacher in Oldersum . People from Oldersum can be recognized in many types of the novel. Due to the early death, other works that Lottmann had started remained unfinished.

Works

• Freyse Staatjes and songs of a wandering Frisian. Emden 1905 (under the pseudonym Fritz Fresenus)
• Aura Academica . Novel. Leipzig 1906
• Dat Hus sünner Lücht. Low German novel. Hamburg 1919, as a reprint in 1989 by Schuster Verlag, Leer
• several unpublished pieces (novels, dramas)

Web links

• Fritz Gerhard Lottmann in the Low German Bibliography and Biography (PBuB)
• Entry on Fritz Gerhard Lottmann in the Biographical Lexicon for East Frisia