Gerhard Nebel

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Gerhard Nebel (born September 26, 1903 in Dessau , † September 23, 1974 in Stuttgart ) was a German writer , classical philologist , essayist and conservative cultural critic .

Youth, teaching and first book

After the death of his parents, Gerhard Nebel moved to Koblenz and graduated from high school there in 1922. For a time he was a classmate of Joseph Breitbach . He wanted to become a teacher and from 1923 to 1927 he studied philosophy and classical philology in Freiburg, Marburg and Heidelberg , among others with Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers . After his doctorate in Plotin's Categories of the Intelligible World with Ernst Hoffmann in Heidelberg in 1927 and the two state examinations, he entered school service in the Ruhr area, but was suspended from school service after some time because of socialist agitation. He was a member of the Cologne Socialist Workers' Party . Another teaching activity in 1933 at the Regino-Gymnasium in Prüm / Eifel ended after a year with a suspension. Nebel traveled to Egypt, worked there as a private tutor, became a teacher in Cologne, around 1937 a high school teacher in Opladen and made a trip to East Africa in 1938/1939. In addition to essayistic reflections on Ernst Jünger, he processed his experiences there in his first book Fire and Water (1939).

War years and publications

After being drafted into the Air Force, Nebel came to Paris as an interpreter in 1941, where he met Ernst Jünger in the "Georgs-Runde" . He was denounced because of an essay in which he compared the warplanes with insects and was transferred to the Channel Island of Alderney as a construction soldier . After the end of the war he published three war diaries (for which he received the Art Prize of the City of Wuppertal in 1950 , where he lived for ten years) as well as the essay volumes From the Elements and Tyrannis and Freedom , in which he dealt with his own behavior and that of the Germans during the Nazi regime -Time grappled.

Post-war years, character and active literary work

Nebel had to leave school in 1955 for health reasons and lived as a freelance writer in southern Germany until his death. He was friends with Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt and Erhart Kästner and had an intensive correspondence with numerous personalities, for example with Friedrich Georg Jünger and Werner Helwig . He traveled a lot and wrote travel books and articles for the FAZ , Neue Deutsche Hefte , Scheidewege as well as for Merian and Christ and Welt . His last book Hamann was published in 1973.

Nebel was a difficult person. For Heinrich Böll , who saw him on his behalf as a German teacher, Nebel was “a mixture of the highest level of sensitivity with a certain roughness, something stupid, amiable and bear-like”. Nebel changed his convictions several times, he was a social democrat, later a Marxist, nihilist , atheist, reactionary and finally, after the Second World War, a seeker of God and a very stubborn conservative. He was quick-tempered, could be polemical and unobjective, sometimes offensive, and was always a zealous fundamentalist in all his convictions, which is why he fell out with almost everyone.

Gerhard Nebel and Ernst Jünger

The reading of Ernst Jünger's books had a great influence on Nebel, through him he felt called to write and he also dedicated his first writings to him. He interpreted his work in Adventure of the Spirit (1949). He corresponded intensively with Jünger and there was a lively intellectual exchange, which was suddenly interrupted when Nebel criticized Jünger's book Heliopolis (1949). It wasn't until 1960 that the two reconciled. In the opinion of the literary critic Sebastian Kleinschmidt, Jünger's correspondence with Nebel, published in 2003, is the most substantial compared to the numerous other correspondence that Jünger conducted.

Gerhard Nebel and his relation to antiquity

As a classical philologist, Nebel dealt intensively with Greek intellectual history. In his reinterpretation of Greek culture, he did not use any scientific methods, but instead relied on experiencing a work in order to understand it. He published his insights and the philosophy he developed from them in many essay publications, for example in Pindar und die Delphik (1961). In the last years of his life he tried to interpret myths, tragedies and philosophy of antiquity on the basis of the Protestant Christian faith. In his book Weltangst und Götterzorn (1951) he claimed: "Christian faith and Hellenic tragedy are identical."

The work of Nebel from today's perspective

Gerhard Nebel had already been forgotten when several new publications drew attention to him between 2001 and 2004: a collection of essays, a biography, an autobiography and above all his correspondence with Ernst Jünger, which was extensively discussed in all national newspapers. Jünger had written to him on December 17, 1947: “Your prose has something certain and solid about it, also something robust, which the writers may find quite uncomfortable. You can tell that a free spirit enters the arena ” . Nebel also showed this “free spirit” in his travel books, which are very idiosyncratic, lively, intelligent, but today seem alienatingly conservative (this is how he praised the then government of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar in Portuguese days ). The collection of essays compiled by Gerald Zschorsch shows Nebel as an independent observer and loner of his time. In summary, Nebel sees people as necessary failures.

Works

  • Fire and water . Hamburg 1939.
  • From the spirit of the savannah . Hamburg 1941.
  • From the elements. Essays . Marées, Wuppertal 1947.
  • Tyranny and freedom . Three owls, Düsseldorf 1947.
  • At the northern Hesperides. Diary from 1942 . Marées, Wuppertal 1948.
  • Ernst Jünger and the fate of man . Marées, Wuppertal 1948.
  • Ernst Jünger. Adventure of the Spirit . Marées, Wuppertal 1949.
  • On Ausonian soil. Italian diary 1943/44 . Marées, Wuppertal 1949.
  • Among partisans and crusaders . Klett, Stuttgart 1950.
  • Fear of the world and anger of gods. An interpretation of the Greek tragedy . Klett, Stuttgart 1951.
  • The trip to Tuggurt . Klett, Stuttgart 1952.
  • The event of beauty . Klett, Stuttgart 1953.
  • Phaean Islands. A trip to the Canarian archipelago . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1954 (3rd edition 1987, ISBN 3-608-95495-3 ).
  • Fire and water. East African images and memories . Stuttgart 1955.
  • The distress of the gods. World and myth of the Teutons. Hoffmann and Campe . Hamburg 1957.
  • On the pillars of Heracles. Andalusian and Moroccan encounters . Klett, Hamburg 1957.
  • Homer . Klett, Stuttgart 1959.
  • Pindar and the Delphic . Klett, Stuttgart 1961.
  • Places and festivals. Between Elm and Esterel . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1962.
  • Behind the forest. 16 lessons for contemporaries . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1964.
  • Time and times . Klett, Stuttgart 1965.
  • Portuguese days . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1966.
  • The birth of philosophy . Klett, Stuttgart 1967.
  • Sea-born land. Greek travel . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1968.
  • Socrates . Klett, Stuttgart 1969.
  • Jump from the tiger's back . Klett, Stuttgart 1970.
  • Hamann . Klett, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-12-906060-X .
  • Pain of missing. Essays . Selected by Gerald Zschorsch. With an afterword by Sebastian Kleinschmidt. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-608-93458-8 .
  • "All feeling is physical". A piece of autobiography , ed. Nicolai Riedel. With an essay by Martin Mosebach. German Schiller Society, Marbach 2003, ISBN 3-933679-91-5 .
  • Ernst Jünger, Gerhard Nebel: Letters (1938–1974) , ed. Ulrich Fröschle and Michael Neumann. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-608-93626-2 .
  • Between the lines. War Diaries 1942–1945 . Editor: Michael Zeller , wjs, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-937989-69-3 .

literature

  • Franz Lennartz: Gerhard Nebel . In: German writers of the 20th century in the mirror of criticism . Volume 2. Kröner , Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-520-82101-X , pp. 1273-1276.
  • Lutz Hagestedt: Janus head, enchanter and epigone. The essayist Gerhard Nebel in a selection of his essays . In: literaturkritik.de . No. 1, January 2001.
  • Erik Lehnert:  Gerhard Nebel. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 22, Bautz, Nordhausen 2003, ISBN 3-88309-133-2 , Sp. 887-890.
  • Hans Dieter Haller: Gerhard Nebel (1903 to 1974) in: Pegasus in the country - writers in Hohenlohe , Baier, Crailsheim 2006, pp. 94–99, ISBN 978-3-929233-62-9 .
  • François Poncet (Ed.): Gerhard Nebel. "A huge mockery of the zeitgeist". Fink, Munich 2013. ISBN 978-3-7705-5287-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joseph Breitbach: Koblenz, in: Ders .:. Feature sections. Edited by Wolfgang Mettmann, Pfullingen 1978, pp. 199–216, here p. 204.
  2. ^ Gerhard Nebel: Places and Festivals, 23.
  3. ^ Gerhard Nebel: Places and Festivals, 24.
  4. ^ Estate in the German Literature Archive Marbach ( Memento from October 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ Gunther Nickel: "Strategist in the background. Ernst Jünger's correspondence with Gerhard Nebel". In: literaturkritik.de . No. 11 November 2003
  6. ↑ Rolf Vollmann: "Metaphysics begins with the beetles. Ernst Jünger read again - for correspondence with Gerhard Nebel". In: DIE ZEIT of November 27, 2003
  7. ↑ Ulrich Fröschle and Michael Neumann (eds.): Ernst Jünger / Gerhard Nebel: Briefe (1938-1974) . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003. ISBN 3608936262
  8. ↑ Sebastian Kleinschmidt in a book review of the correspondence volume. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 30, 2004
  9. ↑ Fear of the world and anger of the gods. Stuttgart 1951. p. 6.
  10. ↑ Quoted from: Ernst Jünger / Gerhard Nebel: Briefe (1938-1974) . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003. ISBN 3608936262
personal data
SURNAME Nebel, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, essayist and cultural critic
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Dessau
DATE OF DEATH 23rd September 1974
Place of death Stuttgart