Fritz von Unruh

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Wilhelm Lehmbruck : "Portrait head Fritz von Unruh" (1918)
Fritz von Unruh; Memorial plaque in Diez / Lahn

Fritz von Unruh (born May 10, 1885 in Koblenz , † November 28, 1970 in Diez an der Lahn ) was a German writer , painter , speaker and poet of literary expressionism .

Life

Von Unruh comes from the old Prussian nobility. He was the second of nine children of the Prussian general Karl von Unruh (1843–1912) and Mathilde born. Klehe (1858-1943). Friedrich Franz von Unruh and Kurt von Unruh were his younger brothers. Fritz von Unruh and two sons of the emperor, Oskar and August Wilhelm, were instructed at the Prussian Cadet Institute in Plön . The first literary works were created while still at school. After taking up service as an officer in the Imperial Guard Regiment in Berlin, he wrote his second play Officers , which Max Reinhardt performed at the Deutsches Theater in 1911 with great success. His regimental commander had previously forced him to retire from the officer's profession. The performance of the next play by Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia was even banned by the Emperor in 1913. From 1924 to 1932 - the year of his first emigration - Fritz von Unruh lived in the historic pension tower on Frankfurt's bank of the Main, where he officially had the right to live for life.

War experiences

As a volunteer, von Unruh went to the First World War . Here he gained experience as a battalion commander and company commander. Commissioned to do this, von Unruh first wrote propaganda literature for the top army command. However, the representations were too realistic so that they were not published. Out of the horror of the war, however, grew the dramatic poem Before the Decision (1915) and the prose story sacrifice (1916, published 1919). The fight against war and violence became the unmistakable basis of his artistic work.

Von Unruh was seriously wounded in 1916 and his attitude changed. “What I understood about the meaning of genius in a hard upbringing, in strict service in the guard, in the blood-soaked field of war - I will say and condense it. I acquired this right to confess and shape it on the Marne and before Verdun . ”(Letter to Thomas Mann dated July 31, 1935)

He became a resolute pacifist and republican-minded military opponent and was henceforth considered to be a polluter in conservative and German national circles.

Weimar period

Fritz von Unruh speaks at a rally of the Iron Front in 1932

In 1919 he became friends with Alma Mahler-Werfel and the expressionist writer Franz Werfel . In the Weimar Republic he was a respected writer. Max Reinhardt staged his plays, which were played on numerous stages. The founding of the Republican Party in 1924 was unsuccessful. In 1931 von Unruh joined the Iron Front , an amalgamation against the Harzburg Front of National Socialist and German-Völkisch forces. In 1932 he warned of a coming war of extermination: "Soon the sheep will be grazing on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin." This renewed the hatred of right-wing circles and led to von Unruhs' pieces being sold in Frankfurt, among other places.

Persecution and emigration

Von Unruh left Frankfurt a. M. 1932, because he no longer felt safe after the tumult over the comedy Zero and a break-in into his apartment in the Frankfurt Rententurm in Germany. Although he had signed a declaration of loyalty to the Prussian Academy of the Arts on March 19, 1933 after the National Socialist " seizure of power " , his works fell victim to the book burnings and on May 7, 1933 Gottfried Benn expelled him from the academy. Von Unruh initially lived in Italy and stayed in southern France from 1935. In 1939 he fled via Spain to the USA, where he lived temporarily in New York City . In 1940 he married the actress Friederike Ergas , née Schaffer (1889–1971).

post war period

As a result of a request made by Walter Kolb , he returned to Germany for the first time in 1948 and gave his big speech to the Germans on May 18 in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt . His literary works were now less successful. The visit from 1952 to 1955 alienated von Unruh from his homeland. Von Unruh complained about the restoration in Germany and felt persecuted. He took the rearmament in 1954 as an opportunity to return to the United States. Stays in the USA, France and Germany followed, until he settled permanently in Germany again in 1962 after a hurricane destroyed his house in 1962 and washed all his belongings into the water. The city of Frankfurt then offered him another apartment. He was no longer successful as a writer until he died on November 28, 1970 in Diez on the family estate of Orange.

Quotes

  • "Unruh and the German Expressionists of that time were friends of peace, were humanitarian and, despite their love of home, they were cosmopolitan." Victor Klemperer
  • "Fritz von Unruh is in truth an inspiring model for all mankind." Albert Einstein

Works (in selection)

Dramas

  • Jürgen Wullenweber. 1908.
  • Officers. 1911.
  • Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia. 1913.
  • One gender. Tragedy, 1917.
  • Space. 1920 (continuation of One Sex )
  • Storms. Drama, 1922.
  • Rose Garden. 1923.
  • Bonaparte. Drama, 1927.
  • Phaea. Comedy, 1930.
  • Zero. Comedy, 1932.
  • Gandha. 1935.
  • Charlotte Corday. 1936.
  • Miss roller skate. 1941.
  • The Minister of Liberation. 1948.
  • Wilhelmus. 1953.
  • Duel on the Havel. Drama, 1954.
  • Bismarck or Why is the soldier standing there? 1955.
  • Odysseus on Ogygia. Drama, 1968.

Novels

  • Sacrificial passage. 1918.
  • That never lost. 1948.
  • The Holy. 1952.
  • Fear nothing. 1952.
  • The general's son. 1957.
  • In the house of the princes. 1967.

Talk

  • Fatherland and Freedom. An address to German youth , 1923
  • Politeia. ed. by Ernst Adolf Dreyer, 1933.
  • Europe awake! held on Europe Day in Basel, 1936.
  • Peace on Earth! Peace o Earth! Frankfurt / M., 1948.
  • Talk to the Germans. Preface by Eugen Kogon, 1948.
  • Be vigilant. Goethe speech, Frankfurt / M., 1948.
  • University speech. In: What is there. Art and literature in Frankfurt / M., 1952
  • Schiller speech. ed. from the Fritz von Unruh-Gesellschaft, Giessen, 1955.
  • You are not powerful in arms. Accompanying word by Albert Einstein, 1957.
  • Call for peace. In: Konkret 7 (1961), 1960.
  • We want peace. Preface by Hanns Martin Elster, 1961.
  • Sport and politics. Appeal to youth around the world, 1961.
  • I call the living. with contribution by Johannes Urzidil, 1962.
  • Speech to the Frankfurt youth. ed. from the DGB, district committee Frankfurt / M., 1964.

Others

  • Before the decision. 1914.
  • Wings of Nike. Book a trip. 1925.
  • My meetings with Trotsky. 1963.
  • Peace in USA? A dream. 1967.

Awards and honors

literature

  • Thomas Diecks:  balance, Fritz Wilhelm Ernst von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 26, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-428-11207-5 , pp. 647-649 ( digitized version ).
  • Ina Götz: Tradition and Utopia in the Dramas of Fritz von Unruh. (= Treatises on art, music and literary studies, 175). Bouvier, Bern 1975, ISBN 3-416-01051-5 .
  • Karola Schulz: Almost a revolutionary. Fritz von Unruh between exile and remigration (1932–1962). (= Cursus, 11). Iudicium, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-89129-461-1 .
  • Dieter Kasang: Wilhelminism and Expressionism. Fritz von Unruh's early work 1904–1921. (= Stuttgart theses on German studies, 78). Academic publishing house Hans-Dieter Heinz, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-88099-082-4 .
  • Friedrich Rasche : Fritz von Unruh. Rebel and herald. The poet and his work. Publishing house for literature and current affairs, Hannover 1960, DNB 455171238 .
  • Robert Meister: Fritz von Unruh. (= Germanic Studies, 39). Kraus Reprint, Nendeln 1967, DNB 457566264 . (Reprint of the Berlin 1925 edition)
  • Eberhard Rohse : Fritz von Unruh 1885–1970. In: Karl-Heinz Habersetzer (Hrsg.): German writers in portrait. Volume 6: Expressionism and the Weimar Republic. (= Beck's Black Series, 292). CH Beck, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-406-09292-6 , pp. 172-173.
  • Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books. Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 . (About the balance, pp. 100–102)
  • Wernfried Schreiber (Ed.): Fritz von Unruh on the 100th birthday and 15th anniversary of his death. Exhibition catalog. (= Publications of the Koblenz City Library, 16). Koblenz City Library, 1985, DNB 860152278 .
  • Dirk Kemper: Politeia - splinters on the exile history of Fritz von Unruhs from a partial Moscow estate. In: Rainer Wild (Ed.): Still they live. Ostracized books, persecuted authors. On the effects of the National Socialist literary policy. Festschrift for Gerhard Sauder. Ed. Text and criticism, Stuttgart ua 2003, ISBN 3-88377-745-5 , pp. 407-418.
  • Hans Joachim Schröder: Fritz von Unruh (1885–1970) - cavalry officer, poet and pacifist. In: Wolfram Wette (ed.): Pacifist officers in Germany 1871–1933. Donat Verlag, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-85-3 , pp. 319-337.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Werner Koch: Fritz von Unruh. A plea for his 80th birthday . In: The time. No. 19/1965 of May 7, 1965.
  2. ^ Hans-Albert Walter: German Exile Literature 1933–1950. Volume 1: Threat and Persecution until 1933 . Darmstadt 1972, pp. 54, 64.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture 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. 626.
  4. ↑ An excerpt from this speech that is impressive in its vehemence is in the audio book Anna Blume meets Zuckmayer: 60 legendary poets in original recordings. Hörverlag 2005, ISBN 3-89940-732-6 , included.
  5. ↑ Honorary Citizen of Diez | SV Diez. Retrieved March 14, 2019 .
  6. ^ Fritz-von-Unruh-Str., Koblenz city map - meinestadt.de. Retrieved March 14, 2019 .


personal data
SURNAME Unruh, Fritz von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, painter, speaker and poet of literary expressionism
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Koblenz
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1970
Place of death Diez on the Lahn