Gerhard Schumann (writer)

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Gerhard Schumann (born February 14, 1911 in Eßlingen , † July 29, 1995 in Bodman ) was a German writer, effective propagandist of the Nazi era and Nazi cultural functionary. He joined National Socialism early on and received numerous NS honors. With his literary, cultural and general political contributions he contributed to the implementation and maintenance of the Nazi system. In post-war Germany Schumann worked as a publisher.

Life

Weimar and National Socialism

Schumann, son of a teacher, grew up in Künzelsau . He attended the Protestant theological seminars in Schöntal and Urach and joined the youth movement early on. His first poems appeared in various newspapers and magazines from 1928 onwards.

In 1930 he began studying German , history and philosophy in Tübingen , which he broke off. At the beginning of his studies he joined the NSDAP , the SA and the National Socialist German Student Union . Even before the NSDAP and its allies came to power, he was district leader of the NS student union and leader of the student SA in Württemberg with the rank of standard leader. In April 1933 he was appointed by the National Socialist minister of education Christian Mergenthaler as commissioner for the Württemberg student bodies in the ministry of education. In these functions he played a leading role in bringing the Tübingen University into line . In April 1933, he prohibited the universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen from participating in the book burnings carried out by local student bodies, the NS student union and student associations (“Action against the un-German spirit”). This prohibition did not result from content-related, cultural-political or ethical objections or from a respect for the burned “un-German” literature and its authors, but rather from internal Nazi rivalries. The Tübingen student body, subordinate to Schumann, had already taken action in April 1933 in a five-point plan with a five-point plan against the literature defamed, fought and forbidden by National Socialism as “trash and dirty literature”.

Hailed by Nazi literary criticism as one of the most important representatives of the young generation of writers, Schumann quickly made a career as an author and cultural functionary. He was also highly honored. In 1935, together with Georg Schmückle, he was the first recipient of the newly created Swabian Poet's Prize, which was awarded until 1942 . In 1936, in the presence of Hitler , he was awarded the National Book Prize donated by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . In 1935 Joseph Goebbels appointed him to the Reich Cultural Senate . From 1938/39 Schumann headed the writers' group of the Reichsschrifttumskammer . He was also a member of the Bamberg poets' circle that existed from 1936 to 1943 .

After serving in the war in 1939, he became chief dramaturge at the Württemberg State Theater in Stuttgart in 1942 and first president of the Hölderlin Society in 1943 . In 1944 Schumann went to the cultural department of the SS main office . Schumann's last SS rank was that of SS-Obersturmführer.

Described as a " Hitler Youth" after 1945, he saw himself as a "knight on the holy grail of German culture". His poetry, in which the Nazi ideology was implemented with quasi-religious pathos, called for the resurrection of the "Reich" through self-sacrifice and glorified the "Führer", whom he messianically glorified:

One: You are the whole!
Choir: Leader!
One: We are your part!
Choir: Leader!
One: Your work and your kingdom. Victory
all: Heil!

From: We may serve. Poems (1943)

In a volume of poetry published in 1940, the poem Schwur u. a.

The borders darken and threaten.
The weather and lightning flash.
Demons stoke the fire.
But we stand with lofty
hearts and active
hands to the Führer and the country.

After the end of the Nazi regime

In 1945, Schumann was arrested by the military government as a distinguished SS member and taken into internment custody until 1948. In the subsequent denazification process, thanks to several persil notes, for example from the prominent Nazi pioneer and partisan Hans Grimm , and on the grounds that he had rejoined the Protestant Church, he was finally placed in Category IV ("less burdened" / "fellow travelers") classified, which in the western zones, after several years of running through the "Mitläuferfabrik" ( Lutz Niethammer ) in a mitigation process, finally accepted most of the unrelieved.

Many of Schumann's writings were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR as contaminated by the Nazi regime .

Schumann stands for German literary and cultural policy continuities after the end of the Nazi regime: In 1949 he founded the "European Book Club", which soon had around 200,000 members, including the ministers at the time Erhard and Seebohm , but also Martin Niemöller , Erich Ollenhauer and Willy Brandt . He supported a number of old Nazi fellow writers such as Hans Grimm , Hans Friedrich Blunck , Mirko Jelusich , Eberhard Wolfgang Möller , Bruno Brehm and Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer by including their books in the book club's program. The book club went up in 1962/63 in the Bertelsmann group, from which some of the right-wing radical authors were taken over into the Bertelsmann Lesering . In 1962 Schumann founded the right-wing extremist "Hohenstaufen Verlag". Schumann was also active in the Deutsches Kulturwerk Europäische Geistes , an organization that was founded in 1950 by Schumann's former colleague in the "Reichsschrifttumskammer", Herbert Böhme , and functioned as an umbrella organization for right-wing national and right-wing extremist groups.

With the end of National Socialism, Schumann's writing career ended. It was only perceived under the historical heading “Literature in National Socialism” and in the right-wing radical milieu. There he was honored, for example in 1974 with the poet's stone shield of the Dichterstein Offenhausen association , which was banned in 1999 due to National Socialist re- employment , in 1981 with the "Ulrich von Hutten Medal" from the circle of friends of the same name, and in 1983 with the Schiller Prize of the German People of the German Cultural Association of European Spirit.

The poet and Büchner Prize winner Hermann Lenz , who knew Schumann from Künzelsau, Tübingen and Stuttgart, made him a fictional character in his works under the name “Schöllkopf”.

A more recent, detached analysis comes to the conclusion that "his poetry had a propaganda function and contributed to establishing and supporting the National Socialist system of rule."

Fonts

  • The Purity of the Empire (1930)
  • One way leads to the whole. Poems (1932)
  • Flag and star. Poems (1934)
  • The Empire. Drama (1935)
  • The Songs of the Reich (1935)
  • Victorious life. Seals for a Community (1935)
  • But we are the grain. Poems (1936)
  • Decision. Acting (1938)
  • Look and do. Poems (1938)
  • Probation. Poems (1940)
  • The Songs of War (1941)
  • Ring of the Year (1943) (collection with poems glorifying the Third Reich by, among others, Schumann himself, Eberhard Wolfgang Möller , Hanns Johst , Carl Maria Holzapfel , Herbert Böhme )
  • Reputation and calling. Essays and Speeches (1943)
  • We are allowed to serve. Poems (1943)
  • Gudrun's death. Tragedy (1943)
  • Law becomes song (1943)
  • The big test. New Poems (1953)
  • Kind malice. Cheerful and reflective verses (1955)
  • The depth carries. Poems of a Youth (1957)
  • Prickly berry selection. New contemplative and cheerful verses with drawings by Karl Staudinger (1960)
  • Quiet song. Poems (1962)
  • A Christmas Tale (1963)
  • The blessing remains. Poems (1968)
  • Reflection. Of Art and Life (1974) [autobiography]
  • Preservation and Probation. Poems (1976)
  • Spruchbuch (1981)
  • Consolation and Confidence from Poetry and Prose (1991)

Memberships (selection)

literature

  • Gerhard Schumann . In: The little book of poet pictures . Albert Langen / Georg Müller, Munich 1938, p. 49 with photography. (= The small library )
  • Jan Bartels: Gerhard Schumann: The "national socialist". In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-89528-719-0 .
  • Simone Bautz: Gerhard Schumann - biography. Plant. Effect of a prominent National Socialist author. Accepted dissertation Justus Liebig University Gießen 2008, uni-giessen.de (PDF) DNB full text
  • German Literature Lexicon. Biographical-bibliographical manual. Founded by Wilhelm Kosch. Volume 16. A. Francke, Bern 1996, Sp. 648.
  • Manfred Bosch : Gerhard Schumann: "If one of us falls, the next one steps forward silently". In: Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators, helpers, free riders. Volume 5. Nazi victims from the Lake Constance area . Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2016, pp. 219–235. ISBN 978-3-945893-04-3 .
  • Jürgen Hillesheim , Elisabeth Michael (Hrsg.): Lexicon of National Socialist Poets. Biographies, analyzes, bibliographies. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1993, pp. 403-412, ISBN 978-3-88479-511-8 ( excerpts from Google Books ) .
  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Completely revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 .
  • Ernst Loewy: Literature under the swastika. The Third Reich and its poetry . 2nd rev. Edition. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1967, 366 pp.
  • Hans Sarkowicz, Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. A biographical lexicon . Adult new edition. Europa Verlag, Hamburg / Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-203-82030-7 .
  • Albrecht Schöne: On political poetry in the 20th century . 3. Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972.
  • Karl-Heinz J. Schoeps: On the continuity of völkisch-national-conservative literature before, during and after 1945: The case of Gerhard Schumann . In: Monthly Issues for German-Language Literature , 91, 1999, pp. 45–63.
  • Wulf Segebrecht: The Bamberg circle of poets. 1936-1943. Peter Lang, Frankfurt / M. u. a. 1987, ISBN 978-3-8204-0104-2 , pp. 209-218.
  • Marcel Steinbach, Annelies Senf: Cold dreams (Führer's bed reading, IV.) . In: Jungle World , April 18-23, 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Wolfgang Strätz : The student "Action against the un-German spirit" in the spring of 1933. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 16 (4) 1968, p. 559, ifz-muenchen.de (PDF)
  2. ↑ a b Werner Treß, Against the Un-German Spirit: Book Burning 1933 , Berlin 2008, p. 119.
  3. ↑ Quotes: affairs: not just from 33 on . In: Der Spiegel . No. 52 , 1950, pp. 38 ( online ). Marcel Steinbach, Annelies Senf: Coldly dreaming (Führer's bed reading, IV.) ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). In: Jungle World , April 18-23, 2003.
  4. ↑ cit. n. Gerhard Schumann: Ingratitude around . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1959, pp. 73 ( online ). . - His work Gudrun's Death (1943) was also about self-sacrifice. The Lübeck reviewer therefore classified the writer as a representative of "the steel romanticism of our days". See Jörg Fligge: "Beautiful Lübeck theater world." The city theater during the Nazi dictatorship. Lübeck. Schmidt-Römhild, 2018. ISBN 978-3-7950-5244-7 . P. 268; 267f., 575.
  5. ↑ Volker Koop : Poems for Hitler. Evidence of madness and delusion in the “Third Reich” . be.bra verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 190.
  6. ↑ Jan Bartels: Gerhard Schumann - the "national socialist". In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology , Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-89528-719-0 , pp. 284–289.
  7. ^ List of the literature to be sorted out German Administration for Popular Education in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. Zentralverlag, Berlin 1946.
  8. ↑ S. Sarkowicz, Mentzer, p. 59. Stefan Busch: And yesterday, Germany heard us , Würzburg 1998, p. 25f. u. P. 190 A150.
  9. ^ First Esslingen am Neckar , then Bodman-Ludwigshafen , since 1989 Munich. It is a re-establishment: the publishing house appeared as early as 1938–1944 with the address Stuttgart, Uhlandstrasse 20 and published the corresponding Nazi literature, z. B. Hans Friedrich Blunck
  10. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Completely revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 501.
  11. ↑ S. Helmut Hornbogen: Hermann Lenz: And never return ... In: Ders .: Remembrance of beginnings - Tübingen - Vom Gedenken. Conversations with Albrecht Goes and Hermann Lenz. Tübingen 1996, pp. 49-84.
  12. ^ Simone Bautz: Gerhard Schumann - biography. Plant. Effect of a prominent National Socialist author . Dissertation, Justus Liebig University Giessen, 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Schumann, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Esslingen am Neckar
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1995
Place of death Bodman