Hans Kaltneker

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Hans Kaltneker
Poems and dramas. Published by Kaltneker's childhood friend Felix Salten . Paul Zsolnay Verlag , 1925. Cover.

Hans Kaltneker (actually Hans Kaltnecker von Wallkampf ) (born February 2, 1895 in Temesvár , Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary , † September 29, 1919 in Gutenstein ( Lower Austria )) was an Austrian playwright , poet and narrator.

Kaltneker was one of the main representatives of Austrian Expressionism ; he died early of tuberculosis . Felix Salten called it "a flame that flared bright and high, and suddenly went out, swallowed up by eternal darkness."

Life

Aristocratic diploma for Major General Artur Kaltneker, 1914

Hans Kaltneker was born in Temesvár, then in the Hungarian Banat , in 1895 as the son of the Austrian staff officer Artur Kaltneker (ennobled in 1914 as "Kaltnecker von Wallkampf") and came to Vienna with his family in 1906 .

He attended high school in Hietzingen , where he met Hans Flesch-Brunningen and Paul Zsolnay as well as Franz Wiesenthal, the brother of the dancer Grete Wiesenthal and her sisters Elsa and Berta, who founded an independent dance group in 1908 in which they developed a new, non-classical dance style , and whose rise he admired. A later prose sketch, “Die Schwestern Wiesenthal” tells of the pantomime “ The Birthday of the Infanta ” (based on Oscar Wilde 's fairy tale of the same name, music by Franz Schreker ), with which the sisters first appeared in public at the Apollo in Vienna . As a high school student, Kaltneker, together with Flesch-Brunningen and Zsolnay, published the hectographed literary magazine “Das neue Land” with poems and features, and in the magnificent villa of Flesch's aunt Adele von Skoda in Grinzinger Himmelstrasse they performed the lyrical dramas Hugo von Hofmannsthal . Flesch described him:

“He was a tall youth in the Schiller sense. He had beautiful black, shiny hair, a big, sensual mouth and even then there was a suspicious shine in his eyes - I say suspicious because he was already under the sign of his illness, which was soon to arise. "

The climatic health resort of Davos

From 1907 onwards, contact with Viennese theater life became important for Kaltneker's poetic work; he adored Josef Kainz and raved about the young Else Wohlgemuth . Above all, however, his later poems are shaped by his visits to the Vienna Court Opera , where opera was revolutionized at the time under the direction of Gustav Mahler , as well as by the departure of the conventional stage design as a forerunner of the Expressionist style, justified by the set designer Alfred Roller . The performances of Richard Wagner's musical dramas with the idea of ​​salvation made a deep impression on him, especially the “ Parsifal ”. Kaltneker also received many stimuli from Catholicism , in particular from the Christian ideas in the works of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky as well as from the works of Sören Kierkegaard , Leonid Andrejew and German mysticism , especially Meister Eckhart .

In 1910 or 1911 Kaltneker wrote the drama "Herre Tristrant" with the theme of Tristan and Isolde as a high school student . Since 1911, there were increasing signs of pulmonary tuberculosis at Kaltneker . He had to interrupt school, went to the Grimmenstein Sanatorium for a long time and, as a result of his illness, lived in the Swiss climatic health resort of Davos from 1912 , where he wanted to learn and poetry for the Matura. There he met the also tuberculous poet Klabund in 1915 , from whom the sentence comes: “ One would have to write a literary history of consumption addicts, this constitutional disease has the property of mentally changing those afflicted by it. They bear the Cain mark of inward passion. “The acquaintance with Klabund brought Kaltneker into contact with“ the spirit of his generation ”and inspired him to write his first story (“ The Handmaid Mary ”). The acquaintance with the writer and translator Hermynia zur Mühlen fundamentally changed Kaltneker's attitude to life; with her he translated Swinburne's poems from English and entrusted her with all of the literary plans. The poems from that time and the drama "Isofta" have been lost.

After staying at health resorts in Davos and Partenkirchen , Kaltneker was able to take the external Matura with distinction in October 1915 . After that he volunteered for military service ; but his mother was able to prevent his entry at the last moment, the father was in Russian captivity in Siberia. Kaltneker studied law in Vienna and passed the first state examination in law at Easter 1917 with distinction .

Poems and dramas. Paul Zsolnay Verlag , 1925

In 1916/17 there were two more stories, Directed! Rescued! and Love , with the theme of redemption and the idea of ​​sacrifice. Kaltneker wrote other poems, of which Erich Wolfgang Korngold set "Three songs based on poems by Hans Kaltneker, op. 18" to music in 1924. In 1917 Kaltneker turned back to drama and wrote “Die Heilige”, an anarchist - visionary mystery for music, in which he designed the Lucifer theme and that after his death in free reworking in the libretto by Hans Müller-Einigen for the opera "The miracle of the Heliane" by Erich Wolfgang Korngold was (premiere: October 7, 1927 in Hamburg).

In enthusiasm and admiration for the talent and beauty of the young Burgtheater star Else Wohlgemuth , whom he had already seen in Arthur Schnitzler's “ The Young Medardus ” as a 15-year-old and with whom he had been friends since 1911, Kaltneker wrote letters and dedicated them to her Set of poems "Tasso to the Princess", which he presented to her at Christmas 1916. In 1917 he saw her enthusiastically in Schnitzler's “ The Lonely Path ” at the Burgtheater. In 1918 Else Wohlgemuth married Count Thun-Hohenstein . Kaltneker sent the last letter of his life to her the day before his death, already on his deathbed.

In 1918, during the last year of his life, Kaltneker wrote his three expressionist dramas The Sacrifice , The Mine and The Sister as a “trilogy of the idea of ​​redemption”. After almost a year at the spa, he returned to Vienna, where in December 1918 he wrote the four-act drama The Sacrifice within eight days. Another spa stay on the Semmering followed in the winter of 1918/19. At Christmas 1918, Kaltneker had to go to Davos again for three months, where he wrote the revolutionary drama Das Bergwerk , a tragedy in three acts. In his poems, more and more foreboding of death became noticeable as his illness became less and less likely to heal.

In June 1919, at his own request, Kaltneker and his parents went to Gutenstein in Lower Austria for a summer break , which was also a climatic health resort due to its climatic location . It was there that Kaltneker wrote Die Sister in just ten days , a mystery play in three sections in which he dealt with the subject of lesbian homosexuality , and most recently in one day the fairy tale game Snow White , which he wrote for the daughter of his motherly friend Hedda Stern and which was published on 17 August 1918 was performed in Gutenstein.

On September 29, 1919, Hans Kaltneker died in Gutenstein , where he was buried in the same cemetery where the poet Ferdinand Raimund lies. Paul Frischauer and Joseph Roth attended the funeral. During his lifetime none of Kaltneker's works were published and none of his dramas were performed on stage.

Robert Musil wrote “of a Viennese poet who died young, so young that one can hardly say whether he would have become a poet.” And Felix Salten said: “How much driving force, how much magic and how much wisdom in this one The shortening of life can lie in this fragment of thought, this epigram of an existence such as that of Hans Kaltneker, we cannot know. "

plant

Kaltneker's literary work is not very extensive (four dramas, three short stories, 27 poems), but of great intensity, visionary power and astonishingly early maturity. It describes the change from erotic sensuality to active neighborly love, deals with speculative ideas about the apostasy and resumption of Lucifer and calls for world redemption through an all-embracing ability to love with the “feeling of shame to be contemporary”.

Dramas

The sacrifice

The central theme in Kaltneker's work are guilt and atonement, suffering and redemption, as in his drama “The Sacrifice” (1918), in which notions of guilt and redemption are presented through the self-sacrifice of the main character. The motto is: “We are not born to die. We die in order to be born. " Alfred Polgar called Kaltneker's play in the" Weltbühne "an " ecstatic drama "," full of doubt, impetuous questions and mild answers that are not settled, but soothed " and wrote about Kaltneker: " Der A pure young man, roused by poetic fervor, who wrote this strange piece of redeeming (in which Ikarian wings rustle), thinks with the feeling ... You could say: The heart went to his head. ” The premiere took place on March 22, 1922 on German Volkstheater Wien, director: Hans Brahm, with Ferdinand Onno as prince.

The protagonist of the play, a prince, rebels in vain against the execution of a lust killer and then conceives the idea of ​​atoning for the violence of mankind by killing his beloved (“Madonna”), especially - as a modern Christ - the guilt to take himself, with Abraham and Isaac and Golgotha as godfathers for the deed. A "Chorus Damnatorum" drives him into action:

CHORUS DAMNATORUM
We live in the dark, in the houses of guilt
our wives are withered, our men are tired,
our children are old, fathers and mothers lazy.
Our young sisters learn to whore
our old sisters must starve,
our brothers shoot at the target in barracks.

However, nobody believes the prince's motives; he is sentenced to death. The defender cynically reproaches him for his religious thoughts of sacrifice:

THE DEFENDOR: I told you that religious insanity has ceased to exist since common robberies began working with Saint Anthony. If you had followed me, you would have passed yourself off as an archsadist! Psychopathia sexualis with severe hereditary problems. But you have transposed the whole thing from the sexual sphere, which everyone would have been interested in, to the mystical one , which no one cares about!

On death row, shortly before his execution, the prince is met by a Dominican monk who, when he drops his hood, is marked with the head of the crucified, and who confronts him with his “ salvatory arrogance ”, convinces him of his hubris and him Shows the meaning of atonement in true humility.

THE PRINCE: I wanted to redeem the world.
THE BROTHER: Of what?
THE PRINCE: Of the blood. From suffering. From guilt. From original sin. From the curse that is over love. From the sweat that sticks to the work. Of the war that brothers wage against brothers. About the revolution that leads brothers against brothers. Of all evil.
THE BROTHER: How did you intend to do that?
THE PRINCE: By murder. I murdered.
THE BROTHER: How did you get there?
THE PRINCE: I wanted to take the blame on myself. I wanted to exclude myself from grace so that it might be bestowed on everyone. He stayed pure. He only took up the cross. This is too little. He offered his body, me more - I also offered my soul. His suffering grew up pure to the stars, but mine is born out of pregnant guilt. No one can be damned after me anymore. For I have committed the worst sin. - I saw God and turned from him. God wanted to let the cup pass me by, but I grabbed it. I emptied it down to the last bitterest drop. I was weak earlier, my earthly bowed to the earth. But now I know that I went the right way. And when tomorrow I stand under the gallows, when my body vomits from fear and disgust, my soul will cry out with pleasure. Because I know that after my death there will be no more death and no more suffering and screaming. Millions of my brothers and sisters will come under my wood and hug and sing Hosiannah. Children will be born without pain and will grow up with pure eyes and shining heads. The sick will recover, the lost will find their way home, the enslaved will be free, the dead will rise and the gates of hell will fly open for ever !! - Well, you guilty, as it is your duty. I have nothing to regret.
THE BROTHER: I do. Guilty in two senses: murder before men and pride before God.

In Kaltneker's drama, the theme of homosexuality is already hinted at, which he later dealt with in his main work “The Sister”: as the delinquent sentenced to death seized in the second act and in the “act of execution in his ghostly, grinning gloom” ( Alfred Polgar ) is to be led to the execution, the prince who is present at the execution jumps over the barrier and throws himself in between:

THE DELINQUENT begins to roar: Uuuuuuaaaah - - - !! The assistants throw themselves at him. One of them presses his hand over his mouth. The delinquent snatches himself away from them despite his hands tied behind his back and throws himself roaring on the floor.
THE PRINCE breaks the cordon, throws the two executioners back and throws himself over the delinquent: People! People!!!
CONFUSED VOICES: But no! - That's unheard of! - Tear away!
THE PRINCE: People! People! That can't happen! A mother gave birth to him in bloody pains, a mother gave birth to us all, is her torment lost for this one? - Get up, get up - and shout it to them, they are a thousand times more murderers than you!
He has pulled up the delinquent, who stares at him like an animal and begins to babble: "Muu-a-tta - - - Muu-a-atta - -"
The murderer, trying to cling to him, sunk to his chest and pressed his mouth to his.

In a "link between homoeroticism and death", the delinquent kisses the prince, which evokes "concerned, indignant exclamations" from the philistine spectators of good society:

VOICES: But there is no such thing! Ugh devil! - Tear them apart! - That's a scandal!
Policemen and executioners attack the two.
THE PRINCE (throwing her back like a madman): Take me! Take me !!

Alfred Polgar writes: “A person who screams in pain is closed the mouth with a kiss of love. The scream is stifled ... that it would also hurt is a beautiful lie of poetry. ” The magazine“ Die Premiere ”described the kiss as the strongest scene in the work: “ It speaks for the poetic potency of the work that a scene that Thematically, almost in a parodisitic sense, could be indicative of school expressionism: how the prince fraternally embraces the murderer on the gallows, has a unique force. "

The mine

Kaltneker's revolutionary drama “Das Bergwerk” takes place in a “mine in a state. In December of a year in the 20th century. ”And deals with the preparations for a general strike after a mine disaster . The world premiere was on February 6, 1923 in the Raimund Theater in Vienna as the thousandth performance of the social democratic art agency.

The worker leader Michael, who is trapped in the mine in the first act , experiences his "awakening" to the gospel of love while - in relation to Klatneker's own fate - he faces death. On the eve of the planned uprising, he realizes that violence cannot bring love, he preaches charity - while his child is being born at the same time - and succumbs to the hatred of the world around him. Michael is shot, his adversary Martin appears at the end of the "Annunciation Drama" with revolutionary thoughts:

MARTIN (raising the revolver): Comrades! My father died down in the mine. I wanted to eat from him because I was hungry. Follow me!!
A single furious cry from all throats. He rushes ahead of them. Background right. The crowd pushes after him, first in a tumultuous disorder, then slowly forming by itself, finally in rows of eight and in step. From the roaring howl, the Marseillaise slowly clenches and hits the sky in flames. Michael has sat up again on the cart and his gaze encompasses the enormous train. Far in the background, the army of proletarians marches in closed ranks, rhythmically thundering pace. The “Marseillaise” and the “Song of Work” keep breaking out of their mouths. Red flags billow huge over their heads. Michael stands upright. There is tremendous light in his face, his mouth screams a word that is drowned out in the roar of the march. His outstretched, raised arm describes a grand gesture, the meaning of which is: “Go on. Beyond that. ”Then he collapses. Distant crackling of machine guns. The singing breaks off, the pounding rhythm of the crowd remains unchanged. Red winter sun breaks through shredded fog. The endless procession marches on in silence across the scene.

The sister

In Kaltneker's third piece, the mystery “The Sister”, which Kaltneker saw as his main work, the lesbian girl Ruth loves her sister. It becomes a "family disgrace", is cast out, gets into vicious society, becomes infected as a nurse with the sick, is again cast out and ends up as a syphilitic whore. The first performance took place after Kaltneker's death on December 12, 1923 at the Renaissance stage in Vienna with Ida Roland in the title role.

In a preface, Kaltneker wanted to explain his intentions programmatically:

“My theory of homosexuality as the summit and center of egoism, therefore as the antipole of those who lay on Golgotha, will alienate, create annoyance. It should be said in advance: I know that 'wrong love' can be more noble than that between man and woman is often. That those affected can be the highest, they tend to be. I have met almost only those. An accusation here would be ridiculous. My definition arose from a more spiritual point of view, even if it was unscientific. "

The first station of the drama demonstrates Ruth's attempt to seduce her stepsister Lo, who, however, “is saved in time from complete disruption by a seasoned man”. Expelled from the house, in the second part Ruth falls into the clutches of the morphine-addicted, cynical, hardened Karin, who introduces her to a demonstration of same-sex Sodom and Gomorrah in a gay-lesbian Walpurgis night club in Berlin :

“Men and women, but always paired the same sex. Some of the men in women's clothes and vice versa; fake mustaches, rubber breasts, wigs, make-up, costumes, masks, fantastic uniforms. The perfect rigidity gives the whole the expression of a ghostly wax museum . "

Orgiastic cravings are expressed in a sadomasochistic choir, which proclaims “tinny, screaming”: “I feel like, / you are tormented!” Kaltneker calls for dissonant music: “The constant, expressionless dissonances must have a deafening, corrosive effect, like the music that a madman thinks he is hearing and cannot get out of his ears ”. Kaltneker also incorporated allusions to the Harden-Eulenburg affair into the scene . Ruth ends up in the third section after trying to lead a helpful life as a nurse as a venereal disease-riddled prostitute in a prison. Because of her humility, after an initial rejection of her fellow inmates, she is understood as a "sister", whereupon the voice of God confirms that the dying have "loved". Kaltneker wrote a sensational dance scene (with a film) in the play and a hymn nude scene of lesbian prisoners receiving God's blessing.

Kaltneker populated his play with desiring same-sex people (“couples hugging chest to chest, knee to knee, mouth to mouth clamped”), which was a literary novelty on stage. Robert Musil wrote in his theater review: “This somewhat violent biography is not as common in life as it is in literature. (…) These scenes are beautiful, bold and pure. For the first time a conflict is here on the stage represented, which leads in the life to much unhappiness, and the action springs from the uranium situation of people in the other world, the moral demands show up ours as intolerant schoolmaster. " Nevertheless, he calls Kaltnekers Pieces "more finished and quicker on the outside than on the inside " and "undoubtedly talented and undoubtedly quite unfinished". “Die Schöne Literatur” stated “the boldest choice of material” in the “sexual field” and judged: “The courage to approach the problem of homoeroticism as Kaltnecker has done is admirable. Nothing remains that is artistically impure. ” The play was therefore threatened by censorship in Austria . Felix Salten wrote: "Here the organ from Goethe's ' Faust ' roars in a Wedekind key."

Kaltneker gives specific labels of homosexuality, which in his opinion symbolizes egoism, sterility and distance from God:

“First: To love the same, own gender - again drawn a barrier more against humanity, again the circle closer to oneself. Isn't the concept of the destroyed 'I' in 'equal' and 'own'? Second: The heroic feeling towards one's own sex, that is, towards the pampered, deified 'self', remains sterile. God wants procreation. Creation be! Soul overflows in blood, immortality in seed! 'Little children, love one another', 'Love does not seek its own'. The egoism (in the highest sense!) Of an embrace, which in its essence signifies the triumph of sterility, only becomes very clear in this evangelical sense. Third: The suffering of those beaten is enormous, incommensurable to ours. [...] There is suffering that freezes, suffering that is no longer able to flow into any 'you', closes the strangling ring of the 'I'. This is the kind of suffering that I experienced. Eros crucifixus. [...] To be more godforsaken, I created [Ruth] 'homosexual', not to write a 'tendency piece'. "

In Hamburg, Kaltneker's play at the Kammerspiele by Erich Ziegel with Hans Otto as Hermann May came out. In Berlin, Kaltneker's play came out in 1924 under the direction of Berthold Viertels on the Goethe stage. Alfred Kerr wrote: “You cannot force lovers of the opposite sex to reproduce. In most acts of sensuality, reproduction is hardly the aim. Why shouldn't one utter the truth? ” “ Die Weltbühne ”accused the play that, based on Frank Wedekind and Hermann Sudermann (“ The Girlfriend ”), a “ deeply frightened young person set up a Golgotha ​​of stray love. ”In 1927 one followed Performance at the “ Theater in Königgrätzer Straße ” in Berlin with Maria Orska as Ruth. On February 14, 1928, the play was also performed at the Wiener Kammerspiele as a guest performance by Maria Orska and directed by Franz Wenzler (set design: Alfred Kunz ), with: Friedl Haerlin , Edwin Jürgensen, Willy Hendrichs, Theodor Grieg and Peter Lorre (as a sex researcher and as a street ghost).

The theater critic Horst Schroeder wrote on December 30, 1924 in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung about the performance of "Sister" on the Goethe stage:

“It may have been in 1921 when the name Hans Kaltneker was first mentioned to me. A singer returning from Switzerland, then married to a distinguished art historian, now to a pianist of repute, told me that she had become very friends with the young Hans Kaltneker in Arosa, that he often spoke to her about his three dramas, and that fate had prevented him from seeing her on any stage. When he was not yet twenty-four years old, he had succumbed to the terrible disease. What poetic works he had left behind was thrown out in the fever of his last days, in a sense of intoxication. […] The three dramas had been submitted to a number of publishers, dramaturges, and directors in Berlin and Vienna, but they all gave the same negative answer. […] The lady closed her story, which was filled with the deepest human aspect, with the request that I read one of Kaltneker's dramas - it was the sacrifice - and tell her my opinion. - I read and marveled - just as much about the undeniable talent of the young dramatic poet as about the undeniable (let's use the mildest expression!) Shortsightedness of the responsible persons. [...] - After this first acquaintance with Hans Kaltneker, I had an understandable desire to get to know more of him, and soon I was entrusted with reading his other pieces. I do not mean to say that I gained the conviction that I was faced with stunning originality, but the favorable impression that the first drama had created was confirmed by the following two. And the author's youth came as a weighty advocate. When I fully learned that even a famous actor, who misunderstood the role that had been created for him, had let the wrestler flash off with all the arrogance of the established one, the desire arose in me to make amends for the injustices committed by others and to give the deceased that recognition to help what would have been due to the living. As it happened, shortly afterwards I was with a well-known Berlin theater director. I brought the conversation to Kaltneker. Yes, the name is not alien to him. Had he read the submitted pieces himself? Not that, but his dramaturge reported to him. I urged him not to rely on someone else's judgment this time, and he solemnly vowed to form his own judgment. A few days later I was invited to a meeting in the theater and the dramaturge informed me that they had decided to accept the sister […]. So, quickly enough, a first stage manager and a first actress were found, but they couldn't get together because they didn't want to know anything about each other. Still, the demand was lively, and the publishing house on the Danube may have been astonished when Berlin suddenly announced such an interest in Kaltneker. But it was still a considerable time before one of the dramas left behind - first the mine - found its way onto a Viennese stage. As always, the success drew a pack of lovers. When the mystery of The Sister in Vienna attracted the crowds, a noble competition broke out in Berlin too. Director Dieterle wanted to perform it, Prof. Robert had concluded a contingent contract in case Dieterle did not fulfill his obligations by a certain date. Actress Ida Roland has now foreseen both of them, boldly defying concessions and agreements. The Goethe stage had its first artistic success. "

stories

Kaltneker's three stories contain strong religious symbolism and deal with the heartless, materialistic bourgeois society that needs redemption through the heart and soul of a hero, the sacrifice of a new “messiah”.

In Kaltneker's first story Die Magd Maria opens an apocalyptic perspective on social reality. A drought has broken out in Vienna, bringing disease and death. A monk equipped with diabolical features calls on the citizens to burn the brothels in order to ward off the divine judgment. He drives the whore Maria to set fire to the brothel in which she works , as it were , and the longed-for rain ends the terrible drought.

“Over the city of Vienna, trumpets blared and trumpets shouted the wrath of God. The Lord's hand lay heavy over the hot city of Vienna. But those to whom it was meant sat on Lloyd steamers in the cool north or in the well-ventilated Alpine hotels or in the waves of fashionable seaside resorts - and the hand of the Lord only crushed the little ones, the lowly and laden, the animals of work - the summer vacationers! "

In the story Love , a satanic tempter uses the words of Master Eckart to persuade a man to sell his beloved to the brothel in order to complete his love. Kaltneker describes the life and activities of Vienna at that time:

“Premieres, redoubts, suppers, musical soirées with bridge. The pace is terribly fast, the rhythm ugly and stomping like that of a locomotive that alternately emits shrill whistles from time to time. Lumps of corpses accumulate between the wheels. Jewish women ride through the Prater, commercial councilors fraternize with aristocrats, the jamming is great, and forms are preserved that are no longer. "

In judged! Rescued! the teacher Matthias Wottawa is breathed on by an angel and begins to rot while still alive. He begins to stink immensely and becomes an outcast from society, the family, and the profession. Kaltneker used quotes from the kk official language, the style of which is reminiscent of Franz Kafka . Wottawa goes to a prostitute, Leni, who confronts him as the redeeming figure Maria Magdalena . He is declared alive by the medical officer and his room is quarantined. In his dream he sees the scene of the Mount of Olives, which closes with the suicide of Judas , who has betrayed heavenly love. Wottawa gives his flesh and blood to starving children. The familiar schoolyard is transformed into a prison yard with a place of execution in his fear of death fantasies :

“Many small children's corpses lay and sat around. Individually and in shy groups. A couple of dead children were playing on the stones and one was sadly leaning against a climbing pole and watching the others. A little dead man sang and another cried because he couldn't learn the multiplication tables. All were scanty and old. "

Poetry

Kaltneker's poetry is described as an "aesthetic sense of language with the personal strong expression of despair, suffering and faith" , in which "the morbidity of the Viennese fin de siècle gives way to ethical ecstasy like melancholy to the pathos of youthful enthusiasm" in the 5th sonnet In the cycle "Tasso to the Princess" he described his illness:

I've known a long fever of black embers
For many years I ate bread from the disease
to the camp death tore my hair
and I vomited my last blood in agony.

Kaltneker had a particularly strong esteem for women, whom he saw as a pure instrument of divine love and who is closer to salvation than men, as in the poem "You pure woman of light and ivory":

You, sweet saint, no wish can profane
but save me, your child, from the aching fire!
I hear the wild riders chase at night
her breath gasps hot into my face -
no, don't help me! Let me endure this too
About you who lift me up when she breaks me

Hellmuth Himmel apostrophized Kaltneker as a “Christian Kafka ” , and in 1937 the “ German-Austrian literary history” called him the “ ecstatic among the Austrian Expressionists ” . This manifests itself in the sonnet "The Murder":

An embankment. Telegraph wires whirring.
Locomotive whistle. Clouds. Gray. Threatening.
Factories. Smoking. Hammer sound. Angry.
Rust-red plumes that wander around chimneys.
The city looms wide in front of the horizon.
Pale yellow blocks. Walls. Towers. Alleys
with horny dogs, people who hate them
and take and squander. One has
a knife in his pocket. Lurks
at the dam in the dark. Ready to jump. The knee
stuck to the ground. Hot with need
of blood. Wait Far away the melody
of the hammer falling on iron.
Steps - - One jump. One push! - A scream!! - One death.

estate

Legal successor and sole heir to Hans Kaltneker was his mother, field marshal lieutenant's widow Leonie Kaltneker (born Max, 1866–1937), who sold the rights to his works from Donau-Verlag to Paul Zsolnay Verlag , newly founded by Kaltneker's school friend Paul Zsolnay , in the second Kaltneker's work “Die Sister” was published and then in 1925 an anthology with Kaltneker's three expressionist dramas and the poems, “Dichtungen und Dramen”, to which Felix Salten wrote the preface. Gottfried Benn recorded four of Kaltneker's poems for his anthology "Poetry of the Expressionist Decade": "Grabschrift", "Der Mord" and two sonnets from the "Tasso" cycle.

Kaltneker's estate, which was kept by the Zsolnay publishing house until 1951, with “Happy Easter! A Passion ”and various poems (“ Les Noyades ”,“ Dolores ”after Swinburne ) and hectographed contributions from“ The New Land ”are considered lost.

Catalog raisonné

Dramas

  • Herre Tristrant , 1910 (missing)
  • The saint . A Mystery for Music, 1917.
  • The sacrifice . A tragedy, 1918 (Premiere Deutsches Volkstheater Vienna on March 22, 1922)
  • The mine . A drama, 1918 (Premiere Raimundtheater Vienna on February 6, 1923)
  • The sister . A Mysterium, 1918 (Premiere Renaissance stage Vienna on December 12, 1923)
  • Schneewittche n (children's play), 1918 (premiered by Gutenstein on August 19, 1918)

Novellas

  • Love
  • Mary the maid
  • Judged! Rescued!

Poetry

  • recovery
  • Quasi una phantasia
  • Esther
  • Judith's walk towards Bethulia
  • The Pharisee's prayer
  • The tax collector's prayer
  • Grace on May 1st
  • A female friend
  • My God!
  • Song to sing in summer
  • memory
  • O dear, dear hand ...
  • Before falling asleep
  • Farewell words
  • The murder
  • Funerary inscription
  • temptation
  • Sonnet for Vienna
  • Tasso to the princess . Nine sonnets

Publications

  • Love. Novella. Donau Verlag, Leipzig / Vienna 1921.
  • The mine. Drama in three acts. Donau Verlag, 1921.
  • The sister. A mystery in three sections (ten scenes). Paul Zsolnay Verlag , Vienna 1924.
  • Poems and dramas. edited by Paul Zsolnay , with a foreword by Felix Salten . Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Berlin / Vienna / Leipzig 1925.
  • The saint (final scene of the first act). In: Jahrbuch 1927. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Berlin / Vienna / Leipzig 1927.
  • The three stories. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Berlin / Vienna / Leipzig 1929.
  • Judged! Rescued! Selection, initiated and selected by Hellmuth Himmel . (= Stiasny library. No. 47). Stiasny Verlag, Graz / Vienna 1959.

literature

  • Kaltneker from Wallkampf Hans. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1965, p. 205 f. (Direct links on p. 205 , p. 206 ).
  • Emmy Wohanka: Hans Kaltneker (1895-1919). Dissertation. Vienna 1933.
  • Inge Maria Gabriele Irwin: Hans Kaltneker. An attempt at a style-critical investigation. University of Maryland, 1969.
  • Gabriele Irwin: Rediscovery of an Undiscovered: Hans Kaltneker. In: The German Quarterly. Vol. 45, No. 3 (May 1972), pp. 461-471.
  • Nikolaus Britz: Expressionism and its Austrian disciple Hans Kaltneker. A paraphrase for the poet's 80th birthday. Braumüller, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-7003-0119-7 .
  • Dietmar Goltschnigg:  Kaltneker von Wallkampf, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 75 ( digitized version ).
  • J. de Vos: Imprisonment in the plays of Hans Kaltneker. Dissertation. Ghent 1981.
  • Hans Kaltneker , in: Hans Heinz Hahnl : Forgotten writers. Fifty Austrian life stories . Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1984, ISBN 3-215-05461-2 , pp. 191–194
  • Norbert Frei: "We are not good enough for each other" On the work of Hans Kaltneker. In: Klaus Amann, Armin A. Wallas (Ed.): Expressionism in Austria: the literature and the arts. Böhlau, 1994.
  • Wilfried Ihrig: The drama "Die Sister" by Hans Kaltneker. In: Wilfried Ihrig: Modern Austrian literature. Berlin 2019, pp. 13–24.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Felix Salten , preface to poems and dramas, edited by Paul Zsolnay , Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Berlin-Wien-Leipzig 1925.
  2. ↑ Hans Flesch-Brunningen , The seduced time. Life memories ; edited and provided with an afterword by Manfred Meixner. Vienna & Munich: Verlag Christian Brandstätter, 1988, ISBN 3-85447-261-7 .
  3. ↑ a b c Helmut Krainer, Writing as a Passion. An essay, 2003.
  4. ↑ Hilde Spiel , What world is my world? Memoirs 1946–1989. List, 1990.
  5. ↑ Judged! Rescued! Selection, initiated and selected by Hellmuth Himmel . ( Stiasny Library , No. 47), Stiasny Verlag, Graz / Vienna 1959.
  6. ^ Nikolaus Britz : Expressionism and its Austrian disciple Hans Kaltneker. A paraphrase for the poet's 80th birthday, 1975.
  7. ^ Poems and Dramas, edited by Paul Zsolnay , with a foreword by Felix Salten , Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Berlin-Wien-Leipzig 1925.
  8. ^ Richard Specht , Franz Werfel : An attempt at a time mirroring, P. Zsolnay, 1926.
  9. ^ Siegfried Jacobsohn , Carl von Ossietzky , Kurt Tucholsky , Die Weltbühne . Athenaeum Publishing House, 1978.
  10. ^ A b Alfred Polgar , Yes and No: Pieces and Players. E. Rowohlt, 1926.
  11. ↑ a b Wolf Borchers, Male Homosexuality in the Drama of the Weimar Republic. Dissertation from the University of Cologne, Philosophical Faculty, July 2001.
  12. ↑ The premiere. Sheets for essential theater. Edited by Hanns Horkheimer. October 1925. Issue 2. Berlin: Kiepenheuer 1925.
  13. ^ Katrin Maria Kohl, Ritchie Robertson, A history of Austrian literature 1918–2000. Camden House 2006.
  14. ↑ Jaak De Vos, Androgyny as 'coincidenta oppositorum' in the ethical-religious field of tension in Hans Kaltneker, Vienna 2006.
  15. ^ Paul Westheim , Das Kunstblatt, Issue 9, Kraus Reprint, 1978.
  16. ^ Karl Eric Toepfer, Empire of ecstasy: nudity and movement in German body culture, 1910-1935. University of California Press 1997.
  17. ^ Robert Musil : Hans Kaltneker: "The sister", The evening , December 13, 1923.
  18. ↑ The beautiful literature. 25.Jg. (1924).
  19. ^ Margrit Lenk, Jutta Wardetzki: Hans Otto - The Actor, in: Writings on Theater Studies, Volume 4, Henschel, Berlin 1966.
  20. ^ Alfred Kerr : Hans Kaltneker: The sister. Goethe stage. Berliner Tageblatt. Evening edition. Volume 53, No. 604
  21. ↑ NZZ , December 30, 1924, noon edition, no.1992.
  22. ↑ Peter Sprengel: History of German-language literature, 1900-1918. Beck, 2004.
  23. ↑ Dietmar Goltschnigg:  Kaltneker von Wallkampf, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 75 ( digitized version ).
  24. ↑ Judged! Saved !, Kaltneker's works, introduced and selected by Hellmuth Himmel, “Das Österreichische Wort”. Stiasny Library 1959.
personal data
SURNAME Kaltneker, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wallkampf, Hans von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian narrator, poet and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Temesvár , Banat
DATE OF DEATH September 29, 1919
Place of death Gutenstein (Lower Austria)