Josef Ponten

Servatius Josef Ponten (born June 3, 1883 in Raeren near Eupen , † April 3, 1940 in Munich ) was a German writer , art historian and geographer .

Life

Memorial plaque in the Belgian German-speaking community of Raeren

Origin, marriage, studies

Servatius Josef Ponten spent his childhood in the triangle between Belgium , Germany and the Netherlands in the area of ​​Eupen. The landscape of the Lower Rhine between the Rhine and the Maas left its mark on him. In 1890 the family moved to Aachen , where he graduated from the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium . Subsequently, from 1903 Ponten studied philology in Geneva and Berlin , from 1904 to 1908 architecture and art history in Aachen . In 1908 he married Julia Freiin von Broich (1880–1947) after her father, Carl Arnold Maria Freiherr von Broich, lord of the castle and mayor of Richterich near Aachen, who had refused his daughter's consent to marry the short man, had died. Julia wrote poetry and painted. Ponten had given one of her brothers tutoring lessons at his father's palace in Schönau while he was in high school . After Josef Ponten had broken off his studies in the meantime, he received his doctorate in Bonn in 1922 with an art-historical dissertation on the painter Alfred Rethel .

Friendship with Thomas Mann

From 1920 the couple lived in Munich. As an autodidact , Josef Ponten had acquired extraordinary knowledge in the field of natural sciences and history, which is why he was mockingly called “Doctor All-Knowing”. In Munich he moved in literarily ambitious circles and met Thomas Mann , among others , with whom he had corresponded in letters since 1919. Mann had previously read Ponten's third novel, The Tower of Babylon , and was impressed, as his diary entries testify. He described him as a “naive” and “excessively German” author and promised him that from now on he would read everything he wrote. He was struck by the "primitive" and "real" nature of his poetry. The friendship between man and Ponten, which also included the wives, was intense and mutual. The couples often met to read aloud to each other and went on bike rides in the vicinity of the city. The relationship became more distant from 1924 after Ponten had called Thomas Mann a "writer" but called himself a "poet". Nevertheless, in 1926 Mann suggested Ponten for inclusion in the poetry section of the Prussian Academy of the Arts . In 1933 Thomas Mann ended the friendship unilaterally when Ponten confessed to Adolf Hitler .

Literary work

As a freelance writer, Josef Ponten created an extensive literary work with ten novels and more than 20 short stories in which he combined local art, expressionist elements and descriptions of landscapes. He also wrote works on art history and geography. His project of an “artistic description of the earth”, for which he has been known since his Greek Landscapes (1914), was incorporated into his fictional writings. His novel Die Studenten von Lyon ( The Students of Lyon) , which Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse valued and which was published after a long period of writing in 1927, is about five Calvinist martyrs in Lyon (1553) and was translated into Italian . It is particularly influenced by such landscape characterizations. His main work, People on the Road, the novel of German unrest , published from 1930 onwards is about emigrants to Russia . In 1925, Ponten was invited to an international geography congress in the Soviet Union , where he became aware of the Volga Germans . Applied to an indefinite number of volumes, he published six volumes in the 1930s on the history of German settlers on the Volga and in the Caucasus . Ponten's ever more extensive travels took him not only to Russia, but also to the Balkans and North Africa. In 1929 and 1937 he and his wife toured North and South America, where the couple traveled long distances in a Buick . In doing so, Ponten followed up on other emigrants' fates, which were no longer reflected in his books.

Relationship to National Socialism

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Ponten was one of the signatories of a declaration of loyalty from the Prussian Academy of Arts to Hitler for the Reichstag elections of March 1933, which was initiated by Gottfried Benn . Likewise, in October 1933, along with 87 other German writers, he was one of the signatories of the pledge of the most loyal allegiance to Adolf Hitler. The Völkischer Beobachter praised Ponten as the “epic among Germans abroad”. In 1936 he was awarded the Rhenish Poet Prize, and in 1938 the "Munich Poet Prize". Apparently Ponten did not join the NSDAP , but expected the regime to support his literary projects and trips abroad. Ponten's culturally conservative concept of landscape, which was based, among other things, on the influences of his youth and his romantic desire to travel, could easily be brought into line with ideas of blood and soil . Arnulf Scriba therefore puts Ponten's works in a row with the “folk-national ideologues and historical homeland novels” of National Socialist flagship authors such as Gustav Frenssen , Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer or Wilhelm Pleyer , whose ideas are mostly expressed in ideological currents the time of the Empire . Despite the conservative-national attitude, Ponten also saw himself as a cosmopolitan , "anti-nationalist" (Thomas Sprecher) and pacifist . Personally, he had prepared an idiosyncratic picture of National Socialism, which he also documented in writing and expressed in interviews: The "natural person" could accept a lot, and the "essence of real National Socialism" was to "give recognition".

Ponten's works were bestsellers until the 1930s . After 1945 he was regarded as a supporter of National Socialism and was hardly read any more. The Thomas Mann researcher Hans Wysling , who published Ponten's correspondence with Mann in 1988, describes him as a “fellow traveler” in the foreword of the edition. By Werner Berggruen 's remark comes: "Ponten was a vain, spreaded males intent on success and therefore ready for any concession to Nazism against."

Nonetheless, around 1936 he was “already violently hostile” by National Socialist circles who encountered the unifying tendencies in Ponten's work. In February 1938 the magazine Der SA-Mann published an anonymous letter to the editor, Ponten u. a. accused him of being " Jewish ", socializing with Jewish friends abroad, glorifying Soviet Russia, expressing disrespect for Hitler (Hitler's speeches contained "truisms") and was an admirer of Thomas Mann. Ponten defended himself in a long letter, which he passed on to Joseph Goebbels, in which he stood by his friendship with Mann: “It was a beautiful friendship between 1920 and 1924. It will go down in German literary history one day. All of us who struggled and struggled with the great German novel owe a lot to Mann. ”Subsequently, Ponten was observed by the Gestapo , his European travel book , published in 1928, was confiscated from the publisher, his apartment was searched and his passport confiscated. He was no longer allowed to travel abroad. The witness, who is said to have heard Ponten's comments critical of Hitler, did not, however, confirm the allegations, whereupon he remained at large. A short time later, Ponten died of angina pectoris , which he had suffered from for years.

Works

• Virginity. A novel. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1906.
  • New version: virginity. Story of a youth and love. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1920.
• Eye pleasure. A poetic study of the experience and a dance of death alphabet. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1907.
• (Ed.) Alfred Rethel . The master's works (= classics of art in complete editions. Vol. 17). German publishing company, Stuttgart 1911.
  • 2nd edition: Alfred Rethel. A selection from the master's life's work. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1921.
• Peter Justus. A comedy of the inhibitions of love. Novel. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1912.
• (Ed.) Alfred Rethel's letters. Published in selection. Cassirer, Berlin 1912.
• Greek landscapes. An attempt at artistic description of the earth. Color pictures, drawings, photographs by Julia Ponten von Broich. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1914.
  • New edition, new version: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Berlin 1924.
• The Babylonian Tower. History of language confusion in a family. Novel. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1918.
• The island. Novella. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1918.
• The buck riders. Novella. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1919.
• The master. Novella. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1919.
• Salt. A novel in disguise. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1921 f.
  • Volume 1: The boy Vielnam. 5 novellas. Scenes from a youth. 1921.
  • Volume 2: The youth in masks. Five stories from a maturing life. 1922.
• Studies on Alfred Rethel. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1922.
• The clock of gold. Narrative. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1923.
• The glacier: a story from Obermenschland. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1923.
• Little prose. Lintz, Trier 1923.
• The jungle. Narrative. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1924.
• Self-portrait from 1920 (= Confessions. H. 7). Society of Book Friends, Chemnitz 1924.
• with Josef Winckler : Das Rheinbuch. A festival by Rhenish poets. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1925.
• Architecture that wasn't built. Heinz Rosemann and Hedwig Schmelz are involved. 2 volumes. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1925.
• Seven Sources. Landscape novel. With an afterword by Hanns Martin Elster . German Book Community, Berlin 1926.
• The Luganese countryside. With 12 pictures after watercolors by Hermann Hesse and Julia Ponten. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1926.
• The last trip. A story. Quitzow, Lübeck 1926.
• Rethel's honeymoon. Tale of an artist's end. Fischer, Berlin 1927.
• From German villages between the Meuse and the Rhine and on the Volga. Adventures. With woodcuts by Ernst Doelling. Friends of the German Library, Leipzig 1927.
• The students of Lyon. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1927.
• Roman idyll. Cover design by Georg A. Mathéy . Horen, Berlin-Grunewald 1927.
• European travel book . Landscapes, spaces, people. Schünemann, Bremen 1928.
• People on the way . German unrest novel. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1930 ff.
  • Volume 1: Volga, Volga. Novel. 1930.
    • 2nd version: In the Wolgaland. Novel. 1933.
  • Volume 2: Rhine and Volga. 1931.
    • 2nd version. The fathers moved out. Novel. 1934.
  • Volume 3: Rhenish interlude. Novel. 1937.
  • Volume 4: The Latter-day Saints. Novel. 1938
  • Volume 5: The Train to the Caucasus. Novel. 1940.
  • Volume 6: The leap into adventure. 1942.
• Landscape images . Reclam, Leipzig 1931 ff.
  • Volume 1: Between the Rhone and the Volga. With a foreword by Erich von Drygalski . 1931.
  • Volume 2: From the Greek landscape. With an afterword by Karl Haushofer . 1933.
  • Volume 3: Contemplative journeys in the Wild West. 1937.
• Landscape, love, life. Novellas. With a depiction of the poet's own life. German Book Community, Berlin 1934.
• Holy Mountains of Greece (= The German Mountain Books. Ed. By Hans Leifhelm . Vol. 4). Styria, Graz 1936.
• Once again. Poems from the estate. Ellermann, Hamburg 1944.

literature

• Philippe Beck: Représentations et idéologie: La France vue par Josef Ponten entre 1920 et 1940. In: Mosaïque. Revue des jeunes chercheurs en Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société de la région Lille-Nord-de-France-Belgique. Issue 2 (January 2010; Varia. Jeunes Chercheurs dans la cité 2008 ; PDF; 258 KiB ).
• Philippe Beck: Coming to terms with the past and the search for identity in the literature of East Belgium. In: Anne Begenat-Neuschäfer (Ed.): The German-speaking Community of Belgium. An inventory (= Belgium in focus. Vol. 3). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2010, pp. 113–138.
• Philippe Beck: Controversial border region. Images of oneself and others by Josef Ponten and Peter Schmitz, 1918–1940. Peter Lang, Brussels 2013 ( table of contents ).
• Gerhart Lohse: Josef Ponten 1883–1940. In: Rheinische Lebensbilder. Volume 2, Düsseldorf 1966, pp. 275-287.
• Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann : Drafts of "Heimat" from authors of the Rhineland. Exhibition catalog, Düsseldorf 2002.
• Wilhelm Dyck: The Problems of the Russo-Germans in the Later Works of Josef Ponten. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1956 (copy available in Aachen City Library).
• Ralf Klausnitzer: Beyond schools and generations? On the literary relationship politics of a solitaire . In: Ansel, Michael: The invention of the writer Thomas Mann. De Gruyter, Berlin 2009.
• Bernd Kortländer : Literature from next door 1900–1945. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 1995.
• Dietmar Lieser: On the ideology of the naive and the sublime. Josef Ponten's criticism of modernity in the “Open Letter to Thomas Mann” (1924) and its fascist implications. In: Dieter Breuer, Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann (Ed.): Modernism and National Socialism in the Rhineland. Lectures by the interdisciplinary working group for research into modernity in the Rhineland. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1997.
• Richard Matthias Müller: Josef Ponten (1883–1940), friend of Thomas Mann. In: Thomas Mann Yearbook. Volume 17, V. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2004, pp. 147–161.
• Hilla Müller-Deku: Josef Ponten, Julia Ponten von Broich. The life of two artists in Aachen and Munich. Helios, Aachen 2009.
• Cristina Rita Parau: Thomas Mann's correspondence with Josef Ponten: a look at the autograph collection of the public library of Aachen. Edited by the public library of the city of Aachen and the association of users, friends and supporters of the public library of the city of Aachen. Aachen, 2007.
• Cristina Rita Parau: The construction of the historical space in Josef Ponten's virtual geographic graph of the Rhineland . In: Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann, Dominik Groß, Georg Mölich (eds.): History of science in the Rhineland with special consideration of spatial concepts (= studies of the Aachen competence center for the history of science. Vol. 2). Kassel University Press, Kassel 2008.
• Cristina Rita Parau: Thomas Mann and Josef Ponten. On the structure of an aesthetic field after World War I, 1918–1924. In: Tim Lörke, Christian Müller (ed.): Thomas Mann's cultural contemporaneity. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009.
• Cristina Rita Parau: On the Genesis of Politically Legitimate Language Codes . Josef Ponten's liminality in the field of National Socialist ideology formation (= Epistemata Literaturwissenschaft. Vol. 727). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2012.
• Cristina Rita Parau: The Romantic Turn. The idea of ​​Europe, the structure of the romantic field in the era of the First World War and its perversion to the aesthetic legitimation of the Nazi regime. In: Grucza, Franciszek (ed.): Files of the XII. International Germanist Congress Warsaw 2010. (= publications of the International Association for German Studies (IVG). Vol. 7). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2012.
• Hans Werner Retterath: “People on the way”. To develop an ethnic self-image. In: Hans Werner Retterath (ed.): Russian-German culture: a fiction? Johannes Künzig Institute for East German Folklore, Freiburg 2006.
• Wilhelm Schneider: Josef Ponten. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1924.
• Thomas Speaker:  Ponten, Servatius Josef. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 617 ( digitized version ).
• Hans Wysling (Ed.): Poet or Writer? The correspondence between Thomas Mann and Josef Ponten 1919–1930 (= Thomas Mann Studies. Vol. 8). Francke, Bern 1988.

Web links

• Literature by and about Josef Ponten in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Josef Ponten  in the German Digital Library
• Works by Josef Ponten in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Josef Ponten in the Internet Archive
• Newspaper article about Josef Ponten in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Biographical notes at Kotte Autographs , accessed on October 10, 2016.
2. ^ 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. 462.
3. ^ Arnulf Scriba: Nazi literature. In: Lebendiges Museum Online (German Historical Museum, Berlin), article from May 15, 2015; accessed on October 16, 2016.
4. ^ Richard Matthias Müller: Josef Ponten (1883-1940), friend of Thomas Mann. In: Thomas Mann Yearbook. Volume 17. V. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2004, pp. 147–161, here p. 154.
5. ↑ Hans Wysling (Ed.): Poet or Writer? The correspondence between Thomas Mann and Josef Ponten 1919-1930 (Thomas Mann Studies, Volume 8). V. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1988.
6. ^ Richard M. Müller: Josef Ponten (1883–1940), Freund Thomas Manns , p. 153 f.
7. ↑ Werner Bergengruen : The existence of a writer in the dictatorship. Records and reflections on politics, history and culture 1940–1963. Edited by Frank-Lothar Kroll a. a. Oldenbourg, Munich 2005, p. 151. Also cited in abbreviated form by Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 462: "(Ponten) A vain, splayed little man [...] ready for any concession in the face of National Socialism."
8. ↑ Biographical notes from Kotte Autographs (quotation with reference to DBE ), accessed on October 10, 2016.
9. ^ Richard M. Müller: Josef Ponten (1883–1940), Freund Thomas Manns , p. 158 f.
10. ^ Richard M. Müller: Josef Ponten (1883-1940), friend of Thomas Mann. P. 160, note 44.