Joseph Willomitzer

Joseph Willomitzer (born April 17, 1849 in Beneschau , Northern Bohemia , † October 3, 1900 in Prague ) was a German journalist and writer in Prague.

Life

Willomitzer attended high school in Eger . After the early death of his father, the public prosecutor in Eger, he had to drop out of school in Sexta . He came to help Josef Gschihay, who was a bookseller in Franzensbad and Eger and owned the Egerer Zeitung. Franz Klutschak (1814–1886), friend of his late father and editor-in-chief of the national liberal Bohemia , discovered Willomitzer's extraordinary journalistic and literary talent. Willomitzer accepted his invitation to Prague and began working in the newspaper's editorial department. In 1884 he wrote a fictional description of the Franklin expedition , in which Klutschak's son Heinrich Klutschak had participated. When Franz Klutschak resigned from the position of editor-in-chief on October 10, 1877, Willomitzer took over the post with Josef Walter. After Walter's suicide (1888) he ran the newspaper on his own. He wrote editorials and articles for all sections of the paper. He also edited the publishing calendars published by the Haase publishing house. He also wrote articles for them.

Married to the daughter of the sculptor Emanuel Max von Wachstein since 1885 , Willomitzer participated in the social and cultural life of the German population of Prague, for example in the German School Association, in the reading and speech hall of the German students in Prague and in the satirical association Orpheus. He was head of the Schiller Foundation (1882) and member of the Prague German writers' association Concordia. Probably as early as 1871 he belonged with Friedrich Adler , Josef Bayer (1827-1910), Alfred Klaar , Ottomar Keindl (1842-1925), Hugo Salus , Ottomar Keindl and Emil Faktor to the key figures and the most popular personalities of the Prague German literary scene . In the German Casino in Prague he organized lectures by guests from Austria ( Ludwig Anzengruber , Ludwig August Frankl von Hochwart ) and Germany ( Ludwig Büchner , Felix Dahn , Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl ). For the unified German candidate list of the German Progressive Party in 1888, he ran unsuccessfully in the supplementary elections to the Bohemian state parliament in 1888 . When he died after a short illness, he was buried in the Olšany cemeteries with the large participation of German-speaking Prague . In October 1937 a bronze memorial stone was unveiled in his birthplace, Beneschau, which disappeared without a trace after 1945.

theatre

In Prague theater life Willomitzer was active through his social connections. His friend Heinrich Teweles, drama dramaturge at the Deutsches Theater Prague (1887-1900), the drama critic Friedrich Adler and Alfred Klaar, who played a major role as a theater critic and theoretician in the Deutsches Theaterverein, were influenced by him. Little is known about Willomitzer's activity in the Prague club or cabaret "Orpheus". Smaller texts by him can also be found in the programs of the Berlin cabaret Überbrettl , which made a guest appearance in Prague in May 1901. Evidence of Willomitzer's considerable, albeit little visible, influence is the fact that after his death on February 2, 1901, the Prague German theater organized a funeral evening in his honor.

Three texts by Willomitzer were performed at the Prague Deutsches Theater. The "New Year's Eve joke" was written for specific occasions . (1893) and a festival for the 25th anniversary of the German gymnastics club Gutheil! (1892). His one-act conversational comedy The Critique of Pure Reason was performed in 1880. It is about the wooing of two men for a married lady, which is magnanimously ended by the husband of the seduced, but faithfully loving wife. The play was resumed in 1887 and 1898; It was still played in 1901. A German amateur theater association from Prague put it back on stage before Christmas 1921.

literature

• R. Reinhard, in: A night in the Middle Ages and other stories . 1911, p. 3 (with a portrait)
• HT [H. Teweles]: Memories of Josef Willomitzer . Prague 1922 (with facsimiles of W's poems dedicated to the author);
• Rudolf Wolkan : History of German literature in Bohemia and in the Sudetenland . Augsburg 1925, p. 93.
• JA Hegenbarth, in: Josef Willomitzer's funny legacy , Böhm. Leipa 1938, p. 5.

Web links

Wikisource: Josef Willomitzer  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Haase'scher House and Economic Calendar (1879-1896) and New Prague calendar for town and country
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Willomitzer, Joseph (Czech theater encyclopedia)