Hermann von Wedderkop

Hermann von Wedderkop , also Hans von Wedderkop and Harro von Wedderkop (born November 29, 1875 in Mecklenburg ; † 1956 ), also known by his nickname Weddo , was a German writer, translator and editor of the journal Der Cross from 1924 to 1931.

Life

Wedderkop, originally a government assessor in Cologne , met Alfred Flechtheim in Paris in 1907 , the art dealer and later founder of the cross-section . In 1912 he wrote a small exhibition guide for the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. During the First World War , Wedderkop was civil commissioner for the German civil administration in Brussels . There he met Gottfried Benn and Thea Sternheim , among others . At this time he is said to have had an affair with Yvonne George .

At the beginning of the 20s Wedderkop was on the advisory committee of the artists' association Das Junge Rheinland . In 1920 he published his first volume on Paul Klee in the Young Art series at Klinkhardt & Biermann Leipzig , which was also the first monograph on Klee. In 1921 a second volume followed on Marie Laurencin . In the same year he worked for the cross section , which developed from the gallery news published by Flechtheim . As publisher, Wedderkop succeeded in making the cross-section the leading German Zeitgeist magazine of the 1920s: open to the artistic avant-garde , such as Pablo Picasso , Marc Chagall or Fernand Léger , as well as to the heroes of boxing, ironically elitist and with artistic photos male and female nude models garnished. In Ernest Hemingway's posthumously published memoirs " Paris - A Moveable Feast " Wedderkop is mentioned as a buyer of his works and as awfully nice : described (in German nice terrible). The fact that Wedderkop 1929 by Ullstein publishing one editor put to the side and he by his publisher post of May 1931 in cross-section has been removed to by Wilmont Haacke some journalistic Wedderkops with enthusiasm for Benito Mussolini have had to do. Wedderkop visited Mussolini on May 5 and October 10, 1930 and on May 28, 1935. He spent most of the Nazi period in Italy.

“Wedderkop […], who became very well known as the editor of the cross-section, but never as anything else. Wedderkop was neither a Berliner nor a writer, but a government assessor in Cologne; he later published travel guides and one or two novels, but he remained a literary amateur. He could be a character by Carl Sternheim : brash with a slight self- satirical ; cynical with a hint of temper ; blasé with seigneural airs , less out of a need for recognition than to offend the citizen. "

- Ernst Stein, Die Zeit . 2nd August 1968.

“Wedderkop, to this day a great stranger, was certainly the best German journalist before the Second World War - unlike Samuel Fischer's Neue Rundschau or Tucholsky / Jacobsohn's Weltbühne , which owed their reputation to the authors alone and otherwise celebrated the lead desert as a design principle, made by Hermann von Wedderkop Flechtheim's magazine Cross-section of the optical central organ of the avant-garde : What a magazine! The year 1927 was cut out of the face, forgotten about history, lustful for associations, nervous, always trying to smash heroes , soften hierarchies and make the wildest visual connections wide awake. The art here was a variety of life - her pictures appeared next to those of boxers, of people on the beach and ancient frescoes. "

- Florian Illies , Die Zeit . 15th November 2017.

Wedderkop rejected the "old literature" about Gerhart Hauptmann and Thomas Mann and advocated a realistic social novel . In 1927 he himself submitted a corresponding, autobiographical attempt to the S. Fischer Verlag with Adieu Berlin . The novel, set in the North Sea resort of Kampen , was not given much attention. Wedderkop's alternative travel books about Cologne, Düsseldorf and Bonn (1928), Paris (1929), London and Rome (1930) and Northern Italy (1931), published by Piper Verlag in the series Was nicht im “Baedeker”, were more successful . After 1938 (first edition of "How to Win Friends" in Zurich) Wedderkop appeared as translator for the motivational speaker and author Dale Carnegie , and in later editions even as a co-author. Wedderkop also translated Et in Arcadia ego by the Italian writer Emilio Cecchi .

The book Deutsche Graphik des Westens published by Wedderkop was put on the list of harmful and undesirable literature by the Reich Chamber of Literature in 1938.

Works

• The wrong note; a musical novel. Scientia, Zurich 1940.
• Sicily. Fate of an island. Scientia, Zurich 1940.
• The unknown Berlin. A guide through streets, time and people. Weicher Verlag, Leipzig / Berlin, 1936.
• The Book of Northern Italy. Piper, Munich 1931.
• The Book of Rome. Piper, Munich 1931 and 1939.
• The Rhine from the Alps to the sea. Schaubücher 40. Zurich: Orell Füssli, 1931
• The Book of London. Piper, Munich 1930.
• The Book of Paris. Piper, Munich 1929.
• The book of Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bonn. Piper, Munich 1928.
• German graphics of the west. Feuerverlag, Weimar 1922.
• Paul Cezanne. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1922 (as Harro von Wedderkop).
• Marie Laurencin. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1921 (as Harro von Wedderkop).
• Paul Klee. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1920 (as Harro von Wedderkop).

literature

• Wilmont Haacke, Alexander von Baeyer (ed.): The cross section. Facsimile cross section through the cross section 1921-1936. Ullstein-TB 4716, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1977, ISBN 3-548-04716-5 ; previously at Scherz, Munich / Bern / Vienna 1968 as a facsimile cross-section through the cross-section DNB 456 595 031 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DURCH SCHNITT KUNST In: taz. die tageszeitung , March 20, 1990. pp. 24–25.

Web links

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