Josef Magnus Wehner

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Dedication of the Langemarck monument on July 10, 1932

Josef Magnus Wehner (born November 14, 1891 in Bermbach , † December 14, 1973 in Munich ) was a German writer and playwright.

Life

He was born in Bermbach (Buttlar) in 1891. His parents were Justus Wehner and Maria Josephine Wehner, née Hahn.

Wehner studied German and classical philology in Jena and Munich. He took part in the First World War as a volunteer in a Bavarian infantry regiment . In 1916 he was seriously wounded near Verdun .

After the war he began to write stories and poetry . In 1924 he found employment as an editor for the Münchner Zeitung . From 1934 the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten published his theater reviews.

On the occasion of the inauguration of the Langemarck memorial on July 10, 1932, he, who had been wounded on the Western Front himself, gave a speech that later became widespread and underpinned the Langemarck myth . At the same time commemorations took place throughout the German Reich.

His breakthrough as a writer and at the same time his greatest success came in 1930 with his novel Sieben vor Verdun , which was directed against Erich Maria Remarque's bestseller , Nothing New in the West and which represented a different, allegedly much better side of war experiences. The novel is characterized by enthusiasm for the war and a glorification of German soldiers.

In May 1933 the National Socialists appointed him to the Prussian Academy of the Arts , in the meanwhile "cleaned" section for poetry. He was one of the 88 writers who signed the pledge of loyal allegiance to Adolf Hitler in October 1933 . After 1933 Wehner joined the NSDAP . He fended off press attacks that referred to him as an “economic National Socialist” by pointing to his positive attitude towards National Socialist ideology and Hitler , whom he saw as the bearer of hope for the realization of his idea of ​​the Reich , which had already existed in the early twenties . In addition, with his publications, he also contributed to giving the German soldier the respect he deserved against a wave of defamatory literature.

He received an annual pension from Joseph Goebbels . Munich appointed him an "honorary officer" after he had already received the literary prize of the state capital of Munich in 1931 .

His ideas of a German empire, which was shaped not only by nationalism and racism but also by Catholicism, found less and less approval among those in power in the Nazi state .

During the Second World War , Wehner was primarily active in propaganda through speeches. In 1940 the Reichsender Köln broadcast its “Address to the German People”, which was intended to increase enthusiasm for the war. His "Hymne an Deutschland" appeared on a record as a poetry reading.

After the end of the war, Wehner denied his National Socialist convictions. His other novels, poems and also plays, with which he continued the style of his beginnings and which expressed his Catholic beliefs with a tendency towards mysticism, only found attention in his region of origin, in which he had lived until the end of school . Here protagonists came together who stylized him into a religious, highly talented poet.

Several of Wehner's works were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone and in the German Democratic Republic .

Works

Novels

Stories, short stories and legends

  • The most powerful woman, 1922
  • The legend of the drops, 1923
  • The hare's mouth, 1930
  • The pilgrimage to Paris, 1933
  • Stories from the Rhön, 1935
  • The great Lord's Prayer, 1935
  • Elisabeth, 1939
  • Akhenaten and Nefertiti , 1940
  • The slow wedding (ca.1943)
  • The golden year (1943)
  • The red ball (ca.1944)
  • Three legends, 1949
  • The black robber of Haiti, 1951
  • The beautiful young Lilofee, 1953

Dramas

  • The thunderstorm, 1926
  • The Temptation of Rabanus Maurus (ca.1950)
  • John the Baptist , 1952
  • The rose miracle, 1954
  • The Fulda Bonifacius Game, 1954
  • Saul and David, 1954
  • But they hold out until the end, 1956
  • The golden calf, 1961
  • Abbot Sturmius von Fulda, 1967

Poetry

  • The Hamlet of God, 1920
  • Flower poems, 1950
  • Earth, purple flame, 1962

Biographies

Autobiographies

  • My life, 1934
  • When we were recruits, 1938

Honors

In Hünfeld, Joseph-Magnus-Wehner-Strasse was named after him.

literature

  • Joachim S. Hohmann : "Party comrade Wehner has an interest in being unencumbered as a National Socialist ..." The life and work of the war and local poet Josef Magnus Wehner . Zeitdruck, Fulda 1988, ISBN 3-924789-12-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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. 649.
  2. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-w.html
  3. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-w.html
  4. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-w.html
personal data
SURNAME Wehner, Josef Magnus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Bermbach
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1973
Place of death Munich