Gustav Schenk

Gustav Schenk (born September 28, 1905 in Hanover , † May 3, 1969 in Ebersteinburg ) was a German writer and photographer. Already in the time of National Socialism - during which he published over a dozen books - he had a tendency towards popular science literature, but also drew attention to himself through field post letters to his beloved and wife (1943), which "glorified" the war.

life and work

The son of an East Prussian master tailor worked as a casual worker after breaking off an apprenticeship as a bookseller, and was also active in the Hanoverian New Objectivity art scene. Together with Grethe Jürgens , Gerta Overbeck , Erich Wegner and Ernst Thoms , Schenk produced the magazine Der Wachsbogen , which appeared twelve times from 1931 to 1932, using matrix printing . At times Schenk, who enjoyed a reputation as a "brilliant primitive", lived in a moor hut in Engelbostel near Hanover. First engaged to Jürgens, he married Gerta Overbeck in 1937. A common child Frauke Schenk (later Schenk-Slemensek) had already been born. The marriage was divorced again in 1940.

In 1930 Schenk came to Worpswede , "where he is said to have stayed away from the art scene." His son Johannes Schenk grew up here . In 1933 Schenk stayed in Italy, on the Gulf of Salerno . His book The Place of the Twelve Winds , published in 1939, was the fruit of this . Before 1933, Schenk was temporarily a member of the KPD and the BPRS . In 1936, as the head of its Hanover branch, he had problems with the Gestapo . "In July 1940 he was posted from a land rifle battalion in Celle to the Propaganda Replacement Department in Berlin / Potsdam and from there transferred to the reporting squad with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army." At the end of 1940 he was sent to Norway and in 1941 to Belarus. The field post letters were created from his impressions . Apparently, Schenk had meanwhile turned away from his communist ideals. Now he saw the soldiers as “heroes of our time, ... strong people with iron hearts.” Schenk had always been fascinated by the raging of the “elemental forces”. “As for Ernst Jünger , one of these elemental forces for Schenk was the war, in which the elemental naturally forced its way. For him it was not a sociological-political event, but a cosmic-biological one. ”However, Schenk kept the tangible horror of the German campaigns, including the corpses of German soldiers, almost completely out of his field post letters.

According to Krogmann, Schenk emerged from a “ denazification process ” in 1946 without a crime. He now settled near Baden-Baden . His non-fiction books, which appeared in rapid succession until Schenk's death in 1969, show wide-ranging interests of a scientific and philosophical nature. Schenk's estate has been in the Hanover City Archives since 2003. Some of the photographs taken by Schenk are said to have entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art . There has been a path named after Schenk in Hannover Linden-Süd since 1986.

Works

• Pagel im Glück , Roman, Bremen 1934
• The passionate game. Chess letters to a friend , Hanover 1936
• Aron or the tropical fire. In: Archives of Pharmacy. 275, 1937, p. 278, doi : 10.1002 / ardp.19372750412 .
• A house book for the puppet show . Play school and games for hand puppets , Berlin 1937
• The untamable. From the rule of the animals , Hanover 1937
• Shadow of the night. The power of poison in the world , Stuttgart 1939
• Streets of Restlessness , Roman, Hanover 1939
• The place of the twelve winds , Berlin 1940
• The Vermouth Island. A seal from the small life of a Hallig , Berlin 1940
• Documents of a love , narrative, Hanover 1940
• From the river of the world , Berlin 1940
• The wonderful life , Roman, Berlin 1942
• Field post letters to the mistress and wife , Hanover 1943
• Dream and deed. Records from two decades , Hanover 1943
• Fruit and Seed , Hanover 1947
• From the dew of the sun , Hanover 1947
• Made of living ore. The miracle of cars , Hanover 1952
• Faces from Worpswede , Bremen 1953
• The book of poisons , Berlin 1954
• Creation from the drop of water , Berlin 1954
• Before the threshold of the last things. On the latest research and findings in chemistry and physics , Berlin 1955
• Burning Steppe , youth book, Munich 1955
• And the earth was desolate and empty. Novel about the origin and development of life , Stuttgart 1957
• Purwin the beggar. Dreams and memories of a traveler , shaped autobiographically, Hamburg 1958
• Panic - delusion - obsession. The rampant crowd yesterday and today , Stuttgart 1958
• God Earth - Creator and Destroyer , Baden-Baden 1958
• She was there. The history of the postage stamp , Gütersloh 1959
• The Bärlapp dynasty. A plant conquers the earth , Berlin 1960
• The human being. Yesterday, today, tomorrow , Stuttgart 1961
• The earth. Our planet in space , Stuttgart 1962
• The basics of the 21st century. On the future of the technical world , Berlin 1963
• The invisible universe. Presentation and documentation of nuclear physics , Berlin 1964
• In the beginning there was paradise. A history of humanity , Berlin 1967

literature

• Ferdinand Krogmann : Gustav Schenk , in: Strohmeyer / Artinger / Krogmann: Landscape, Light and Low German Myth. The Worpsweder Art and National Socialism , Weimar 2000, pages 250-252

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ferdinand Krogmann, Weimar 2000, see bibliography
2. ↑ Heike Scholz: At the edge of the field of vision. Grethe Jürgens - an artist of the twenties in Hanover , dissertation at the Philipps University Marburg 1999, page 114.
3. ↑ Heike Scholz: At the edge of the field of vision. Grethe Jürgens - an artist of the twenties in Hanover. Dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg 1999, page 111.
4. ↑ Quotes and information in this paragraph from: Krogmann, Weimar 2000
5. ^ Gustav-Schenk-Weg , accessed on February 7, 2012
6. ↑ Brief review Spiegel, February 25, 1959 , accessed on February 7, 2012

Web links

• Literature by and about Gustav Schenk in the archive of the DNB