Hanns Johst

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Hanns Johst in 1933.

Hanns Johst (born July 8, 1890 in Seerhausen , Saxony ; † November 23, 1978 in Ruhpolding ) was a German writer , playwright , National Socialist cultural functionary and since 1935 President of the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK).

Life

Youth, studies and career beginnings

Johst grew up as the son of an elementary school teacher in Oschatz and Leipzig , where he attended the newly built Königin-Carola-Gymnasium from 1902, where he graduated from high school in 1911 . An early career aspiration was to become a missionary . At the age of 17 he worked for a short time as a nurse in the Bodelschwingh'schen Anstalt in Bethel . He then studied medicine , German , philosophy and art history . He broke off his studies at the universities of Leipzig , Munich and Vienna in 1915. In 1914 he published his first drama, the one-act play The Hour of the Dying . As a war volunteer , Johst was released from the army after only two months due to an unspecified illness; he then lived as a freelance writer and assistant director. He married the wealthy Johanna Feder, with whom he moved into a property in Allmannshausen on Lake Starnberg in 1918 .

Development as a playwright and playwright

Johst's early work was created under the spell of Expressionism . Examples are The Beginning (1917) and The King (1920). With the play Der Einsame about the playwright Christian Dietrich Grabbe , Johst achieved his breakthrough as a playwright in 1917. The play already shows ethnic and anti-Semitic elements, which should be consolidated in his novel Kreuzweg and the play Prophets from 1922. Bert Brecht conceived his drama Baal as an artistic exploration and counterpart to the lonely von Johst, whom Brecht described as "terrible expressionism".

Later Johst turned to a more realistic style. During this time, the comedies Wechsler und Händler (1923), The Happy City (1925) and Marmelade (1926), which portray social grievances as a failure of the democratic constitution in Germany, as well as the historical drama Thomas Paine (1927) about the enlightener and founding father of the USA , Thomas Paine .

In the 1920s, Johst became one of the best-known young German dramatists, whom the political right proclaimed for themselves. During this time he was also well acquainted with Thomas Mann , whom he admired. In 1922 Johst terminated this connection because of Mann's commitment to the democratic state. Probably not knowing that Thomas Mann had emigrated to Switzerland, he wrote in October 1933 in a letter to his friend Heinrich Himmler regarding Klaus Mann's activities in exile:

"Since this half-Jew is difficult to cross over to us, so unfortunately we cannot sit him on the chair, I would suggest the hostage procedure in this matter. Couldn't Mr. Thomas Mann, Munich, be imprisoned for his son a little? His production would not suffer from an autumn freshness in Dachau . "

- Quoted in: Düsterberg Hanns Johst 2004, p. 288

The drama "Schlageter"

With his play Schlageter , dedicated to Adolf Hitler , Johst achieved the greatest success of his career as a playwright. The drama, on which he worked from 1929 to 1932, premiered on April 20, 1933 on Hitler's birthday. Schlageter has been played by numerous German theaters in over 1,000 cities. Johst received almost 50,000 Reichsmark royalties for this . The play deals with the free corps fighter Albert Leo Schlageter , who was sentenced to death by a French military tribunal during the occupation of the Ruhr (1923) for having carried out attacks on military transport links. Johst proclaimed him the "first soldier of the Third Reich".

The statement incorrectly attributed to Hermann Göring also comes from the Schlageter : "When I hear culture ... I unlock my Browning" (1st act, 1st scene). Johst's dedication “For Adolf Hitler with loving admiration and unchangeable loyalty” impressed Hitler just as much as the content of the play.

Career in National Socialism and the post-war period

In 1928 Johst joined the Kampfbund for German culture founded by Alfred Rosenberg . In 1932 he became a member of the NSDAP (membership no. 1,352,376). In his 1933 essay Position and Progress, Johst expressly acknowledged Hitler's worldview.

After taking power , Johst played a key role in bringing the poetry section into line at the Prussian Academy of the Arts , in the dissolution of the German PEN Center and in founding the Union of National Writers . He was one of the 88 writers who signed the pledge of loyal allegiance to Adolf Hitler in October 1933 . After the death of Paul von Hindenburg , he was one of the signatories of the call by cultural workers for a referendum on August 19, 1934 on the amalgamation of the Reich Chancellor and Reich President offices in the person of Adolf Hitler. As president of the Reichsschrifttumskammer , a subdivision of the Reichskulturkammer , he headed an institution from 1935, from which the National Socialists expected the "keeping of literature from unsuitable and unreliable elements".

During the National Socialism, Johst held other offices, including a. Chief dramaturge of the Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, President of the Poetry Section at the Prussian Academy of the Arts, President of the Union of National Writers. In January 1934 he was appointed to the Prussian State Council. He joined the SS as member No. 274,576 , skipped all ranks and was immediately promoted to SS-Oberführer on November 9, 1935 because of his position with the staff of the Reichsführer SS . On January 30, 1942, he was appointed SS-Gruppenführer and on November 9, 1944, he was accepted into the staff of the Reichsführer SS.

Johst was a friend and chronicler of Heinrich Himmler . He had accompanied him on inspection trips to Poland in 1939 and early 1940, published a booklet about it and asked for the privilege of accompanying Himmler on important undertakings in the future. In mid-June 1941 Johst was among the participants in a meeting at the Wewelsburg , at which a dozen of the highest SS leaders (including Hans-Adolf Prützmann , Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski and Friedrich Jeckeln ) were prepared for the impending war of extermination. Specifically, there was talk of a “decimation” of the population of the Soviet Union by 30 million people.

In 1944, in the final phase of the Second World War , when defeat was already looming, Johst was exempted from all war obligations through his inclusion in the list of the gifted of God and in the special list of the six most important writers drawn up by Hitler.

After the end of the war, Johst was interned and on July 7, 1949, a Munich court of rulings first classified him as a “ fellow traveler ” in the denazification process . An appeal process ended in 1949 with the classification as the "main culprit" and a three and a half year labor camp sentence (already served). After his release from prison and another denazification process in 1951, he was classified as “incriminated”. In 1955 Johst achieved the repeal of this decision and the termination of the proceedings at the expense of the state treasury. He was practically rehabilitated.

In 1946 all of his works - with the exception of The Beginning - were in the Soviet occupation zone . Roman (1917), The Foreigner (1916), Ave Eva (1932), Songs of Longing. Poems (1924), The young man. Scenario (1916), mother. Poems (1921), mother without death. Encounter (1933), Straw (1916), The Hour of the Dying (1914), Folly of Love. Roman (1931) and Wayward. Poems (1916) - added to the list of literature to be discarded.

Johst could no longer gain a foothold as a writer in the Federal Republic of Germany, but since 1952 he has been writing poems for the Edeka customer magazine Die kluge Hausfrau under the pseudonym "Odemar Oderich" . His attempt to publish a book in 1953, which was completed and revised at the end of 1943, failed. He died on November 23, 1978 in an old people's home in Ruhpolding.

Awards and honors

Alfred Rosenberg presents the NSDAP Prize for Art to Hanns Johst (right)

Works

Novels, short stories, short stories

  • The beginning , 1917
  • The Way of the Cross , 1921
  • Consuela , 1924
  • Consuela. From the diary of a trip to Svalbard , 1925
  • So they go. A novel about the dying nobility. 1930
  • The encounter , 1930
  • The folly of a love , 1931
  • Ave Eva , 1932
  • Mother without death. The encounter , 1933
  • Mask and Face , 1935
  • Blessed Impermanence , 1955

Dramas

  • Hour of the Dying , 1914
  • Straw , 1915
  • The young man , 1916
  • The foreigner , 1916
  • Straw , 1916
  • The lonely one , 1917
  • The King , 1920
  • Prophets , 1922
  • Changer and dealer , 1923
  • The merry city , 1925
  • The Lord Monsieur , 1926
  • Thomas Paine , 1927
  • Schlageter , 1933
  • Fritz Todt. Requiem , 1943

Poetry

  • Away , 1916
  • Rolandsruf , 1918
  • Mother , 1921
  • Songs of Longing , 1924
  • Letters and poems from a trip through Italy and through the desert , 1926

Essays, speeches, propaganda writings, etc. a.

  • Dramatic work , 1922
  • Knowledge and Conscience , 1924
  • I think! Confessions , 1928
  • My earth is called Germany , 1938
  • Call of the Reich, Echo of the People , 1940
  • Hanns Johst speaks to you (collective edition) , 1942
  • Fritz Todt, Requiem , 1943
  • Stories , 1944

literature

  • Christian Adam : Reading under Hitler. Authors, bestsellers, readers in the Third Reich. Galiani, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86971-027-3 , p. 283 ff.
  • Siegfried Casper: Hanns Johst. Langen / Müller, Munich 1940.
  • Rolf Düsterberg : Hanns Johst: The bard of the SS. Careers of a German poet. Schöningh-Verlag, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-71729-4 .
  • Rolf Düsterberg: Hanns Johst - the literary functionary and saga poet. In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-89528-719-0 .
  • Curt Hotzel: Hanns Johst. The way of the poet to the people. Frundsberg, Berlin 1933.
  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , pp. 285-286.
  • Elisabeth Kleemann: Between symbolic rebellion and political revolution. Studies on German Boheme between the Empire and the Weimar Republic - Else Lasker-Schüler, Franziska Countess Reventlow, Frank Wedekind, Ludwig Derleth, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Hanns Johst, Erich Mühsam (= Würzburg University Papers on Modern German Literary History; 6). Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. u. a. 1985, ISBN 3-8204-8049-8 .
  • Helmut F. Pfanner: Hanns Johst. From Expressionism to National Socialism (= Studies in German literature; 17). Mouton, The Hague 1970.
  • Eberhard Rohse: Hanns Johst 1890–1978 . In: Karl-Heinz Habersetzer (ed.): German writers in portraits 6: Expressionism and the Weimar Republic (Beck'sche Schwarze Reihe, 292). Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-406-09292-6 , pp. 86-87.
  • Esther Roßmeißl: Martyr stylization in the literature of the Third Reich. Driesen, Taunusstein 2000, ISBN 3-9807344-1-2 .
  • Klaus Mann caricatured Johst in his novel Mephisto in 1936 in the role of Caesar von Muck.
  • Rolf Düsterberg: “My Reichsführer, dear Heini Himmler!” In: Die Zeit , No. 12/2004.

Web links

Commons : Hanns Johst  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Hauptmann: Alphabetical index of former Carolaner . In: Twenty-five anniversary of the Queen Carola High School in Leipzig in 1927 , Leipzig 1927, p. 26.
  2. ↑ Christian Adam: Reading under Hitler . 2010, p. 284.
  3. ↑ In the sense of the " change of territory " of a game to be killed.
  4. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 285.
  5. ^ Peter Longerich: Heinrich Himmler: Biography. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88680-859-5 , p. 540.
  6. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, licensed edition 2005, p. 289.
  7. ↑ Ernst Piper: Brief history of the NS from 1919 to today . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2007, pp. 279f.
  8. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. In: polunbi.de. Zentralverlag, Berlin, 1946. Transcript letters I and J, pp. 190–203 , accessed on August 31, 2019 .
  9. ^ A b Ernst Klee: The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 286.
  10. ^ Jürgen P. Wallmann: Review of Rolf Düsterberg: Hanns Johst .
  11. ↑ They are types . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1957 ( online review of the novel).
personal data
SURNAME Johst, Hanns
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Or me, Odemar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Volkish playwright and poet and functionary of the NSDAP
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Seerhausen , Saxony
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1978
Place of death Ruhpolding