Hans Wilhelm Hagen

Otto Emil Hans Wilhelm Hagen (born May 9, 1907 in Markirch , Upper Alsace , † April 2, 1969 in Munich ) was a German journalist , art historian and cultural functionary of the NSDAP .

academic career

His parents immigrated from Brandenburg to the realm of Alsace-Lorraine . In 1919 the family had to move to Freising . There he attended the humanistic grammar school and then the grammar school in Zurich .

He then began to study German literature, philosophy, music and art studies in Zurich, Berlin and Greifswald. In Zurich he belonged since 1926, the fraternity Teutonia Zurich and Berlin since 1929, the Berlin fraternity Teutonia on. In 1931 he was awarded a Dr. med. On the subject of "Rilke's revisions, a contribution to the psychology of his poetic work". phil. PhD at the University of Greifswald .

From 1932 to 1935 he took over the senior position in the German Department of the University of Greifswald under Professor Wolfgang Stammler . During this time, Hagen tried in vain for his habilitation . Allegedly, Hagen had commented on the Index Romanus , with which it was no longer accepted by a Catholic professor.

Political and professional career until 1945

Hagen joined the SA in June 1933 . During the Greifswald book burning and the local “Action for the German Spirit” he acted on behalf of the NSDStB as “specialist advisor” for the action.

From 1934 he worked as a volunteer lecturer in the Office for Literature Maintenance, which was an agency of Alfred Rosenberg . Officially, he was on the staff of the Führer of SA-Sturmbanns III / 49. On the side he began to work as a writer and wrote articles for the weekly newspaper Das Reich and the Völkischer Beobachter .

From 1935 to 1937 he took a position as a lecturer at the German Photo Service, where cultural-political series were produced. He joined the NSDAP in 1937 as member No. 4,158,225. From 1937 he worked as head of the cultural policy department of the party official examination commission (PKK) of the NSDAP. In 1939 he also worked as an editor for culture at the Berliner Börsenzeitung .

In the Second World War , Hagen fought as a storm pioneer from 1939 to 1941 , where he was seriously wounded in France. In 1941, at the request of Joseph Goebbels, he became an advisor to the main editor of Das Reich . Hagen attacked the writer Eberhard Wolfgang Möller in 1941 in the magazine Weltliteratur because of a poem by accusing him of “aesthetic desecration of corpses”, whereupon Möller was assigned to a frontline deployment. In March 1943, Hagen was promoted to lieutenant in the " Replacement Brigade Greater Germany" in Cottbus .

From 1942 he was in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda a . a. Responsible for subversive literature, the prohibition system, the control of the import of books and the national bibliography, whereby he was subordinate to the head of the office, Karl Heinz Hederich . For one year in 1944 he was supposed to do a study of German literary history at the party chancellery.

A short time later, due to his injury, he became an orderly officer with the headquarters of the Berlin Guard Battalion "Greater Germany ". As a lieutenant under Otto Ernst Remer , he made a significant contribution to suppressing the uprising of July 20, 1944 , by not carrying out the Valkyrie orders by establishing a connection between Remer and Goebbels , which is why he was promoted to captain in August 1944 .

After 1945

In connection with the participation on July 20, 1944, he was tried but not convicted. Among other things, he worked as an editor for the newspapers Deutsche Wochenzeitung and Deutsche Nachrichten , which was published by the NPD . Furthermore, Hagen was active in the neo-Nazi German cultural organization of the European mind (DKEG) and in the right-wing extremist society for free journalism . In 1958 he published an autobiographical book about the events of July 20, 1944 called Between Oath and Orders .

In 1960 he received the DKEG's "Ring of Honor of German Poetry". After he had made a contribution to the cultural development of the Arminia fraternity in Munich , he became a member in 1962.

Fonts

• Rilke's makeovers. A contribution to the psychology of his poetic work - form and spirit . Leipzig 1931, ( Work on Germanic Philology, Vol. 24).
• German poetry in the decision of the present . Berlin 1938.
• The fate of German poetry . Berlin 1938.
• Breakthrough to the new center. Three studies to overcome the culture crisis . Munich 1957.
• Between oath and command. Testimony from the events of July 20, 1944 . Munich 1958.
• Unforgettable pictures. German painters from six centuries . Leoni am Starnberger See 1959.
• Musical sacrifice. An altar in words with four side panels around the central shrine . Munich 1960.
• A look behind things. The lower octave. Twelve encounters . Munich 1962.
• An example of liberation . Munich 1967.

literature

• Erika Martens: For example “Das Reich”. On phenomenology d. Press in the totalitarian regime . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1972, ISBN 3-8046-8459-9 , (also: Kiel, Univ., Philos. Fac., Diss. 1971), p. 172 f.

credentials

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 2: F-H. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0809-X , pp. 223-224.
• National Front of the GDR (Ed.): Braunbuch. War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. State, economy, army, administration, justice, science . 3rd revised and expanded edition. State Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin 1968.
• Hans Sarkowicz, Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. A biographical lexicon . Extended and revised new edition. Europa-Verlag, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-203-82030-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Gareis: The Munich fraternity Arminia - becoming and fate. Munich 1967, p. 205.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Wilhelm Hagen in the catalog of the German National Library