Heinz von Lichberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinz von Lichberg, actually Rudolf Gustav Ernst Heinz von Eschwege , (born September 7, 1890 in Marburg , † March 14, 1951 in Lübeck ) was a German writer and journalist . He came from a noble family in Hesse and was the only son of the Prussian Colonel Ernst von Eschwege (1858–1914).

Lolita

Heinz von Eschwege , who served as a cavalry officer in World War I, published poems in the magazines Jugend and Simplicissimus at an early age . In 1916 the Darmstadt-based Falken-Verlag published a collection of fifteen of his stories under the pseudonym Heinz von Lichberg under the title "Die verfluchte Gioconda". The ninth of these, only 18 pages long, was about a middle-aged intellectual who fell in love with the very young daughter of his carpenter while on a trip abroad; the girl named Lolita, who gave the story its title, dies in the end. In 1917 a small volume of poetry was published: "Vom Narrenspiegel der Seele".

Columnist

After the war, Lichberg worked as a journalist in Berlin. He wrote reports and feuilletons for Alfred Hugenberg's Scherl-Verlag and its Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger , but also published himself. In 1920 the little book “The big woman - little things from the life of some people” was published. However, he only became really well known in 1929 when he reported on the circumnavigation of the world with the airship “Graf Zeppelin” for the Scherl-Verlag with the collection “Zeppelin goes around the world” .

At the end of the Weimar Republic, Lichberg was clearly part of the nationalist camp. On January 30, 1933, it was Lichberg who, together with SA Sturmführer Wulf Bley, euphorically commented on the SA torchlight march in a nationwide radio broadcast. In May 1933 he became a member of the NSDAP , and soon afterwards he was a member of the cultural department of the Völkischer Beobachter party organ . His theater reviews did not go down well with party members, however, and from 1934 onwards he had to limit himself to lighter features articles that appeared mainly in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger ("Kater Julius on lodging visit", "Little spring, little love", " Mausi and the nut cream filling "," The dream of the big lot "). Obviously he found this unsatisfactory, and in 1935 he tried again to make a name for himself as a novelist with the cheerful novel "Nantucket Lightship", but apart from a commemorative publication two years later, this was his last book in print.

military service

The end of 1937 came Lichberg in the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces , where he reussierte. His membership in the NSDAP was suspended from June 23, 1938. He served in Department II of the Abwehr, founded by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris at the beginning of June 1938 and responsible for sabotage, provocation, connection with the ethnic Germans and propaganda, and seems to have been recruited by the Canaris circle be. In 1941 he was in the high command of Army Group C or North , a year later, meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel, in Abwehrkommando 204. In 1943 he was in the High Command of the Wehrmacht , again in Abwehrabteilung II. Later he was with the reserve battalion 600 in western Poland , in the so-called Wartheland . In February 1944 he was sent to Paris on an unknown assignment.

Post-war years

Lichberg came into British captivity from which he was released in April 1946. He moved to Lübeck and worked there for the Lübecker Nachrichten . He died after a brief illness on March 14, 1951. His marriage to Martha, née Küster, remained childless.

Nabokov's Lolita

Almost forty years after Lichberg's Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita was published in the USA in 1955 . It was only in 2004, almost 50 years later, that the literary scholar Michael Maar drew attention to the many similarities in structure and content between Lichberg's and Nabokov's Lolita (see lit.). Nabokov and Lichberg lived simultaneously in Berlin for 15 years, from 1922 to 1936. It is therefore very possible that Nabokov knew Lichberg's “Lolita” story and that it inspired him to write his novel decades later. However, Nabokov's masterpiece of modern literature can in no way be described as a plagiarism of the artistically insignificant horror story of 1916.

bibliography

  • The cursed Gioconda, Darmstadt, Falken-Verlag, 1916
  • The German Heart, Berlin, Stilke, 1917

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Maar: The traces of the Gioconda. With the letters to his wife Véra, the complete edition of Nabokov's works is completed. And the mystery of "Lolita" can now be cleared up. , in: Die Zeit, December 14, 2017, p. 49
personal data
SURNAME Lichberg, Heinz von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eschwege, Rudolf Gustav Ernst Heinz von (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Marburg
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1951
Place of death Lübeck