Hem Schüppel

Horst Ernst Merten "Hem" Schüppel (born May 6, 1923 in Plauen ; † August 21, 1987 in Friedrichsdorf ) was a German visual artist and poet. He was a professor of aesthetics and communication in Frankfurt am Main .

Life

After a Notabitur 1941 at the high school in Döbeln , he was drafted at age 17 into the army and came to the war in the Battle of Berlin in Soviet captivity. In autumn 1945 he returned from captivity and began studying German, social education and art in Austria and Switzerland. At the age of 23 Schüppel worked as a teacher in the Soviet zone of occupation and became a founding member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany(LDPD) of Saxony. As part of this political commitment, he exerted significant influence on the municipal level in Döbeln as well as in the Dresden state parliament, so he campaigned in the state parliament for the preservation of culturally and historically valuable buildings that were threatened by decay or demolition. Because of his commitment he was threatened by persecution, but did not fled to the West like many of his LDPD party colleagues (including Wolfgang Mischnick ) and was arrested by the Soviet occupying forces on January 17, 1949, together with his brother Hansulrich. As a political prisoner he was finally imprisoned at the age of 26 in Potsdam ( Lindenstrasse "), Bautzen (" Gelbes Elend ") and in Halle / Saale ( Roter Ochse ) for" diversion and espionage ", by a Soviet military tribunal in accordance with Article 58 -6 ( "Espionage") and 58-10 ("anti-Soviet propaganda") were sentenced to death and spent a year in solitary confinement with the daily threat of carrying out this death sentence. In 1950 his case was negotiated again and Schüppel was “pardoned” four times for 25 years of forced labor and transferred from Bautzen to the Soviet Vorkuta labor camp . Vorkuta is located north of the Arctic Circle in the far north of the Urals and was one of the largest camp regions in the Soviet gulag system . The prisoners worked in three shifts under the most primitive conditions in the coal pits there. Schüppel worked in shafts 9, 10 and 29. In shaft 29 he witnessed the prisoner uprising and the strike in 1953 , when six of the 17 departments of the Vorkuta complex rebelled against the prison conditions after Stalin's death, and witnessed the bloody suppression of the strike.

After five years in Vorkuta, he was released on October 12, 1955 through the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the FRG, in connection with the release of the prisoners of war, as part of the return of the ten thousand , with many other German-speaking political prisoners.

After his release from prison, Hem Schüppel settled in the west, taught in a village near Erbach at the Gütterbach school and started a family. He was married since 1957. In 1958 his son, Ulf Schüppel , was born his daughter in 1961. His new beginning was marked by visits to Switzerland and Austria, where he took part in further training at Pestalozzi and SOS Children's Villages.

Hem Schüppel, who had lived in Friedrichsdorf im Taunus since 1968, worked here as the educational director of the Hessian Landvolk University . In 1973 he was appointed professor for aesthetics and communication in the social pedagogy department at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences . Innovative projects in the fields of art education and gerontology , where he was particularly interested in Scandinavian project developments, were the focus of his research and teaching.

Since the mid-1960s, numerous exhibitions and readings of his poetry have taken place at home and abroad. Since the beginning of 1974 he was chairman of the German Association of Artists Taunus . In 1978 his volume of poetry came out: "Signs carved on the walls of time". Together with the actor Moritz Stöpel , who accompanied his poetry with music (piano, guitar), numerous readings took place at home and abroad. In the 1970s he was commissioned to design a pottery fountain in Friedrichsdorf , the concept of which he took over in the following years with the involvement of the citizens.

From 1977 to 1987 he was a member of the Free German Association of Authors (FDA). During this time he published his volumes of poetry: “Rufzeichen in Taubenblau”, “Feel with all your senses” and together with Cesar Manrique (gouaches) “Lanzarote, olivine and lava wine”. Hem Schüppel was a co-founder of the musical and visual workshop in Friedrichsdorf. In February 1987 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Federal Cross of Merit) on ribbon. Hem Schüppel died on August 21, 1987.

Works

• 1978: Volume of poetry “Signs scratched on the walls of time. Impressions of my world in four aspects ”. Bläschke Verlag, Darmstadt; ISBN 3-87561-745-2 .
• 1981: Volume of poetry: "rufzeichen in taubenblau", Bläschke Verlag, Darmstadt; ISBN 3-7053-1421-1 .
• 1986: Volume of poetry: “Feel with all your senses: something thought about in the Jägerwinkel”, Welm-Verlag, Frankfurt / M .; ISBN 392585701X .
• 1986: "Lanzarote, olivine and lava wine". Poetry by Hem Schüppel, gouaches by César Manrique , Stuttgart, Zurich; ISBN 3-7630-1635-X .

Awards

• 1987: Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

• Wladislaw Hedeler , Horst Hennig (ed.): Black pyramids, red slaves. The strike in Vorkuta in the summer of 1953. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007, pp. 278 ff, ISBN 978-3-86583-177-4 .
• Olivia Kroth: Time travel in the Taunus. A brief cultural history of the region between the Rhine, Main and Lahn . Societäts-Verlag, 2002, pp. 85ff, ISBN 3797308094 .

Web links

• Portrait of Schüppels , accessed on May 13, 2012.
• Article in fr-online , accessed on May 13, 2012.