Hermann Sendelbach

Hermann Sendelbach (born April 8, 1894 in the hamlet of Erlenbach ; † June 12, 1971 in Schliersee ) was a Franconian poet .

Life

Aerial view of the hamlet of Erlenbach (Karlstadt). In the background Rettersbach and Mariabuchen

Hermann Sendelbach was born as the first child of the farmer's couple Otto and Christine Sendelbach on April 8, 1894 in the hamlet of Erlenbach, which was part of the then independent municipality of Wiesenfeld (today part of the city of Karlstadt ) and is located on the Franconian Platte, and grew up there until he was 13 years old on his parents' farm. Here he attended the small school and had a happy childhood together with his sister Anna, who was seven years his junior.

The death of his mother, suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, on January 13, 1907, ended this carefree first phase of Sendelbach's life. On May 1, 1907, he moved to his aunt in Reuchelheim (today part of the town of Arnstein ) in the Werntal and attended the local preparation school in Arnstein . Here he came into contact for the first time with works of literature that made a lasting impression on him and influenced him for the future.

In 1910 Sendelbach entered the Würzburg teacher training college and, after his first state examination, was employed as a substitute teacher in Hausen (today the district of Würzburg) and Duttenbrunn (today part of the market in Zellingen). He got a permanent job in Pflaumheim near Aschaffenburg in 1914 and in Aschaffenburg itself in September of the same year.

On November 25, 1914, Sendelbach was drafted into the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 5 for military service and deployed on the Western Front until the end of the war, where he was wounded several times. His first poems were written at this time.

Dismissed as a lieutenant in the reserve in December 1918, Sendelbach resumed a teaching position in Aschaffenburg-Damm in January 1919 and passed his second state examination in Würzburg. Sendelbach published his text "Don't forget it!" In the publishing house of the "Volkszeitung" in Aschaffenburg, in which he describes his experiences in the First World War . He studied for two years in Jena, Würzburg and Munich, then he had to break off further studies due to the lack of money due to inflation. After a brief employment as a teacher in Schweinheim near Aschaffenburg, he exchanged positions with a fellow teacher and moved to Munich, where he worked from then on at the elementary school in Kirchenstrasse.

On February 27, 1923 he married Johanna Wiesengrund, a relative of Theodor W. Adorno . In Munich he found a circle of colleagues who were interested in literature. During the war he had already met the writer Georg Britting , with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In addition to participating in a briefly published magazine "Das Gegenspiel" in 1925, his first volume of poetry "Aufgesang" was published in 1928. Further poetry publications in book form and in newspapers and magazines received benevolent recognition from such prominent fellow writers as Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse .

From 1932 to 1937 he made several trips abroad that took him to France, Italy and Hungary.

Although his wife, being “ half-Jewish ”, was not directly affected by the Nuremberg Laws , the Third Reich began a time of worry and fear for the Sendelbach couple. After all, it was impossible to foresee whether a tightening of the National Socialist race laws would not also include “half-Jews” in the “ final solution ”. After moving to the elementary school in Versailler Straße, Sendelbach worked in a Kinderlandverschickung camp in Kolbermoor from 23 August 1943 and in a corresponding camp in Endorf from January 1945.

As a politically unaffected person, Sendelbach was able to resume his old teaching position immediately after the end of the war. It was not until 1953 that another volume of his poetry appeared. In 1959 he retired. On June 12, 1971, Sendelbach died completely unexpectedly while on vacation in Schliersee. He is buried with his wife, who died three years later, in Munich's Ostfriedhof .

Sendelbach's literary work primarily consists of poetry determined by his Franconian homeland and his childhood memories. Smaller prose pieces found their way into reading books for Bavarian elementary schools as early as the 1920s. Today, apart from a selection volume published in 1976, his works are no longer in circulation and can only rarely be found in antiquarian books.

Works

• Don't forget it! 1919
• Singing, 1928
• One Way, 1929
• Call of confidence, 1933
• Earth Siblings, 1953
• Immeasurable Moment, 1956
• Seed and harvest - day and night. A peasant year, 1959
• From joyful trust, 1966
• John XXIII An epic attempt, 1973
• Child between Forests (selection), 1976

literature

• Hermann Schaub: The poet Hermann Sendelbach never forgot his homeland Erlenbach. In yearbook 2004/05. Karlstadt 2004, ISBN 3-9808818-8-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hermann Sendelbach in the catalog of the German National Library