Hans W. Fischer

Hans W. Fischer (real Hans Waldemar Fischer, born December 18, 1876 in Schweidnitz , Province of Silesia , † July 17, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German writer , theater critic , translator and editor .

Live and act

Hans W. Fischer studied Classical Philology and History and received his doctorate from the University of Jena in 1898 . His first volume of poetry appeared in 1900, followed by nine more books from 1906 to 1907. After retiring from Berlin to the country to write for two years in 1907, he moved to Hamburg in 1909 , where he headed the feature section of the Neue Hamburger Zeitung from that year until 1923 .

In this function, Hans W. Fischer “promoted Hamburg's breakthrough to modernity in a decisive way”. He is considered one of the most important German critics of his time and, for example, campaigned for the Hamburger Kammerspiele as a venue for modern, expressionist theater and helped here a. to enforce the dramas by Ernst Barlach . Mary Wigman certified his pioneering position as a promoter of the young dance art. Fischer's diverse cultural commitment also included painting for the Hamburg Secession or the design of the Hamburg artist festivals. He is also considered to be the discoverer and supporter of a number of young Hamburg writers, namely Hans Leip , Ludwig Beil, Carl Albert Lange , Paul Schurek, Hugo Sieker and the later Senate press chief Erich Lüth . Fischer also played an important role in Hamburg's cultural history of those years through the “Round Table” he led, an informal community of people from the fields of literature, painting, sculpture, music, applied arts, drama, dance and science that met weekly in an Alster pub .

In 1923 Hans W. Fischer returned to Berlin as a freelance writer and advisor to the German Book Association. Under the pseudonym “Dr. Frosch ”- already from Hamburg - he wrote the second (cultural-political) leading article for the Berlin weekly newspaper Welt am Montag for years . When this "independent newspaper for politics and culture" was banned in 1933, Fischer published almost exclusively within the framework of the German. Book community. He died two months after the Battle of Berlin at the age of 69.

Monographs

• Ad artis veterum onirocriticae historiam symbola. Phil.Diss. Jena 1898 (H. Pohle Vlg., Jena 1899).
• Longing and Life. Poems. Schuster and Loeffler, Berlin and Leipzig 1900.
• Social anatomy. A dozen essays with prologue and epilogue. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1906.
• Alciphronx's letters of hetaera. In addition to additional pieces from Lucian, Aristaenet, Philostratus, Theophylactus, the anthology and the legend. Translated and provided with an introduction by Hans W. Fischer. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1906 (2nd edition 1907; new edition with 6 pictures by Heinrich Kley , Wigand, Leipzig 1921).
• Christ in the magic lantern. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1907.
• Book of contradiction. Poems. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1907.
• Old German Schwänke. Collected, linguistically updated and introduced by Hans W. Fischer, 2 volumes. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1907.
• Salomon and Markolf. After the edition of Hagen's new ed. v. HW Fischer. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1907.
• Schelmuffky's truly curious and very dangerous travelogue. With an introduction by Hans W. Fischer. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1907.
• Balzac, H. de: The succubus. From the French and with a preface by HW Fischer. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1907.
• German wedding poems. Edited by HW Fischer. Rothbarth, Leipzig 1907.
• The thirty year old. Georg Müller, Munich 1910.
• The chain. Poems. Georg Müller, Munich 1910.
• Aviator. Drama. Georg Müller, Munich 1913. (premiered in 1913 Koblenz City Theater).
• Sack, Gustav: a lost student. Preface by HW Fischer. S. Fischer, Berlin 1917.
• The motor. Drama. Oesterheld & Co., Berlin 1919 (premiered in the Dt. Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf).
• The heroic Fraulein Müller and other strange things. Berlin: Weltwende-Verlag 1919
• The women's book. As an attachment: three dance games. Albert Langen, Munich 1919. (further editions 1923, 1928).
• The sword. A cycle of poems. W. Seifert, Heilbronn 1920.
• The gourmet paradise. A paperback for bon vivants. Rösl, Munich 1921. (numerous new editions, most recently: Arani, Berlin 1976).
• "The place of the skull. Of people and Kaffirs. Rösl, Munich 1921. (also 1922; inter alia also Gebrüder Paetel, Berlin-Leipzig 1927).
• "The hunter". Drama (performed in Düsseldorf in 1923).
• Hamburg culture picture sheet. A cultural history 1909–1922. Rösl, Munich 1923 (Newly edited and commented by Kai-Uwe Scholz, Mathias Mainholz and Rüdiger Schütt. Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 1998).

Secondary literature

• Hugo Sieker (Ed.): Hans W. Fischer. A book of remembrance. Vlg. Hamburgische Bücherei, Hamburg undated [1948].
• Kai-Uwe Scholz: Mentor of modernism in Hamburg in the 1920s: the columnist and cultural critic Hans W. Fischer (1876–1945). In: Hans W. Fischer: Hamburg cultural Bilderbogen. A cultural history 1909–1922. New edition Hamburg 1998, pp. 166–171 (with additional literature).

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans W. Fischer in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Scholz 1998, p. 170.