Gustav Willscher

Gustav Willscher (born July 2, 1882 in Meltsch , Opava district , Austrian Silesia ; † December 14, 1937 in Vienna ) was an Austrian native poet and composer .

Life

Willscher was the oldest of eleven children and came to the neighboring village of Ratkau with his parents in 1884 . After attending the local elementary school , he completed the lower secondary school and the teacher training institute in the provincial capital of Opava . Willscher was then a teacher in Ostrau and in his hometown Ratkau, became a district assistant teacher for the district administration in Mürzzuschlag ( Styria ), taught in Langenwang , Veith , Rad , Mürzsteg and Allerheiligen in the Mürzstal , met and became the Austrian writer Peter Rosegger (1843-1918) finally in 1906 appointed to the German school in Philippopel in Bulgaria , where he stayed until the end of 1908. Study trips took him to Asia Minor , Palestine and North Africa .

Willscher promoted local musical life in all places of work by founding and leading choral societies. Through Rosegger's mediation, Willscher then entered the service of the German School Association, was a teacher in Sion near Mies (Slovakia) , then in Vienna and finally at the school association elementary school in Zimrowitz near Troppau. During this time he composed and wrote the “Schlesiermarsch”, which he made public for the first time in 1913 in his home town of Ratkau. A year later, in the first days of August 1914, the brass music for the "Silesian March" was created.

1915 Willscher to the "all ones", the kuk Infantry - Regiment . No. 1 ( "Kaiser"), recovered. Out of joy, he dedicated his “Schlesiermarsch” to the regiment, which from then on was always played as the second regimental march alongside the “Trautenauer” (commemorative march of the victory of the “Einser” over the Prussians in 1866 on the Kapellenberg near Trautenau ).

From 1916 to 1918 Willscher was at the front , most recently as first lieutenant , in Italy , Serbia , Montenegro , Romania and Albania and was wounded several times. Then he worked as a teacher again: in Burgenland , in Prague and in Carpathian German communities. In 1929 Willscher worked in the "Association for Germans Abroad", Berlin, where he suffered a hemorrhage during a lecture in 1936 .

On December 14, 1937, Gustav Willscher, the author of numerous poems and stories, folklore studies and an operetta , closed his eyes forever in Vienna. In the last weeks of his earthly existence Willscher, already marked by death, suffered from an irrepressible longing for his homeland, his "green Siles" , which was closed to him because of the political conditions at the time. The poetic expression of the unfulfilled longing for a reunion with home is his

Farewell to d´r Schles´!

Brown the field and brown the forest

if the world is gray, so put us cold.

Ech stand om Barg and saw today

dech, dear Schles´ for the last mole.

It must be so that ech dech lo!

Ford goes my body, my heart leads to it.

It's cloudy my Aag, red from Grenna,

away from d´rhäm it half death.

In 1963 the “Humanitarian Association of Austrians from Silesia in Vienna” created a worthy grave for the poet and composer of the “Silesian March”. Willscher's urn was buried in a grave at the Vienna crematorium that had fallen victim to the year 1952. The Silesian Association had the urn earthen - the old grave site could no longer be renewed - it was buried at a new grave site and a tombstone was erected.

Works

literature

• "Inne do" (poems and stories in Silesian dialect. Published in Prague in 1932)
• "Germany, a contribution to the Carpathian-German settlement history"
• "The School Leader"
• "The school system in the Carpathian-German settlements"
• "Children's scenes"

music

• "Eight songs from the Schles´"
• "Silesian March"
• "The Bass Buried"
• "Song of the Sudeten Germans"
• "The lovely nest (operetta 1929)"

Web links

• Literature by and about Gustav Willscher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library