Hermann Häfker

Hermann Wilhelm Häfker (born June 3, 1873 in Bremen , † December 27, 1939 in Mauthausen ) was a German writer who died as a political prisoner in the Mauthausen concentration camp .

Life

At the age of twenty he wrote his first monograph on Shakespeare 's cycle of sonnets ( What does Shake-speare say?, 1896). He believed he had found a key that would resolve the many ambiguities and contradictions in this mysterious work. The professional world did not get involved in this contribution by an outsider, especially since the author linked his views with the “Shakespeare-Bacon theory”, which the specialist philologists had already shelved.

In the early days of film history, when the "Kintopp" was still considered cheap popular amusement, the passionate amateur photographer Häfker began to be interested in the new medium because, like other cinema reformers of the time, he recognized the possibilities of taking cinematography to a higher level to raise yes to the rank of art. As a freelancer for the first specialist magazine, Der Kinematograph , and later for the magazine Bild und Film , he soon became one of the leading cinema reformer. In particular, he was regarded as the most important film theorist of his time alongside Gustav Melcher .

With the resources of an association Bild und Wort , which he founded , he put together his own sample programs, which the audience thoroughly enjoyed. Fundamental to Häfker's concept was that the then very short, only minutes long films were not only unwound mechanically one after the other, as is customary everywhere, but brought into a well-considered order, separated by short pauses, presented with short introductory lectures, interrupted at appropriate points by still images and above all accompanied by sophisticated noises and music "behind the curtain". But all of this was too time-consuming and costly for open-minded imitators to find.

His writing Kino und Kunst , which appeared in the Lichtbildbühne library in 1913 , was soon recognized as the “most advanced programmatic writing of the pre-war cinema reform” (Helmut H. Diederichs). Cinema and Geography and The Cinema and the Educated were soon to appear in the same series . In the latter, he explained in detail his conviction that the popular cinema dramas , which he disparagingly called "feature films", could not have a future because the silent mime films were not able to express differentiated thoughts and feelings. But, of all things, his mocking word coining has survived to this day. He was no longer able to acknowledge or even inspire the triumphal march of the sound film that began in 1928.

After the outbreak of World War I , Häfker shifted his literary focus to the topic of popular education, and he was particularly keen on a paper on peace that had been planned long before the war. When, contrary to expectations, at the end of 1916 he still received the draft order for military service, his projects first sank “into the ashes”. Häfker was able to serve his two years of service as a simple soldier in the Guard Infantry in the home service. After his father died in August 1917 and his wife and children moved to his parents' house in Bremen, he was able to have himself transferred to Bremen shortly before Christmas 1917.

In August 1918 he became the Bremen representative of the cinema reformer Dr. Erwin Ackerknecht in Szczecin founded the Picture Stage Association of German Cities , which also finally released him from military service. At the same time, towards the end of the war, he became involved in current politics for the first and last time in his life. He found a like-minded group of anarchists in the Worpswede artists' colony, namely Heinrich Vogeler , Ludwig Bäumer and Carl Emil Uphoff . Häfker wrote a pamphlet on "Gemeinwirtschaft", and Vogeler founded a labor commune in his "Barkenhoff" based on this principle.

For the Bremen Council Republic , which was founded on January 10th after the November Revolution , he drafted a “transitional constitution” as a stopover to the forecast “community economy”. On February 4, the council government had to surrender when a free corps deployed by the provisional SPD government marched in. Hermann Häfker was also arrested, but given an amnesty after a few weeks.

After the founding of the KPD (on January 1, 1919), Häfker and Vogeler became a member of this party, but resigned only a few months later because of too different ideas.

After the establishment of the “reaction”, Häfker founded his own “work school” in Falkenberg, following the example of the “Barkenhoff Commune”, after he had sold his father's house for it. This project failed and ended with a personal, mental and spiritual breakdown.

For about four years, Häfker has not published anything since then, financially kept afloat by the patron Ludwig Roselius, founder of the global company Kaffee-HAG.

The constellation book

He opened up a new subject area that lastingly expanded his own view of the world: the emergence of culture, religion, worldview, science in early human history. He translated the world epic Gilgamesh in poetic form, bridged the gaps with connecting text and in a fundamental afterword he drew the quintessence of what he considered to be “the most powerful epic I know”. His book of constellations (“A Book of Heaven and Weltanschauung”) , published two years later, and his adaptation of Biblical Stories from the Old Testament also belong in this context . He drew a summary of his findings in one volume in his World History, published in 1928 . The world history Jarmiloj pasas (“centuries pass”) , written in Esperanto , is a partial revision and expansion .

In the meantime, his wife Selma, née Jäckel, had died of lung cancer in December 1926, after which, for the first time in his life, in addition to his literary work, he also personally looked after his eight children, now between the ages of three and eighteen, and the design of the Had to take care of the family household.

In 1932 he married again, a woman 37 years his junior, and the following year he had another son from this marriage.

With the appearance of Hitler and National Socialism on the political stage, Häfker felt a new political responsibility. He is said to have warned President Hindenburg in writing not to appoint him Chancellor; According to another family memory, he is said to have accused several Nazi leaders of electoral fraud and also refused to join the Reichsschrifttumskammer. After a temporary arrest, in March 1936, he escaped another by fleeing to Prague in order to prepare for emigration to England for himself and his family from there. The invasion of German troops in March 1939 prevented it. He became one of the first inmates of the Dachau concentration camp, a quarter of a year later, on September 27, 1939, he was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp , where he officially died of "old age" on December 27.

Works

What does Shake-speare say? The self-confessions of the poet in his sonnets. A contribution to the Shakespeare-Bacon question. 1896
Cinema and art. 1913
Bicycle travel and outdoor education. 1914
Cinema and geography. 1914
The tasks of cinematography in this war. 1914
The cinema and the educated. 1915
Gilgamesh. A seal from Babylon. 1924
Sexuality, love and kindness. A piece of information for my growing children. 1925
Biblical Stories from the Old Testament. 1925-26 (3 vols.).
The constellation book. A book of heaven and worldview. 1926
World history in one volume. 1928
Education for love. 1929. - 2., reworked. Edition 1930
Yarmiloj pasas. Universala historio. (A world history in Esperanto). 1930/31

literature

Helmut H. Diederichs: Hermann Häfker - film theorist, cinema reformer In: Cinégraph , Lg.3, 1985, D1-D4
Helmut H. Diederichs: Beginnings of German film criticism . Fischer + Wiedleroither, Stuttgart 1986.
Helmut H. Diederichs: Nature film as a total work of art. Hermann Häfker and his "cinetography" concept . In: Eye-Look . Marburger Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft, No. 8: The silent film as a total work of art . Marburg 1990, pp. 37-60.
Helmut H. Diederichs: Film criticism and film theory . - In: Wolfgang Jacobsen (ed.): History of German film . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1993, pp. 451-464.
Helmut H. Diederichs: Early history of German film theory. Their origins and development up to the First World War . University of Frankfurt; 1996; especially chap. III.D.4 Cinema as a total work of art: Hermann Häfker , pp. 471–535.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Häfker, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Häfker, Hermann Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German writer
DATE OF BIRTH	June 3, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bremen
DATE OF DEATH	December 27, 1939
Place of death	Mauthausen