Hans Flesch

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Hans Flesch (around 1929)

Johannes Georg Julius Jacob Flesch , called Hans Flesch (born December 18, 1896 in Frankfurt am Main ; missing in April 1945 ; declared dead on December 31, 1945) was a German radio pioneer and doctor . He has made a name for himself as director and radio play author. So he wrote the first German-language radio play with magic on the station .

from right: Kurt Magnus , Hans Flesch , Heinrich Giesecke , Alfred Braun , Friedrich Ebert junior and Ernst Heilmann as prisoners in the Oranienburg concentration camp , August 1933

Life

Hans Flesch was born in Frankfurt am Main as the youngest child of the lawyer, politician and social reformer Karl Flesch . His brothers were Max Flesch-Thebesius and Jacob Flesch . In 1915 he volunteered for the medical service and returned to Frankfurt seriously injured in 1918. He studied medicine in Heidelberg (with a focus on radiology ) and for some time attended Carl Ebert's drama school in Frankfurt am Main. In 1920 he married Gabriele "Medi" Rottenberg, one of the two daughters of the Frankfurt opera conductor Ludwig Rottenberg . From this marriage the two children Ilse-Margot "Wuma" (born August 26, 1920) and Hans Karl Wilhelm (born May 4, 1924) emerged.

After his doctorate in medicine, Hans Flesch was appointed artistic director of Südwestdeutsche Rundfunkdienst AG (SÜWRAG) in Frankfurt am Main on April 1, 1924 ; his assistant was Ernst Schoen . In search of an original broadcast art form, he wrote Zaubererei on the transmitter , the first German-language radio play. It playfully anticipates the assembly technique of the tape, which is not technically possible at this point in time. The magic on the transmitter was by no means just the gimmick that contemporaries and radio historians often called it. What is striking is the very conservative attitude of the artistic broadcasting director, “Herr Doktor” in the play, which in no way corresponded to Flesch's actual positions. His innovative and experimental intentions (technical magic) with the new medium are instead expressed in the figure of the magician. The radio play, broadcast live on October 24, 1924, is not only a formal "attempt", but also a programmatic announcement by the 27-year-old radio director.

Hans Flesch quickly implemented his ideas and was soon considered to be the most progressive German radio director. Bertolt Brecht , Walter Benjamin , the young Theodor W. Adorno and Flesch's friend and brother-in-law Paul Hindemith worked for the Frankfurt broadcaster under his direction . As the successor to the artistically conservative theater director Carl Hagemann , Flesch was appointed director of the Funk-Hour Berlin in June 1929 , where he did his radio work a. a. with the film and radio play pioneer Walter Ruttmann . Under Flesch's aegis, a number of serious radio play productions were realized at Funk-Hour from 1929 onwards. "Like no other, Hans Flesch campaigned early on against pure live radio plays and for the use of tapes in radio play production."

As part of a "broadcast reform" under Chancellor Franz von Papen , NSDAP member Erich Scholz was appointed broadcast commissioner to the Reich Minister of the Interior . Hans Flesch, as a representative of a modern and unconditionally democratic radio, had long been hostile to the political right and especially to the National Socialist Richard Kolb , was dismissed on August 15, 1932 as director of the radio hour. From February 1933 Kolb officiated there as his successor. A few months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich, Flesch was imprisoned with other representatives of the Weimar Radio in August 1933, initially in the Oranienburg concentration camp and later in the Moabit prison (pre-trial detention).

In November 1934, Flesch had meanwhile been released on bail, the " Reichs-Rundfunk-Trial " began, an 86-day show trial initiated by the new Nazi Reich broadcasting director Eugen Hadamovsky against some of the leaders of the "Systemrundfunks". However, the trial ended with minor prison sentences, which had already been served during the pre-trial detention period, since the accused could not be proven guilty even under dubious legal conditions. A later appeal at the Reichsgericht was prevented by Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry in 1938 because acquittals were likely. After the end of the radio process in 1935, the so-called " half-Jew " Hans Flesch was not allowed to work as an artist or as a doctor. His wife Gabriele had to support the family with secretarial work. Flesch lived temporarily with friends in Frankfurt, after their emigration returned to his family in Berlin in November 1938 and got by with odd jobs.

From 1943 onwards, Hans Flesch was forced to act as substitutes for doctors in the military. So he came to Crossen an der Oder , where he managed two medical practices. At the end of January 1945, the civilian population of Crossen was evacuated and the Red Army marched on Berlin. Hans Flesch, World War I volunteer , saw the misery of wounded soldiers. Instead of bringing himself to Berlin as a civilian in relative safety, he turned to the Wehrmacht and set up a military hospital in the "Hindenburg School" in Crossen. As a "civilian doctor in the Wehrmacht" with the rank of battalion doctor, he headed this hospital and went with the German troops retreating behind the Oder towards Guben . In March 1945 Flesch was transferred to the Volkssturm as a doctor ; on April 1, 1945, between Guben and Berlin, he wrote the last letter he received, in which he mentioned an imminent deployment to the front, and called again a few days later. Since then, Hans Flesch has been considered lost.

In the summer of 1945, the British and later the Americans looked for Hans Flesch in occupied Berlin. The American army had the intention of founding a new radio station in its sector, the later RIAS . Hans Flesch should have been his first director.

On the night of October 23-24, 2004 - 80 years after the first broadcast of the magic on the station - "A magician on the station - the long night of radio pioneer Hans Flesch" by Armin H. Flesch and Wolfgang Hagen was broadcast on Deutschlandfunk. For the first time, the three-hour feature also processed the private written estate of Hans Flesch, which had survived unevaluated in the USA and Tahiti.

On the following morning of October 24, 2004, the Hans-Flesch-Platz in downtown Frankfurt am Main, named on the initiative of journalist Armin H. Flesch, was inaugurated. It is located on the site of the former Postgiroamt on Stephanstrasse. In the same place, five floors higher, had been the first studios of the Frankfurt transmitter from 1924 to 1930, in which Hans Flesch's radio career began and the magic on the transmitter was produced. Hans Flesch's son, who lives in New Zealand, the mathematician Dr. Hans Flesch jun., Present.

Radio plays

author

  • 1924: Magic on the transmitter (also direction)
  • 1962: Magic on the transmitter - directed by Theodor Steiner
  • 1963: British Week in Munich; English Guest Sunday: The Stuarts. A dramatic history lesson - Director: Walter Hertner
  • 1974: Magic on the transmitter. New production on the occasion of the Wilhelmsbad productions in 1974 - Director: Ulrich Lauterbach

Director / narrator / translation / commentary

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans Flesch  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Appendix. Five texts by Kurt Weill (PDF; 937 kB). In: Nils Grosch, Joachim Lucchesi , Jürgen Schebera (eds.): Kurt Weill studies. Volume 1. Publications of the Kurt Weill Society Dessau, Springer, Heidelberg 1996, ISBN 978-3-476-45166-8 , pp. 193-200, here: p. 195.
  2. ↑ a b Peter Jelavich: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture. University of California Press, Berkeley 2006, ISBN 978-0-520-25997-3 , pp. 84f.
  3. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Krug
  4. ^ Foreword in: Richard Kolb: Schicksalsstunde des Rundfunks . Brunnen-Verlag Bischoff, Berlin 1932.
personal data
SURNAME Flesch, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German broadcasting pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH between April 1945 and December 31, 1945