Heinrich Malzkorn

Max Heinrich Malzkorn (born January 4, 1892 in Mönchengladbach , † March 12, 1980 in Süchteln ) was a German writer , painter and conservationist . His main literary work is the animal story of the otter "Patschel".

Life

Childhood and youth

Heinrich Malzkorn comes from a middle-class background. When he was born on January 4, 1892, operated his parents, Hubert and Josefine Malzkorn in Mönchengladbach at the Eickener Straße 223 a grocery store . He attended elementary and high school. Instead of taking over the parents' shop, Malzkorn completed a teacher training course at the preparatory facility in (Mönchengladbach-) Odenkirchen.

Teacher and soldier

He got his first job as a teacher in April 1912 in Materborn near Kleve . During these two years he was also the deputy head of the hotel "Zum Reichswals". The plans to take over the hotel in full lease were not realized due to the outbreak of the First World War . As a war volunteer, Malzkorn entered a mounted artillery regiment on November 16, 1914 . He was buried, almost went blind as a result, lost the sight of one eye for life. He was discharged from the army on May 31, 1917. This was followed by a short teaching period in Niederheide ( Schiefbahn ).

Education

Then he continued his studies in cultural history , literature and economics in Cologne , Greifswald and Bonn . During this time he dealt intensively with the theories of the Berlin economist Adolf Damaschke (1865–1935), especially with his main work The Land Reform .

Restaurateur

After he married the hotelier's daughter Annemarie Bertus, they both ran a hotel together in 1920/21. In 1921, Malzkorn became the syndic of the Rhenish Farmers 'Association and managing director of the district farmers' association.

He took over the catering in the town hall restaurant in Krefeld and had to give it up in 1930 despite the good framework conditions. He also had to give up his gastronomy in the Krefeld excursion restaurant "Forstwaldhaus" after a short time (January 14, 1932).

In addition to the failure of his gastronomy, his marriage also failed, which ended in a divorce, his wife died in 1935.

unemployment

After the takeover of the Nazis in 1933 fled Malzkorn in the Hunsrück . He was unemployed until 1938, keeping his head above water by selling pictures and publishing his stories in magazines. He learned painting at the private art school Arp in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel .

Second World War On August 3, 1940, Malzkorn, who meanwhile was teaching again in the Lower Rhine region, married Ilse Miltzow from Mönchengladbach. In 1942 the teacher was transferred to the primary school in Born, in 1944 the couple were evacuated to Thuringia , where he initially worked as a teacher again. After the occupation by the Soviet Army, he was entrusted as a specialist in land reform with the conversion of private agricultural property into agricultural production cooperatives (LPGs). In this difficult task he made enemies in all camps, and at the end of 1945 the couple returned to Born.

Reform ideas Malzkorn campaigned strongly for nature conservation. In 1954, for example, he put the “cry for help for man and earth” into circulation with simple means. This was directed against the expansion of lignite mining on the Lower Rhine. In the 1950s, Malzkorn founded the Naturschutz Verlag in Brüggen, where he himself published volumes of poetry and plays, the novel Sold Youth on the Great Depression in 1929 and a new edition of his otter novel Patschel . The title A Life for the Hariksee comes from the hand of his wife Ilse Malzkorn-Miltzow . A socially critical monthly magazine for all professionals, Das Weltgewissen. Malzkorn played together with Emmy Wagner. A series of publications was also created for this magazine (Volume 1: Johannes Ude: Christian moral theologians as accomplices of capitalism. Brüggen 1957). Unfortunately, Malzkorn, as a publisher, complied with the obligation to submit documents very sporadically, so that the German National Library can only provide incomplete evidence of the production of the magazine in particular.

Teacher again In the 1960s, the baby boomers in the Federal Republic of Germany started school. At the same time, the school system, which was still largely under church supervision, was called into question. The few new teacher training graduates could choose their positions and avoided structurally weak areas. After Easter 1963, the pensioner Malzkorn was reactivated in the Bracht Catholic elementary school and taught there again until the establishment was re-established as a primary or secondary school in the summer of 1968.

estate

The Malzkorn estate is in the Mönchengladbach city archive.

Works

• The hunter from Churpfalz. Borniger, Bacharach 1988.
• Divide et impera. Naturschutz-Verlag, Brüggen / Niederrhein 1969.
• Patschel vom Schwalmtal. Naturschutz Verlag, Brüggen / Niederrhein 1962.
• The partisans of God. Naturschutz-Verlag, Brüggen / Niederrhein around 1962.
• Heartbeat of the woods. Naturschutz-Verlag, Brüggen / Niederrhein 1962.
• Sold youth. Naturschutz-Verlag, Brüggen / Niederrhein 1960.
• Patschel. Kühlen, M. Gladbach 1949.
• The black lies. Prince, Krefeld 1934.
• Rhenish boy. Salm-Verlag, Cologne 1921.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Malzkorn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Heinrich Malzkorn exhibition catalog (pdf; 211 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Paul Offermanns: Brüggen: A fountain for Patschel . In: Rheinische Post . July 10, 2008 (title character of Heinrich Malzkorn's unique otter novel).
2. ↑ Ludger Peters: Max Heinrich Malzkorn (1892–1980). In: Home book of the district of Viersen. Volume 44, 1993, pp. 31-39, here pp. 33-34.
3. ↑ BROWN COAL: The desert threatens. In: Der Spiegel. 47/1954, of November 17, 1954.
4. ↑ Ferdinand Jorißen: A quarter of a century elementary school and secondary school Bracht 1959–1984. Self-published, Bracht 1984, p. 16.
5. ^ Archives in North Rhine-Westphalia - City Archives Mönchengladbach - Heinrich Malzkorn.