Hanns Heinz Ewers

Hanns Heinz Ewers, around 1907. Photo by Rudolf Dührkoop and Minya Diez-Dührkoop

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HH Ewers

Hanns Heinz Ewers (born November 3, 1871 in Düsseldorf , † June 12, 1943 in Berlin ; born Hans Heinrich Ewers ) was a German writer , filmmaker , globetrotter and cabaret artist . Ewers' stories revolve around the themes of fantasy , eroticism , art or artists and trips to exotic countries. His sometimes extremely drastic representations made him a scandal-ridden bestseller author , at the same time he had to defend himself again and again against the accusation that his works were trivial , immoral or pornographic .

In his extremely eventful life, Ewers also took contradicting positions. He campaigned for equal rights for Jews , but joined the NSDAP in 1931 and was involved in its propaganda work . In 1934 he was given a general publication ban.

biography

Childhood and youth

Hanns Heinz Ewers at the age of 4

Hanns Heinz Ewers came from an artistic family. His father, Heinz Ewers , was court painter to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin , his mother, Maria Ewers, born in Weerth , invented fairy tales together with the young Ewers. She also worked as a translator from French (including Frédéric Boutet and Claude Farrère ).

The Ewers family, his grandmother Maria aus'm Weerth and his two years younger brother Ernst Gustav , who later joined the Imperial Navy and became Rear Admiral of the Provisional Imperial Navy in 1920, lived in their own house at Immermannstraße 22 In Dusseldorf. Ewers is said to have been a shy, dreamy child with a pronounced love of animals and a tendency to defiance - qualities that Ewers also gave his later novelist Frank Braun.

Ewers attended pre-school and the royal high school in Düsseldorf . The boy quickly came into conflict with the Wilhelmine education system. Especially in math he got bad grades home. On the other hand, he was good at languages ​​and at essay writing. Until his death, Ewers could no longer shed an aversion to school and teachers.

At the age of 17 Hanns Heinz Ewers began to write poetry. His first poem, an homage to the recently deceased Emperor Friedrich III. , further homage to prominent representatives of the German Empire followed . Another subject he wrote about was love . The young Ewers fell in love quickly and wrote glowing love poems for his loved ones, but also glowing poems of jealousy when he was turned away again. The most important poetic model for Ewers was Heinrich Heine, who was also from Düsseldorf . During this time, the desire to become a writer , or at least a businessman , "or something where you can look around the world a bit" also grew in Ewers .

On March 12, 1891, Ewers just passed the Abitur, after which he was drafted as a one-year volunteer for military service. He joined the Kaiser Alexander Garde Grenadier Regiment No. 1 in Berlin . For the young man there, the big city nightlife was much more important than the military. After 44 days, he was released from the hospital for myopia .

Study and Corps

Ewers as a Berlin Norman

Ewers enrolled on May 2, 1891 the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin for the subject Law one - as his literary models Heinrich Heine and ETA Hoffmann , both of whom had also studied law.

In November 1892 he enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Bonn . In 1893 he studied for two semesters in Geneva . In 1894 he passed the first state examination in law in Bonn .

Ewers was less interested in studying than in nightlife, which he enjoyed to the full. He joined the Corps Normannia Berlin , where he quickly gained the reputation of a bully. Ewers fought several lengths , from which he emerged with many throws . Especially in his novel Vampire Ewers processed these experiences. However, after an insufficient length, he was expelled from the Normannia in June 1892. In Bonn he joined the Corps Guestphalia , from which he was also dismissed because of insufficient lengths without a ribbon. In 1932 he received the Norman ribbon back. Alemannia Wien awarded him the ribbon on February 9, 1934 .

Legal clerkship

Then Ewers began his legal clerkship in Neuss and Düsseldorf. He neglected jurisprudence and was quickly noticed for his sloppy work. Instead, he dealt with literature, philosophy , occultism and hypnosis . The latter in particular played a role in his later novels and short stories - most clearly in his debut novel The Sorcerer's Apprentice .

Ewers worshiped the Irish dandy and writer Oscar Wilde at the time . His conviction to a prison sentence for fornication (here: homosexuality ) led to a first break with the studied jurisprudence, above all the principle of equality before the law , which Ewers rejected as impossible. For example, in the novella Die Herren Juristen (1905), Ewers wrote:

“What is the disciplinary punishment for a man from universal education, from the perhaps over-refined culture of Oskar [sic!] Wildes? - Whether he was convicted rightly or wrongly, whether the famous paragraph belongs to the Middle Ages or not, is completely irrelevant, what is certain is that this punishment was a thousand times harder for him than for anyone else! "(Pp. 81–82)

Occultism and spiritualism exerted a strong fascination on Ewers, but at the same time he always approached the subject with a critical distance. On December 11th, 1895, for example, he probably blew up a spiritualistic meeting and was then challenged by the angry attendees for breaking their word of honor. The affair resulted in a year and a half legal battle, which was also rumored in the press. In 1897 Ewers was finally sentenced to four weeks' imprisonment at the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress and released from civil service. In his second novel Alraune , Ewers processed memories of his time as a fortress.

Ewers did not take the 2nd state examination. However, he was on November 7, 1898 the University of Leipzig Dr. jur. PhD. Ewers used this title on many occasions for reasons of prestige. Ewers' only child was born in Leipzig - an illegitimate daughter who was placed in a Red Cross nursing home by her mother .

Cabaret, satires, fairy tales, children's books

At this time, Ewers also dealt with the philosophy of Max Stirner , who rejected any authority, denied the existence of universally valid values ​​and interpreted these values ​​as ultimately subjective. Stirner's influence on Ewers cannot be overestimated. His commitment to individualism, formulated in later texts, and his pronounced egocentricity can be traced back to Stirner's philosophy. Ewers initially positioned himself clearly against the Wilhelmine mainstream. His first literary publications appeared in the magazine Der Eigen , one of the first magazines for homosexuals.

During this time, Ernst von Wolhaben became aware of Ewers and invited him to Berlin in 1901 to participate in his planned cabaret Überbrettl - Buntes Theater . Ewers wrote satirical lyrics and recited it with such success on the stage that his texts in Berlin to popular songs were. So he grew into the literary life of Berlin and made the acquaintance of, among others, the free thinker Bruno Wille and the anarchist Erich Mühsam . His first books, collections of his cabaret texts, appeared under his own name and became bestsellers. In 1901 Ewers was promoted to artistic director of the Überbrettl . On May 15, 1901, he married the illustrator Caroline Elisabeth Wunderwald (1875–1957), sister of the painter Wilhelm Wunderwald (1870–1937) and cousin of the painter Gustav Wunderwald , with whom he had had a relationship for a long time. Ewers met her in 1895 at the Malkasten artists' association . After the marriage she called herself Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald. From then on she also worked with the Überbrettl and illustrated many of his later books.

Despite his success, Ewers was not happy with his work on cabaret. He wanted to be taken seriously as a poet, but he was not known for his more demanding cabaret texts, but for the rather simple, mimic ones that were easy to depict. This also led to a conflict with Ernst von Wolhaben, which ended with Ewers setting up his own troop. He called his competition Überbrettl. Modern theater in which Ewers moved from pure cabaret to a conventional theater. But the competition from other Überbrettl imitators became too great, so that by 1903 Ewers' Überbrettl was no longer financially worthwhile.

Ewers and his wife withdrew for a year to the Italian island of Capri , which around 1900 was a paradise for the rich and beautiful and for life reformers who indulged in nude bathing here, a little beyond bourgeois morality. Homosexuals were also drawn to the island's liberal atmosphere. Ewers began his work as a travel writer here, writing small travel articles for several German newspapers, which were later included in the volume With My Eyes. Journeys through the Latin World (1909) published.

Ewers wrote a number of art fairy tales on Capri . Back in Berlin, he and Erich Mühsam wrote several children's books in verse under the pseudonym Uncle Franz , which were illustrated by Paul Haase . Also with Mühsam and together with Victor Hadwiger, René Schickele and Dr. Walter Bläsing (a community pseudonym of the authors, as Mühsam writes in his memoir ), Ewers wrote a guide through modern literature with 300 briefly portraits, some of them slightly satirical. This book was reprinted in several editions.

Ewers' marriage to Illna fell into crisis around 1904. Both lived separately from each other - Ewers in Berlin, Illna in Düsseldorf with his mother. The marriage was divorced in 1912. In addition to alcohol, Ewers began to experiment with other drugs - including hashish and mescaline - and to use intoxication as a source of inspiration. Intoxication and art , as an essay is called, soon became two inseparable components in Ewers' work.

Travel before the First World War

Ewers began his extensive travels in 1905. These were mainly financed by feature sections that he wired to newspapers and that later appeared in the two volumes With My Eyes , From Seven Seas and India and Me . These anthologies did not go back to Ewers' initiative, which he expressly pointed out in the forewords to the respective books.

Another important source of income was the Hapag shipping line used by Ewers . He received free travel on the ships, but undertook to positively mention the shipping line in his texts. Ewers complied to the highest degree; especially in Mit mein Augen , but also later in the novel Vampir , feature sections that can be described as surreptitious advertising in the sense of a corporate placement .

Almost all of his later short stories and novels were written on these trips. Ewers named the place of origin of each text after the title - a peculiarity that invited many contemporaries who were critical of Ewers to mockery.

The first trip took Hanns Heinz Ewers and Illna Ewers-Wunderwald to Spain in 1904 , where he was fascinated by the Alhambra - for his essay Edgar Allan Poe (1909), this Arab castle complex provided the narrative framework. However, Ewers' impression of the country was initially extremely negative. Above all, the bullfights and the cruelty to animals he often observed appalled the avowed animal lover Ewers. Ewers also first attested to the Spaniards that they were a cultureless people. Over time, however, Ewers revised this opinion. So he later wrote in From Seven Seas : "I love Spain more and more and more and more!"

In Spain Ewers also found the inspiration for one of his most famous novels, Die Tomatensauce (1905), a drastic depiction of a human cockfight in the mountains of Andalusia . In public lectures, there were repeated fainting attacks in the audience during the tomato sauce . The novella can be described as a forerunner of splatter and gore films because of its graphic representation of violence .

The second trip took the Ewers to Central America in 1906 . During the crossing, Ewers began his first novel The Master , which was published under the title The Sorcerer's Apprentice or The Devil Hunter (1909).

In Central America, the group traveled to Cuba , Mexico and the Caribbean . Ewers was not enthusiastic about Central America. Above all, he saw an inferior copy of European culture there. Haiti seems to have exerted a fascination on Ewers . This is the country he wrote most often about this trip. He was particularly interested in the voodoo cult. He also took part in a voodoo ceremony that likely saw a child sacrificed.

The third trip took Ewers in 1908 for the first time over the equator to the southern hemisphere. Again sponsored by the Hamburg-America Line , the Ewers drove to South America . Ewers drove to Argentina along the coast of Brazil . From Buenos Aires Ewers took a river steamer inland to Asunción in Paraguay . Back in Buenos Aires, the trip went to Rio de Janeiro and then back to Europe.

The feature pages of this trip were also republished in the anthology With my eyes after they had appeared in daily newspapers . The Hamburg-Amerika-Linie was not happy about the advertisement by Ewers, who had written so sharply about Argentina that the Argentine government threatened the company with business reprisals.

Ewers made his fourth trip in 1910 to India , Southeast Asia , China and Australia . This trip was also paid for by Hapag, Norddeutscher Lloyd and Ewers' publisher Georg Müller .

India had an ambivalent fascination for Ewers. On the one hand he was fascinated by the exoticism of the country, the architecture of the Taj Mahal and the immense wealth of the Indian maharajas , on the other hand he was unable to understand Indian culture.

From Colombo the journey continued to Australia, where Ewers visited Adelaide , Perth and Sydney . Australia seemed sobering to Ewers. Travel articles from this continent have not survived. The continuation of the trip to German New Guinea , the Philippines , Hong Kong and probably Shanghai is also poorly documented. Ewers reported in the volume Of Seven Seas that he had been to Singapore , and in his last novel The Most Beautiful Hands of the World (1943) Ewers told of a stay in China.

Director, screenwriter, producer

From 1913 Ewers advocated the still young medium of film. At that time, film and cinema were not yet recognized as an art form, but were viewed as "cheap fun fair for the masses". The German Bioscop GMBH , the first film production company that films with artistic merit produced, completed in 1912 u. a. signed a contract with Ewers and the actor Paul Wegener for future collaboration.

The first collaboration between Ewers and Wegener, the film Der Verführte (1913), was artistically disappointing in the eyes of both, but Der Student von Prag (1913), the second film by Ewers and Wegener, is considered the first art film ever and therefore as a milestone in film history. Ewers wrote the script especially for the film, while Wegener directed it with the Dane Stellan Rye and was production manager in Prague's old town. The story of the student Baldwin, who sells his mirror image, is reminiscent of Adelbert von Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl's miraculous story (1814), ETA Hoffmann's The Story of the Lost Mirror Image (1815) and Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890).

Together with Wegener and Rye, Ewers made several films until the outbreak of World War I , most of which are now considered lost , including Die Eisbraut (1913) based on Ewers' own novella John Hamilton Llewelyn's End (1907), which was censored because of a The nude scene was banned immediately.

Ewers was at the height of his popularity at the time. He even won the only prize of his life - in a male beauty competition. Years later, his opponents cited this award to ridicule Ewers.

In addition, Ewers published the book series Galerie der Phantasten , a series with stories by well-known fantastic authors such as ETA Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Karl Hans Strobl , Oskar Panizza and Alfred Kubin .

Nevertheless, Ewers had financial problems, as the fees of his publisher Georg Müller were poorly paid or not paid at all.

World War One: Propaganda in the United States

His fifth long-distance journey took Ewers to South America in 1914, which he circled. The journey went from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Montevideo in Uruguay , on to Argentina, Tierra del Fuego and through the Strait of Magellan to Chile . There, in Antofagasta , the ship received a telegram with the news of the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne in Sarajevo . Ewers continued through the Panama Canal, which had not yet been officially opened, to Costa Rica and Jamaica and from there on to New York , where he arrived on the day Austria declared war on Serbia .

Ewers was during the First World War in the United States . He justified his decision by saying that it was impossible as a German to travel to Europe by ship without falling into British captivity in view of the political situation . This decision was held against him after his return. Later he told another variant: he had already half crossed the Atlantic when the ship turned back so as not to be intercepted by the British fleet. However, this variant contradicted Ewers' other statements to his mother or in the ( unpublished ) book Yankeeland and in the novel Vampir , in which Ewers dealt with his time in the USA in literary terms.

In the USA Ewers put himself in the service of propaganda for the German Empire. He wrote articles in German and English-language magazines and was sent through the USA by the German “Propaganda Cabinet” to promote Germany with speeches, to collect donations from sympathizers and to take part in debates for Germany. He also seems to have worked underground. There are only a few reliable statements on this; What is certain, however, is that Ewers was involved in a false passport affair in 1915.

Ewers also worked artistically. He reported on a number of films (now lost) for which he wrote the script. Müller-Verlag announced his book Yankeeland about his work for German propaganda, but it never appeared. One of the few surviving works from this period was his collection of German War Songs (1914). Wilhelm II is said to have enthusiastically recited one of the poems, We and the World , to his generals. The emperor then had the poem printed and distributed among the German soldiers. Some of the war songs were also included in some school books.

In the USA Ewers met Aleister Crowley , the later Hitler supporter Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl and his future wife Josefine Bumiller.

Ewers' underground activity did not go unnoticed by American intelligence, and in 1918 he was arrested on suspicion of being involved in an assassination attempt. First he sat in various New York prisons, in July 1918 he was transferred to Fort Oglethorpe in the US state of Georgia . There he spent a year in the so-called millionaire camp for prisoners with relationships. Despite the preferential treatment, Ewers was sick and weakened when he was released. Initially, he was required to report and was prohibited from publishing. Both were canceled in 1920 and he was also given permission to leave the country. On July 3, 1920, Ewers started his journey home. At the beginning of August he came back to Germany after six years.

Ewers' stay in the USA was the great turning point in his life. His career slowly but steadily declined from that point on, and Ewers changed his political mind under the impact of the reprisals and his internment from 1918 to 1919. Before that, Ewers felt connected to the “cultural nation”, belonging to a supranational, cultural elite. During his stay in the USA he turned more and more to a mythical image of Germany. In his third novel, Vampire. A wild novel in tatters and colors (1920), Ewers traced this development using his alter ego Frank Braun.

Twenties: attempts at comeback

After his return, Ewers tried to regain a foothold in Germany, but of the many plans he had - including writing the German-language libretto for a musical - only a few came true. He was criticized from many quarters for staying in the United States during the First World War. The public mood was against Ewers. He was also not doing well financially. With the Georg-Müller-Verlag there were more and more lawsuits in which Ewers sued for retained fees. He first tried to stay afloat with his lectures on India and The Religion of Satan , with which he had already celebrated successes before the First World War. In 1921 he married Josefine Bumiller in Berlin, who had meanwhile arrived in Germany.

In 1920 he published the US-written novel Vampire . On the island of Brioni he completed his last book of short stories, Nachtmahr. Strange Stories (1922). As in Vampire , America is the setting for the action.

Ewers caused a little outcry in the literary scene when he announced that he wanted to finish Friedrich Schiller's novel fragment Der Geisterseher . The collective work (1st part by Friedrich Schiller, 2nd part by Hanns Heinz Ewers) also appeared in 1922. In the afterword of the ghost seer, Ewers complained about his isolation within the cultural scene.

At this time Ewers also turned to Walther Rathenau , then Reich Minister for Reconstruction. Both had met in person around 1911 and were in lively correspondence up to that time. Rathenau corresponded to Ewers' idea of ​​a German-Jewish elite, most detailed in Vampir . He shared his respect for Rathenau with a colleague from his circle of friends at the time, Artur Landsberger .

After Rathenau's murder on June 24, 1922, Ewers was unable to identify with the otherwise unpopular Weimar Republic . Like many Germans, he later placed his hopes in President Paul von Hindenburg .

In 1923, the worst year of the crisis in the Weimar Republic, the Rhineland was occupied by the French and the Ruhr area by the Belgians; Separatists proclaimed the Rhenish Republic , and inflation peaked. The Rhinelander Ewers was particularly appalled by these developments. Democracy became less and less a form of government with which he could identify. His political frustration finally culminated in the novel Reiter in deutscher Nacht (1931), with which he offered himself to the National Socialist movement. In 1925 Ewers wrote a popular science book: Ants (1925). His mother died in 1926.

In 1927 Ewers changed the publisher. Tired of the constant annoyance with the delinquent payments made by Müller-Verlag, he went to Sieben-Rod-Verlag . In addition to a work edition, this brought the travel volume From seven seas. Rides and Adventure (1927) and Ewers' new novel Fundvogel. History of a Change (1928). Its topic is gender reassignment . Ewers also had a film made for the cinema about Fundvogel . With the newly founded company Hanns Heinz Ewers Produktion , he also planned the film adaptation of the novel. But when his partner moved to Buenos Aires with a large part of the money, Ewers had to sell the rights to the script in order to be able to produce the film at all. The story of the film has been completely rewritten. Ewers' comment on the final result: “Never again film!” In 1929 Ewers felt at a low point: his marriage to Josefine was in crisis and he became seriously ill.

Relationship to National Socialism

Turning to National Socialism

In 1929 Ewers read nothing new from Erich Maria Remarque's novel In the West , he was hardly impressed by it. He decided to write a similar novel. However, the topic was not the western front of the First World War, but the German Freikorps , which had made pacts with right-wing forces during the Weimar Republic. As a template for the design of his hero Gerhard Scholz, Ewers chose Paul Schulz , a corps leader of the Black Reichswehr , who in the 1920s had been sentenced to prison in a spectacular trial for a femicide after the First World War in Upper Silesia . The book was published by Cotta in 1932 and opened the way for Ewers to right-wing extremist circles.

At this time Ewers was already a member of the German National People's Party (DNVP), but from around 1930 he increasingly spoke out in favor of a fascist revolution, which he saw coming soon. Accordingly, he became a member of the Society for the Study of Fascism founded by Waldemar Pabst in 1931 . His closer acquaintance now include Ernst Hanfstaengl , knew the Ewers still from New York and now one of the financial backers of Nazi party, and August Wilhelm of Prussia , a son of William II. He also had the first contacts with leading NSDAP members, u. a. the SA leader Ernst Röhm and the later Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels .

Rise and fall as a Nazi propagandist

Ewers started researching his last novel Horst Wessel. A German Destiny (1932). The SA storm leader Horst Wessel , murdered in 1930, was to be turned into a martyr of the National Socialist movement according to Goebbels' plans . Ewers made contact with Wessel's family and comrades from his storm. It can be considered likely that Ewers and Wessel knew each other - both studied law at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, both were in the same student union, the Normannia - Ewers as an old man , Wessel as a corps boy. Wessel also worked as an extra in the second version of the Student from Prague (1926) when filming in Berlin. Ewers directed the film together with Henrik Galeen and is even suspected in Wilfried Kugel's biography as a possible ghostwriter of the text of the Horst Wessel song .

Ewers was not happy working on the Horst Wessel novel. On the one hand, he wanted to stay as close as possible to the truth, on the other hand, the NSDAP and the Wessel family kept demanding changes, especially with regard to the relationship with Wessel's fiancé, a former prostitute. In the end, no one was really happy with the finished novel: Ewers wasn't, because he saw his artistic freedom restricted. Neither did the party, as the book did not fit into the party's political concept. The political opponent was denigrated, but the book lacked the desired anti-Semitic agitation.

At the same time, Ewers' opponents formed within the Nazi power apparatus under the leadership of Alfred Rosenberg . Especially Ewers' earlier novels were accused; they are immoral and too revealing. Until 1934, however, Ewers was still firmly in the saddle, as he held a secure position within the Nazi propaganda. In 1933 he also shot a film adaptation of Horst Wessel . However, after a closed preview, Goebbels imposed a ban on showing due to artistic deficiencies. However, after a few cuts and re-shooting of individual scenes, the film came out under the title Hans Westmar. One of many. A German fate from 1929 1933.

Ewers' star fell with the so-called Röhm Putsch on June 30, 1934. Ewers is also said to have been on the SS liquidation list . The street riots in Horst Wessel were no longer opportune in propaganda for the NSDAP, which had ruled since the previous year. Ironically, Horst Wessel was the first to be banned from Ewers' books, then Fundvogel and Alraune . Finally, in the same year, all of Ewers' works were placed on a prohibited list, with the exception of Reiter in German Night .

Turning away from the regime

With the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the disenfranchisement of German Jews was complete. Ewers supported his Jewish friends by getting them exit visas to the USA or Great Britain. In 1938 Ewers put together his estate , which is now kept in the Heinrich Heine Institute in Düsseldorf.

With endless submissions, Ewers succeeded in lifting the publication ban. Together with Zinnen-Verlag, Ewers planned to publish two volumes of stories: The Most Beautiful Hands in the World appeared shortly after Ewers' death in 1943, The White Wolf did not get beyond the planning. In addition to what has already been published, The Most Beautiful Hands in the World also contained three new texts, the eponymous travel novel and the two satires on National Socialism We Catch Fish and The Earthworm Club .

In 1943 Ewers was in bad health and weakened by professional and personal crises. He died on June 12, 1943 in his Berlin apartment. His ashes were buried on October 15 of the same year in the Düsseldorf North Cemetery.

Works

• with Theodor Etzel: book of fables. Langen, Munich 1901.
• Singwald. Fairy tale. EA Seemann, Leipzig 1901.
• Highly embarrassing stories. Seemann, Leipzig 1902.
• The sold grandmother. Fairy tale, sailor, Leipzig 1903.
• with Erich Mühsam : Billy's path to earth. An elephant story for good children. Fairy tale. Globus, 1904; New edition: Faber & Faber, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936618-63-1 .
• The Cabaret , Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin / Leipzig 1904.
• Edgar Allan Poe. Schuster & Löffler, Berlin / Leipzig 1905.
• The gorse witch and other summer fairy tales. Illustrated by Paul Horst-Schulze. Schalscha-Ehrenfeld, Leipzig 1905.
• with Victor Hadwiger , Erich Mühsam and others: Guide through modern literature. 300 honors of the most outstanding writers of our time. Globus, 1906; Corrected and commented reprint: Revonnah, Hannover 2005, ISBN 3-934818-23-4 .
• The horror. Strange stories. Stories. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1907.
• With my eyes ... trips through the Latin world. Konrad W. Mecklenburg formerly Richter'scher Verlag, Berlin 1908.
• The possessed. Strange stories. Stories, Georg Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1908. (Includes the story The Spider )
• with Hermann Bahr , Otto Julius Bierbaum , Otto Ernst , Herbert Eulenberg , Gustav Falke , Georg Hirschfeld , Felix Hollaender , Gustav Meyrink , Gabriele Reuter , Olga Wohlbrück and Ernst von Wolhaben : The novel of the XII. Novel. Mecklenburg, Berlin 1909.
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice or The Devil Hunter. Novel. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1909; New edition: Mandrake / The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Area, Erftstadt 2005, ISBN 3-89996-505-1 .
• Delphi. Drama in three acts. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1909.
• Wackelsteert the Drake (A funny duck story). (Written anonymously, illustrated by Paul Haase). Weise, Stuttgart 1909.
• Grotesques. G. Müller, Munich 1910.
• The sold grandmother. Fairy tale. Moeser Nachf., Leipzig / Berlin 1910.
• Moganni Nameh. Collected poems. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1910.
• Mandrake. The story of a living being . Novel. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1911; New edition: Mandrake / The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Area, Erftstadt 2005, ISBN 3-89996-505-1 .
• with Marc Henry : Joli Tambour! The French folk song. New life, Berlin 1911.
• India and me. With 54 photos on boards. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1911.
• with Marc Henry : The dead eyes . Stage poetry (opera). Music (1912/1913): Eugen d'Albert . Premiere 1916.
• The miracle girl of Berlin. Drama in four acts. G. Müller, Munich 1913.
• German war songs. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1915.
• My funeral and other strange stories. Novellas. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1917.
• The crucified Tannhauser. Extended edition of the grotesques from 1910. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1918.
• The girl from Shalott. Six plays. (Contains: The Girl from Shalott , Trecento , Delphi , The Dead Eyes , The Wonder Girl of Berlin and The Path to Light .) G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1920.
• Vampire. A wild novel in tatters and colors. Novel. G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1921. (also online edition)
• The hearts of kings. With 6 etchings by Stefan Eggeler. Artur Wolf, Vienna 1922. 500 copies, in three editions.
• Nightmare. Novellas, G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1922.
• The ghost seer. After Friedrich Schiller . G. Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1922.
• Meine Mutter / Die Hex. With 6 etchings by Stefan Eggeler, Frisch & Co. Verlag Vienna 1923 / numbered special edition 300 copies.
• Ants. Novel. G. Müller, Munich 1925.
• with Marc Henry : Iva's Tower. Stage poetry (opera). Music (1926): Ernst von Dohnányi . Premiere 1926.
• The sad story of my drainage. Landsberg'sche Buchhandlung. Berlin 1927.
• From seven seas. Rides and adventures. Seven rods, Berlin 1927.
• Found bird. The story of a change. Novel. Seven rods, Berlin 1928.
• Horsemen in German night. Cotta'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Stuttgart / Berlin 1931.
• Horst Wessel. A German fate. Cotta, Stuttgart / Berlin 1932.
• Kilian Menke's change. Story of a strange occurrence. Novel. JL Schrag, Nuremberg 1941.
• The most beautiful hands in the world. Stories in the sun. Zinnen Verlag, Munich / Vienna / Leipzig 1943.

New issues after 1945 (selection)

• Tales of horror. Choice of four stories. Herbig, Munich / Berlin 1972.
• My funeral. And other grotesques. Contains 14 revised short stories from Ein Fabelbuch (1901), The Crucified Tannhauser (1916) and Grotesques (1929). With an afterword by Michael Helming . Wunderkammer, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-1-49474039-9 .
• The Chinese crucifixion. And other horror stories. (Contains: The Spider , The Tomato Sauce , The Last Will of Stanislawa d'Asp , The Tophar Bride, etc.) With an afterword by Axel Weiß. Wunderkammer, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-1-49493857-4 .
• Cheeky fairy and funny bad king. Fairy tale. Edited by Sven Brömsel. 2014, ISBN 978-3-94399917-4 .
• Lust murder of a turtle. And more stories. Edited and edited by Marcus Born and Sven Brömsel. The other library , Volume 356, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-84770356-3 .
• Mandrake. The story of a living being. Omnium-Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-942378-66-6 .
• Hanns Heinz Ewers, Leonard Langheinrich Anthos: The student from Prague. With the original exposé from 1913. Media Net-Edition, Kassel 2015, ISBN 978-3-939988-30-4 . (= Films to read. 3).

literature

Monographs

• Ulrike Brandenburg: Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943). From the turn of the century to the Third Reich - short stories, dramas, novels 1903–1932. From the genesis of the arioheros from the retort: ​​the development of a "German imperial utopia". Studies on German and European literature of the 19th and 20th centuries (Volume 48). [At the same time dissertation, University of Mainz 2002.] Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / Brussels / New York / Oxford / Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-631-39785-2 .
• Timo Kozlowski: When Nazis stroll around the world and write. About the proximity between artists and National Socialism. Shown using the example of Hanns Heinz Ewers. In: The bridge. Journal for German Studies in Southeast Asia. Issue 5, 2004 ( online on the author's website )
• Heike Jestram: Myths, Monsters and Machines. The artificial human in the film. (= Film studies, 7). Teiresias, Cologne 2000.
• Reinhold Keiner: Hanns Heinz Ewers and the Fantastic Film. (= Studies on film history, 4). Olms Hildesheim 1988. Updated new edition: Media Net-Edition, Kassel 2012, ISBN 978-3-939988-20-5 .
• Wilfried Kugel : The irresponsible one. The life of Hanns Heinz Ewers. Grupello, Düsseldorf 1992.
• Verna Schuetz: The bizarre literature of Hanns Heinz Ewers, Alfred Kubin, Gustav Meyrink, and Karl Hans Strobl. Madison WI, Univ. Diss. 1974
• Hans Krüger-Welf: Hanns Heinz Ewers. The story of its development. Wunderlich, Leipzig 1922.
• Barry Murnane, Rainer Godel (eds.): Between popularization and aestheticization. Hanns Heinz Ewers and the modern age. (= Modern Studies, Volume 16), Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8498-1014-6 .
• Clemens Ruthner: Eerie return. Interpretations of the ghostly fictional characters by Ewers, Meyrink, Soyka, Spunda and Strobl. (= Studies on fantastic literature, 10). Corian, Meitingen 1993.
• Heike Westram, Hanns Heinz Ewers' Alraune: “A phantom, a shadowy thing”. Femininity images and artist fantasies. Mag.-Work. Munich 2000.

Essays

• Christoph Amberger: Poetry and Propaganda - Hanns Heinz Ewers in New York 1914-1918. Einst und Jetzt , 40 (1995), pp. 135-148.
• Reinhold Keiner: “The deed that he did not want to commit was committed by the other.” Thoughts on Hanns Heinz Ewers and his film and short story “The Student of Prague”. In: Hanns Heinz Ewers, Leonard Langheinrich Anthos: The student from Prague. with original synopsis from 1913. Media Net-Edition, Kassel 2015, ISBN 978-3-939988-30-4 . (= Films to read. 3). Pp. 7-18.
• Bernd Kortländer: From 'Students from Prague' to 'Horst Wessel' - Hanns Heinz Ewers and the film. In: Ute Wiegand (Hrsg.): Düsseldorf cinematographisch. Contributions to film history. Triltsch, Düsseldorf 1982, pp. 137-148.
• Michael Matzigkeit: Hanns Heinz Ewers - Mandrake in a brown shirt? In: Michael Matzigkeit: literature on the move. Writer and theater in Düsseldorf 1900–1933. Goethe-Buchhandlung, Düsseldorf 1990, pp. 83-107; 283-288.
• Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 , pages 219-224
• Gerhart Werner: An enfant terrible of Düsseldorf. Hanns Heinz Ewers in memory. In: Contributions to the history of the Lower Rhine. Düsseldorf yearbook . Volume 57/58, 1980, p. 431.
• Dieter Wurdak: One who went out to teach the creeps: Hanns Heinz Ewers. In: Clams. Annual journal for literature and graphics . No. 38. Viersen 1999. 137-148. ISSN  0085-3593

Entries in biographical reference works

• Karl Richter:  Ewers, Hanns Heinz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 697 f. ( Digitized version ).

Parodies

• Ewers. A guaranteed neglected junk novel in rags, tatters, antics and underpants by Hanns Heinz Vampir. A parody by Hans Reimann . Hanover 1921.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Diary, p. 29; quoted after Kugel 1992, p. 24.
2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 5 , 255; 130 , 221.
3. ^ Clemens-Peter Bösken: Tatort Düsseldorf. 100 years of crime. 3rd edition, Grupello Verlag, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-89978-019-1 , p. 11 ff. ( PDF )

Web links

Wikisource: Hanns Heinz Ewers  - Sources and full texts

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

• Literature by and about Hanns Heinz Ewers in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Hanns Heinz Ewers  in the German Digital Library
• Works by Hanns Heinz Ewers in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Works by and about Hanns Heinz Ewers at Open Library
• Article Ewers, Hanns Heinz in: Franz Brümmer : Lexicon of German poets and prose writers from the 19th century to the present . Leipzig 1913, Vol. 2, pp. 174f.
• Hanns-Heinz-Ewers-Society
• 96-page essay by Ewers on Edgar Allan Poe (1906)