Herybert Menzel

Herybert Menzel

Herybert Menzel (born August 10, 1906 in Obornik near Posen , † February 1945 in Tirschtiegel near Posen) was a German poet and writer at the time of National Socialism and a member of the Bamberg circle of poets .

Life

Menzel was the son of a postal secretary and grew up in the border town of Tirschtiegel. After High School in Crossen , he studied two semesters law in Breslau and Berlin . Then he settled as a freelance writer in his hometown. In 1926 he published his first independent publication, the volume of poetry Mond, Sonne und Stern und Ich. Little songs .

The tensions between Poles and Germans in the border region of Posen-West Prussia shaped his artistic work . Menzel explores this conflict-laden atmosphere in his home region in the works Grenzmärkische Sagen (1929) and Der Grenzmark-Blackpe. Grenzmärkische sagas, stories, ballads and poems (1933) as well as in his first novel Controversial Earth (1930). The latter had several editions with a total of at least 56,000 copies by 1943. With the novel

“It is aesthetically, but also ideologically, a simply knitted, vulgar-racist text that uses an undemanding friend-foe dichotomy. It takes place around 1918/20, towards the end of the First World War and in the following twelve months, in the province of Posen and deals with the conflict between the previous German ruling class and their opponent, the Polish population. The concrete historical reference point is the [...] Poznan (or Wielkopolska) uprising . "

Menzel joined the NSDAP and the SA before 1933 (in 1943 he achieved the rank of Sturmbannführer ). After the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists, Menzel was best known for his poems , songs and cantatas . In October 1933 he was one of the 88 writers who made the “ vow of most loyal allegiance ” for Adolf Hitler . Poems in his volume of poetry Im Marching Step of the SA (1933) contributed to his reputation as "Homer of the SA". His productions also found their way into mass media literature as propaganda contributions:

In front of the picture of the Fiihrer
If I only have doubts, I look at your picture,
your eye tells me what applies to us alone.
I
talk to you for many an hour, as if you were close and now knew about me.
Wherever someone becomes silent before the act,
He comes to you, you best comrade.
In your face it is serious and pure,
What it means to be Germany's son.

Menzel published in the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter , in the series “Young People” and contributed to the HJ yearbook The Young Team . On the occasion of the 6th anniversary of Horst Wessel's death in 1936, he wrote the cantata Ewig lives die SA , which was performed on February 23, 1936 in 739 cities in the German Empire. From 1933 to 1935 he was a member of the board of the Reich Association of German Writers . He was a member of the Reichstag , which was insignificant during the National Socialist era , from March 29, 1936. In 1938 he became a member of the Bamberg circle of poets .

During his (first) military service for the " Third Reich " in June 1940, Menzel suffered such serious injuries in France that he had to be treated in hospitals for almost a year and finally left in November 1941 after serving in a convalescent company Was discharged from military service. Menzel now fully devoted himself to his work as a freelance writer and now also wrote dramatic and prose texts as well as a chamber play. In his last published volume of poetry, Anders we return again (1943), Menzel's disparaging, inhumane attitude towards the Slavic (especially Polish) population is revealed again. This becomes clear, for example, from the following verses, which refer to Warsaw, which was captured by the Wehrmacht , and its inhabitants.

[…] Since the fire was already soot, / The corpse haze disappeared, the survivors / Again haggling and laughing and lusting / And all this denies; the mouths are red / greed grows in horror; this was ripe, / O, overripe for damnation. […] / […], We force ourselves to lock step again, we winners. / Boots, dustier, further through dust! You meet / nothing that was not rejected.

The writer also pursued propaganda in the sense of the Nazi regime on his lecture tours to Norway (1941) and Bulgaria (1942). Poems by him found their way into the flag and battle slogans of the Hitler Youth.

It can be assumed that Menzel was drafted into the Volkssturm at the beginning of 1945 as a reaction to the winter offensive of the Red Army and died in battle. An exchange of letters shows that, for fear of an upcoming house search, Menzel's mother agreed to burn her son's estate, which also contained unpublished writings, in 1946.

After the end of National Socialism, his writings were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone and in the German Democratic Republic .

Jan-Pieter Barbian counts Menzel in the guards of Nazi apologists ... who expressed the political guidelines of those in power in and with their works.

Menzel was a close friend of the Siewert sisters, the painter Clara Siewert and especially the writer Elisabeth Siewert , after whose death in 1930 he wrote an obituary in the Ostdeutsche Monatshefte.

A poem by Menzel with the title “Der Kamerad” was used by Konrad Kujau as an alleged Hitler poem in the context of the Hitler diaries forged by him.

Honors

• 1938 Literature Prize of the Reich Capital Berlin (3rd place, for the poems of comradeship )
• 1939 Earnings from the Harry Kreismann Foundation
• 1940 Culture Prize of the SA (for Menzel's complete works)

Fonts

• Moon and sun and star and me. Little songs , 1926
• Fascinated. Poems , 1930
• Controversial Earth , novel, 1930
• Franz Lüdtke, the East German man and poet , 1932
• The Grenzmark black horse. Legends, stories, ballads and poems from the Grenzmark , 1933
• At the march of the SA. Poems , 1933
• We are the victory! , 1934
• The great harvest. Cantata , 1935
• The great vow. A cantata , 1935
• God blazes in our banners. Cantata , 1935
• Poems of Comradeship , 1936
• When we're under flags. Songs of the Movement , 1938
• Everything that is alive shines. Poems of a Decade , 1938
• Germany, holy Germany! The Great Vow , 1938
• The SA lives forever. A celebration , 1938
• Mr. Figulla's shop window. Cheerful Stories , 1941
• The Seven Stars , novel, 1942
• The peace ship. Satire in 3 acts , 1943
• We return differently. Poems , 1943
• Napoleon again? Comedy , 1943
• Introduction to Hermann Harz, The Experience of the Reichsautobahn . A picture , dedication: "In memory of the creator of the Reichsautobahn Reichsminister Dr. Fritz Todt ." Foreword by Albert Speer . Edited by Reich Ministry Speer , Georg DW Callwey , undated (1943) Munich
• The letter. A chamber play in 3 acts , 1944

literature

• Lisa Lader, Wulf Segebrecht: Herybert Menzel. In: The Bamberg Poets' Circle 1936-1943. Peter Lang, Frankfurt (Main) 1987 ISBN 3820401040 pp. 192-197
• Hans Sarkowicz, Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. A biographical lexicon. , exp. New edition, Europa, Hamburg 2002, pp. 309–311
• Erich Stockhorst: 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1 (unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1967).
• Rolf Düsterberg : Death and Transfiguration. The Nazi propaganda poet Herybert Menzel. International Archive for the Social History of German Literature IASL, 35 (2010), no . 2, Verlag Walter de Gruyter , Berlin 2010 ISSN  0340-4528 ; electronic: ISSN  1865-9128
• Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the singer of the "Ostmärkische SA". In: ders. (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich" , Vol. 2, Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2011 ISBN 9783895288555 pp. 143–173

Web links

• Literature by and about Herybert Menzel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Herybert Menzel in the database of members of the Reichstag
• "The man grows up" (poem)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 146.
2. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 147f.
3. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 148.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the “singer of the East Markets SA” . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 156.
5. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 406.
6. ↑ cit. according to: Siegener Zeitung, January 30, 1943; see also: Ernst Klee, Kulturlexikon , p. 406. Christian Ingrao , Hitler's Elite. BpB , Bonn 2012, pp. 90 - 92 quotes 4 other poems and describes in detail their use in a ceremony, an SS wedding in Posen
7. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, pp. 155, 157.
8. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 159f.
9. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 163.
10. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 164f.
11. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 166.
12. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, pp. 166–168.
13. ↑ Herybert Menzel: We return differently. Poems . Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1943, p. 11. Quoted in Düsterberg (2011), p. 168.
14. ^ Karl Emerich Krämer (ed.): Flag sayings. Published by the war support service of the Hitler Youth in the Mainfranken area (39). Georg Graßer (print), Würzburg 1944, pp. 3 f., 13 f., 30 and 35.
15. ^ Rolf Düsterberg: Herybert Menzel - the "singer of the East Markets" . In the S. (Ed.): Poet for the "Third Reich". Volume 2. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2011, p. 168f.
16. ^ Letter M, list of literature to be discarded. Published by the German Administration for Public Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone. Preliminary edition as of April 1, 1946 (Berlin: Zentralverlag, 1946). In: www.polunbi.de. Retrieved August 19, 2016 . 
17. ^ Letter M, list of literature to be discarded. Published by the German Administration for Public Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone. First addendum based on January 1, 1947 (Berlin: Zentralverlag, 1947). In: www.polunbi.de. Retrieved August 19, 2016 . 
18. ^ Letter M, list of literature to be discarded. Published by the Ministry for National Education of the German Democratic Republic. Third supplement based on April 1, 1952 (Berlin / GDR: VEB Deutscher Zentralverlag, 1953). In: www.polunbi.de. Retrieved August 19, 2016 . 
19. ^ National Socialism and Literary Politics . Series: Hanser's Social History of German Literature, 9: National Socialism and Exile 1933 - 1945. Munich 2009 ISBN 3423043512 pp. 76f.
20. ^ Herybert Menzel: To the death of Elisabeth Siewert. In: Ostdeutsche Monatshefte, 11th year, 1930, pp. 506–508. See also the introduction to Menzel's contribution in the same place by the editor Carl Lange .
21. ↑ Chronik, Hamburger Abendblatt, March 3, 2008, see: [1] .
22. ^ "Reichsministerium Speer" printed, official note in the book