Hans von Wolzog (writer)

Hans Paul Freiherr von Wolhaben (born November 13, 1848 in Potsdam ; † June 2, 1938 in Bayreuth ) was a German writer , editor , librettist and publisher .

childhood

Hans Paul von Wolzieh was born in Potsdam on November 13, 1848. His father, Alfred von Wolhaben , was court theater director in Schwerin; his mother was a daughter of the famous builder Karl Friedrich Schinkel . She died when her son was two years old.

Even at school he was particularly interested in poetry , music and the theater . In 1872 he married Mathilde Friederike Theodore von Schöler (born October 11, 1851), a daughter of General August von Schoeler . On his honeymoon he came to Bayreuth for the first time , where shortly before, on May 22nd, the foundation stone for Richard Wagner's Bayreuth Festival Theater had been laid.

In Bayreuth

In 1877 he was brought to Bayreuth by Richard Wagner, where from 1878 to 1938 he initially edited and published the magazine Bayreuther Blätter . From 1878 he lived in Schillerstrasse, not far from Wagner's Wahnfried house .

Richard Wagner, from whom the idea for the magazine originated, saw the Bayreuth papers as a magazine for understanding the possibilities of a German culture . The magazine corresponded to Richard Wagner's view of art and life. a. his last essays published for the first time. Wagner regretted at times that he had called Woliehen to Bayreuth because he felt compelled to employ him and to write articles for the magazine. After Wagner's death, Wolzüge developed into a central figure in the so-called “Wahnfried Circle”, who tried to charge Wagner's work with pseudo-religious significance.

Wolzog was the head of the General Richard Wagner Society . On December 19, 1928, Woliehen was one of the signatories of the founding manifesto of the nationalist , anti-Semitic Kampfbund for German culture . During the time of National Socialism , in March 1936, Wolzo wrote an article in the magazine for music in which he celebrated Hitler “as the embodiment of the völkisch spirit” and compared it to Richard Wagner.

Literary work

As a man of letters, Wolhaben wrote a biography about Wagner and religious essays. He also published a book that tells of the poet Wilhelm Raabe and is entitled Raabenweisheiten . He is said to have coined the term “ leitmotif ” to describe characterizing tone sequences in Wagner's works, which recall and symbolize people or processes. Wolzog worked as a librettist for Hans Sommer ( Saint Foix , premier 1894, Der Meermann , premier 1896, Münchhausen - together with Ferdinand Graf Sporck and Hans Sommer -, published 1897, and Augustin , published 1899) and Eugen d'Albert ( Flauto solo , WP 1905). Around 1900 his transfer of the Edda appeared in the universal library of the Leipzig Reclam publishing house . In 1891 he also wrote the poem Castle of Hearts based on Gustave Flaubert's Chateau des cours , published in 1881 , for which Hans Sommer composed the incidental music.

In 1912 he published an obituary for the Salonnière Marie Countess Schleinitz , with whom he had shared his weakness for Wagner.

His book Deutscher Jesusglaube (Verlag Deutsche Christen , Weimar 1938) was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone .

Works

• Beovulf (Bärwelf). The oldest German heroic poem . Reclam, Leipzig approx. 1872 ( digitized version )
• Richard Wagner and the animal world. Also a biography. Published by H. Hartung & Sohn, Leipzig 1890.
• Beowulf - Gudrun . With pen drawings by Franz Stassen. Publishing House for Patriotic History and Art, Berlin 1920.
• The Edda, Germanic sagas of gods and heroes . First volume: sagas of the gods. With 48 pen drawings by Franz Stassen. Publishing House for Patriotic History and Art, Berlin 1919.
• The Edda. Songs of gods and heroic songs . From the Old Norse. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig (without specifying the year of publication).

literature

• Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of baronial houses, 1879, ninth and twentieth year, p.952

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans von Wolzüge in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wolzog manuscripts in German-language archives and libraries
• Hans Sommer Archive , source location
• The Edda: Germanic sagas of gods and heroes, illustrated by Franz Stassen, 1920
• Part of the estate of Hans von Wolhaben in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 675.
2. ↑ See Bayreuther Blätter. Born in 1912, pp. 169-172.
3. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-w.html