Heinrich Zillich

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Heinrich Zillich (born May 23, 1898 in Brenndorf near Kronstadt / Transylvania , † May 22, 1988 in Starnberg ) was a German writer and expellee functionary .

Life

Until 1945

"Funny stories from Transylvania" (1940)
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Born the son of a Transylvanian sugar manufacturer, Zillich graduated from the Kronstadt Honterus High School in 1916 . During the First World War he took part in the Austro-Hungarian army as a Tyrolean Kaiserjäger . In 1919, after Transylvania was annexed to Romania, he was involved as a Romanian lieutenant in the fighting against communist Hungary . From 1920 he attended the commercial school in Berlin (graduated as a business graduate in 1922) and then completed a degree in political science at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin , which he obtained in 1924 with a doctorate in Dr. rer. pole. completed.

He was the founder and from 1924 to 1939 the editor of the magazine “Klingsor”, the most important German-language cultural periodical in Southeast Europe. Thomas Mann welcomed the publication of the magazine as a “cultural institution that has an impact on life”, Josef Weinheber published his first works in it, as did some German-speaking Jewish authors from Bukovina . Despite this superficial “pluralism”, the main task of the magazine under Zillich's direction was the nationalist, later openly National Socialist “folk work”, which Zillich combined with deep - seated anti-Semitism . Zillich wrote in 1932 to the Jewish author Alfred Margul-Sperber about Judaism as a "corrosive nucleus":

“It is not the fact that the Jews are different that is a challenge, but the particular type of difference that is directly directed against the soul, especially of the Germans. … The inability of the Jews to adapt internally creates hatred of the Jews among peoples who are still creating culture, who for lack of a definitive form still have a spiritual future ahead of them. ... It will only get better if the strong creative personality in Germany again determines and Judaism ... disarms. "

This hatred of Jews, trapped in prejudices and chauvinism, was also reflected in the description that Zillich gave of a festival with Jewish participants at which he was a guest: “The Jews mostly cannot drink. The sensuality is exaggerated. ”The only“ positive ”thing he can remember is:“ There were very pretty babes there. ”

In Transylvania, Zillich supported the National Socialist Self-Help Movement of Germans in Romania (NSDR) and - after it was banned in 1933 - the successor organization National Renewal Movement of Germans in Romania (NEDR), from which Zillich promised to "revive our national and social feeling": "Our The whole people were won over to the German ideological rebirth through these struggles. The youth took countless impulses for folk work from it, especially the labor service. "

From 1936 Zillich, who had published novellas and poems since the 1920s and had lived as a freelance writer since the 1930s, lived on Lake Starnberg . For Werner Bergengruen , who had known Zillich since the early 1930s, he was "a cold-blooded nerd, an economist who ultimately devoted himself to National Socialism." He succeeded in his development novel Between Limits and Times (1936) literary breakthrough. In 1937 he received numerous honors for his work and was received by Adolf Hitler during the 7th Berlin Poet Week. In 1939 Zillich praised him in a poem as the "Savior of the Reich and the people":

"Kind eye, blue, and iron sword hand, dark voice you and the most faithful father of the children,"
"See, there are gathered across the continents, woman and man holy united in the flames of the soul,"
"An endless chain, rushing out before the morning that your shoulders alone lifted from the crevices of need over the ridges."

By 1945, Zillich's books had a total circulation of around 1.5 million copies. In the late 1930s and 1940s he was one of the "top authors" of the Nazi cultural magazine Das Innere Reich . In his magazine publications during this time, Zillich presented himself as the "completely carefree National Socialist, plagued by no recognizable doubts". In 1940 the Romanian citizen was given German citizenship as a “ Volksdeutscher ”. In 1941 he became a member of the NSDAP and was briefly discussed in 1943 (alongside people such as Hans Friedrich Blunck , Hans Carossa , Wilhelm Pinder and Heinrich von Srbik ) as a candidate for the presidency of the German Academy , the forerunner of the Goethe Institute . As an officer in the Wehrmacht, he was among other things the editor of the field post editions of German poetry during World War II .

After 1945

In the post-war years, Zillich denied any affinity for National Socialism. However, his speeches and journalistic publications showed no content-related break with his statements before 1945: In 1950 Zillich again propagated the task of the German people as “the guardian of the West”. Zillich wrote of Hitler in 1968 that he was a “genius”, “but had no sense of justice and was ultimately pathologically excessive. But it is not only his fault that until today Europe has not come to rest and to the right unity that could increase it to world power. ” According to Zillich in 1975, the Allied re-education after the end of the war and one that has ruled since then are more to blame for Germany's decline “Intellectual clique”, to which Zillich counted Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass , among others . “Your senses helped that we became the country with the lowest birth rates, that abortion is facilitated, that is, the annihilation of unborn children is tolerated, that mothers and wives are placed behind working women. They crippled love for sexual sport. "

Zillich tried to put the Holocaust into perspective (“The Basler Nachrichten once wrote that only about 300,000 were killed”). Even if his opinion on the “Jewish question” had not changed, he publicly held back on this point: “To look seriously at the Jewish question and to look for what caused it and why no people like the Jews, what our freedom is dangerous today not exactly confirmed. If you try to uncover the truth here, you will soon find yourself in Satan's kitchen. ”On the other hand, he praised the Palestinians fighting against Israel :“ The Palestinian terrorists want to recapture their lost homeland; they are patriots ”.

During the Cold War , this political stance did not hinder Zillich's career. He continued to work as a writer, his books appeared together with those of other Nazi authors such as Hans Grimm , Friedrich Griese and Gerhard Schumann in the company group of the publisher Herbert Fleissner , for example in Zillich's old publishing house Langen-Müller , and at Bertelsmann . He also became one of the most active functionaries of the West German expellee associations , was from 1952 spokesman and from 1963 honorary chairman of the Landsmannschaft of the Transylvanian Saxons . From 1959 to the age of 82 he was editor and author of the Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter . Under Zillich's leadership, these became a platform for "relativising and leveling the Nazi crimes and the abolition of the chronology of cause and effect," according to the Transylvanian historian Johann Böhm . Zillich was also a member of the East German Cultural Council , of the German Circle 58 founded to combat “subversive disintegration work” , honorary member of the right-wing German cultural organization European Spirit , speaker of the right-wing nationalist cultural association, the Society for Free Journalism, and author of the right-wing extremist magazine Nation Europa . In 1987 he was awarded the poet's stone shield from the Dichterstein Offenhausen association, which was banned in 1999 because of being re- employed by the National Socialists .

Zillich had been married since 1927 and had five children.

Literary work

In his books, Zillich describes the life and customs of Germans living abroad in Romanian Transylvania and their environment.

The evaluation of his works differs: Zillich supporters, especially from the Transylvanian circle, see in him a "de-ideologized classic of Romanian German literature", which enabled an "escape from the National Socialist everyday life into a so-called simple life" ". “Zillich was first and foremost a writer,” said the writer and publicist Hans Bergel , “unfortunately the political tone of the day found its way into his literary work.” And based on Zillich's novellas Der Urlaub (1933), Die Reinerbachmühle (1935) and Der Balticische Graf (1937) stated the literary scholar Peter Motzan "a rhetoric of the national and heroic".

For Zillich's critics, his works are part of National Socialist German propaganda abroad. The writer and publicist William Totok describes him as a “pioneer of Romanian German fascism”, for the philologist Horst Denkler he counts, like Hans Grimm, Bruno Brehm and Erna Blaas, to the “propagandists and apologists” within the Nazi writers. As evidence for this, among other things, Zillich's novella Der Zigeuner , first published in 1931, is used, in which the "readers get to know that strange, mostly of the strength and work of the other parasitic people's strike, without which the southeast cannot be imagined", so the contemporary publishing advertising. Furthermore, Zillich's main work Between Frontiers and Times , the development novel by a “young German warrior”. The novel was a great commercial success and was hymnically acclaimed by Nazi literary critics. The “literary pope” of the Third Reich Hellmuth Langenbucher considered the book, along with Grimm's novel Volk ohne Raum, to be one of the “great German poems of life”, while contemporary critics from abroad rated it as a pure “propaganda novel ”.

Honors

Publications (selection)

  • Forests and lantern light. Sibiu 1923.
  • The current. Medias 1924.
  • Current and Earth. Kronstadt 1929.
  • The gypsy. Schäßburg 1931.
  • Fall from childhood. Leipzig 1933.
  • The Caught Oak and Other Transylvanian Tales. Cologne 1935.
  • Come what will. Munich 1935.
  • The Reinerbachmühle . Leipzig 1935.
  • Between boundaries and times. Munich 1936.
  • The Baltic Count. Munich 1937.
  • The wheat bouquet. Munich 1938.
  • Nonsense and fuss. Funny stories from Transylvania. Munich 1940.
  • Transylvania and its fortifications , Langewiesche, Königstein i. Ts. 1941; from 1957 under the title "Transylvania. A Occidental Destiny", last edition 1982 (= The Blue Books ).
  • Storm of life. Vienna 1956.
  • Forests and lantern light. Munich 1978.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ s. Unteachable, rigid and repellent (letter from Zillich to Holzträger, January 13, 1980); Who is who? XVI (1969/70), Vol. 1, p. 1492; Zillich, Heinrich. In: Polunbi database writing and image 1900-1960. Oldenburg o. J.
  2. ↑ cit. n. Georg Maurer / Gerhard Wolf (ed.): Poetry is your world. Halle / Saale 1973, p. 324; see also Farewell to Heinrich Zillich. In: Neue Kronstädter Zeitung , July 1, 1988, p. 5.
  3. ↑ Zillich to Margul-Sperber , May 8, 1932, cited above. n. William Totok: Heinrich Zillich and the topography of displacement. In: Hjs , 1/1993, pp. 57-72.
  4. ↑ Zillich 1936, quoted in n. Klaus Popa : Zillich's political position in the 1930s. (1998). Website of the Hjs .
  5. ↑ cit. n. Frank-Lothar Kroll u. a. (Ed.): Werner Bergengruen. The existence of a writer in the dictatorship. Munich 2005, p. 151.
  6. ↑ a b Neither mythization nor blanket condemnation . In: Dossier Heinrich Zillich (1898–1988) (see web links).
  7. ↑ Heinrich Zillich: The Germans sent by God ... In: The leader. Poems for Adolf Hitler. Stuttgart / Berlin 1939, cit. n. Hans Holzträger: memory gaps and silence. In: Hjs , 6th vol., 1/1994, pp. 30-38.
  8. ↑ s. Questionable honor . In: Antifaschistische Nachrichten , 14/1998.
  9. ↑ Quotations: Horst Denkler: Janusköpfig. On the ideological physiognomy of the magazine “Das Innere Reich” (1934–1944). In: Ders., Karl Prümm (Hrsg.): The German literature in the Third Reich. Stuttgart 1976, p. 399 and 401
  10. ↑ s. Klaus Popa: Heinrich Zillich as an economic knight . Transylvania website .
  11. ↑ Fig. Of Zillich's NSDAP membership card in: Dossier Heinrich Zillich (1898–1988) . Part II (see web links).
  12. ↑ (Academy for Scientific Research and Maintenance of Germanness), s. Federal archive files , R 55 177; see also Deutsche Akademie, 1925-1945 , in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns .
  13. ↑ Münchner Merkur , November 30, 1950, quoted from: Hans Sakowicz, Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany . Hamburg / Vienna 2002, p. 418.
  14. ↑ In: South East German Quarterly leaves 3/1968, S. 157th
  15. ↑ Quotations from William Totok: Heinrich Zillich and the topography of displacement. In: Hjs , 1/1993, pp. 57-72.
  16. ↑ Quotes from: Unteachable, rigid and repellent (Zillich letter to Holzträger, January 13, 1980); also quoted in: Hans Holzträger: Memory gaps and silence. In: Hjs , 6th vol., 1/1994, pp. 30-38.
  17. ↑ Quotations from William Totok: Heinrich Zillich and the topography of displacement. In: Hjs , 1/1993, pp. 57-72.
  18. ↑ Hans Sakowicz / Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. Hamburg / Vienna 2002, p. 58f .; Stefan Busch: “And yesterday, Germany heard us”. Nazi authors in the Federal Republic. Würzburg 1998, p. 26 A68.
  19. ↑ Johann Böhm, quoted in n. Hans Holzträger: memory gaps and silence. In: Hjs , 6th vol., 1/1994, pp. 30-38; see also William Totok: Heinrich Zillich and the topography of displacement. In: Hjs , 1/1993, pp. 57-72.
  20. ↑ s. Who is who? XVI (1969/70), Vol. 1, p. 1492; Zillich, Heinrich. In: Polunbi database writing and image 1900–1960. Oldenburg undated; Hans-Dieter Bamberg: The Germany Foundation e. V. Studies on the forces of the “democratic center” and conservatism in the Federal Republic of Germany . Meisenheim am Glan 1978, p. 327; Questionable honor . In: Antifaschistische Nachrichten , 14/1998.
  21. ↑ s. Who is who? XVI (1969/70), Vol. 1, p. 1492.
  22. ↑ Quotations: William Totok: Heinrich Zillich and the topography of displacement. In: Hjs , 1/1993, p. 57; Brigitte Tontsch: A differentiated research into taboo topics. In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung v. April 2, 2004.
  23. ↑ Peter Motzan: The many ways to say goodbye. Transylvanian-German literature in Romania (1919–1989). A socio-historical outline. ( Memento from October 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Siebenbürger Sachsen in Baden-Württemberg. 50 years of the Landesgruppe der Landsmannschaft. 1999, chap. 15th
  24. ^ William Totok: Heinrich Zillich and the topography of displacement. In: Hjs , 1/1993, p. 57; Horst Denkler: Janus-headed. On the ideological physiognomy of the magazine “Das Innere Reich” (1934–1944). In: Ders., Karl Prümm (Hrsg.): The German literature in the Third Reich. Stuttgart 1976, p. 398.
  25. ↑ cit. n. Hans Sakowicz / Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. Hamburg / Vienna 2002, p. 418; For the Gypsy see also the short analysis on www.lesekost.de .
  26. ↑ Hans Sakowicz / Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. Hamburg / Vienna 2002, p. 418.
  27. ↑ Joop Wekking: Investigations into the reception of the National Socialist worldview in the denominational periodicals of the Netherlands 1933-1940. A contribution to comparative imagology. Amsterdam / Atlanta (GA) 1990, p. 390.
personal data
SURNAME Zillich, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and expellee official
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Brenndorf near Kronstadt
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1988
Place of death Starnberg