Julius Langbehn

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Julius Langbehn (around 1900)

August Julius Langbehn (born March 26, 1851 in Hadersleben , † April 30, 1907 in Rosenheim ) was a German writer , cultural critic and philosopher . The nationalist and co-founder of culturally pessimistic anti-Semitism was best known for his book Rembrandt als Erzieher .

Life

Julius Langbehn grew up as the third child of the teacher and philologist Johann Jakob Langbehn and a pastor's daughter in Kiel . A grandfather was the theologian Andreas Johannes Boysen . His father died when he was 14 years old. In 1870 Langbehn volunteered for the military at the age of 19 and was released as a lieutenant in the reserve after the end of the Franco-Prussian War . He then studied art history and archeology in Kiel. During his studies in 1869 he became a member of the Teutonia fraternity in Kiel . He later went on trips to Italy. After he made his Kieler 1,875 fraternity temporarily dimittiert was, he went to Munich , where he in 1880 with a thesis on "wings shapes of ancient Greek art" Dr. phil. PhD . For his work he was awarded the travel grant of the German Archaeological Institute 1881/82, with which he was able to travel the Mediterranean region . After the end of the scholarship, he led - friends with the painter Otto Vorländer - an unsteady life with changing jobs and places of residence - for example, he lived with the painter Hans Thoma for a long time .

In 1889 Langbehn contacted Franziska Nietzsche , the mother of the mentally ill Friedrich Nietzsche , and wanted to cure her son through talk therapy. Nietzsche, who was still healthy, had not reacted to an earlier letter of homage. After an attack by Nietzsche, Langbehn left for Dresden and wrote to Nietzsche's mother asking for guardianship over the patient. This was prevented by the intervention of Franz Overbeck . In 1891 Langbehn was charged with allegedly disseminating pornographic content in his volume of poems "40 songs from a German". He then left Dresden and moved to Vienna. In 1900 Langbehn converted to Catholicism . This step was significantly influenced by the Bishop of Rottenburg Paul Wilhelm von Keppler and Langbehn's friend and later biographer Benedikt Momme Nissen .

Rembrandt as an educator

In 1890 Langbehn had his second publication Rembrandt als Erzieher appear anonymously ("Von einer Deutschen") in the Leipzig publisher C. L. Hirschfeld , which had 39 editions in the German Empire within two years. The book was sponsored by the two art historians Woldemar von Seidlitz and Wilhelm von Bode , with whom Langbehn was friends, and recommended to the publisher Hirschfeld, who offered it at a low price of 2 Reichsmarks. Paul de Lagarde was initially accepted as the author of the Book of Rembrandt, but he soon denied this. Although Langbehn's true authorship quickly became known, his name remained unknown to most readers. Langbehn later received the nickname of the Rembrandt German , which he also used himself.

In his culturally pessimistic considerations, Langbehn understood rationality , scientificism, materialism , liberalism , cosmopolitanism and intellectual and cultural uniformism as degenerative phenomena for which he blamed enlightenment and urbanization . As a mystical-romantic counterpoint to the hated modernity, Langbehn used the “Low German” type, embodied by the painter Rembrandt . A völkisch rebirth through art should result from his spirit .

As an educator , Rembrandt skilfully absorbed the anti-liberal and anti-modern zeitgeist of the emerging local art , which is why it sold well and saw numerous editions. However, the book also became the subject of satiricals , such as Höllenbreughel as an educator ( Ferdinand Pfohl , Leipzig, Carl Reissner, 1890), who portrayed Langbehn's “wannabe philosophy” as a quibble. Even Theodor Fontane provoked the work to an irritated parody in the figure of the Berlin original Nante corner stand : Nante Strump as an educator. From a Berliner. Loosely based on "Rembrandt as an educator" . In it he deliberately used Langbehn's rhetoric to reduce it to absurdity .

The title is an allusion to Nietzsche's third Untimely Consideration of Schopenhauer as an educator . Langbehn took over the ideas of the young Nietzsche and integrated them into a German national worldview. He rejected Nietzsche's later works as blasphemous "aberrations". Langbehn's interpretation of Nietzsche, which is similar to that of his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche , was effective in the early 20th century, but is now rejected in Nietzsche research.

The work, which was revised from edition to edition, increasingly reflected anti-Semitic tendencies, which Langbehn et al. a. drew from an exchange of letters with Theodor Fritsch . Max Bewer , who made a name for himself as a friend and “student” of Langbehn, and in 1892 published a defense for the Book of Rembrandt, had a direct influence on this development .

Opponent of modernity and aftermath

Langbehn became an opponent of modernity and in particular of all modern science. In 1891 he sent his doctoral certificate torn up back to the University of Munich. After his conversion to Catholicism, he moved to Munich and Altötting and died in Rosenheim in 1907 . At his request, he was buried under the ancient Edignalinde next to the church in Puch near Fürstenfeldbruck . His private secretary, the painter Benedikt Momme Nissen , published other works compiled from the estate after his death. Their authenticity is considered uncertain, as Momme Nissen, as a Dominican , is assumed to have an interest in unilaterally highlighting the Catholic elements in Langbehn's thinking.

Langbehn's ideas had a strong influence on the development of anti-intellectualism and anti-Semitism in the German youth movement . The cultural Catholicism , which after a reconciliation between Catholicism and nationalism sought, found an important reference point in Langbehn. His work was also effective in the art education of National Socialism . His writings, promoted by the National Socialists and taken up in their concerns, experienced a renaissance especially at this time. Langbehn's key anti-Semitic work, Rembrandt, was of particular importance as an educator for the Low German movement . With its establishment of the Low German folk spirit and culture, the script became its central document, as the Low German type of person imagined by Langbehn stands for the ideal Aryan: “Since the author defines Low German as a racial characteristic as well as a cultural area, the book can be .. . read as ... the quasi-religious promise of Low German. "

Debate about renaming Langbehnstrasse in Puch (Fürstenfeldbruck)

In 2013, the city council of Fürstenfeldbruck decided to examine possible renaming of polluted street names in the city area. An independent working group was set up specifically for this purpose. Langbehnstraße in Puch, a district of Fürstenfeldbruck in the district of the same name, also fell into the list of contaminated street names. It was dedicated to Langbehn , who was buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. Sebastian (Puch) in the 1960s. In 2015, the working group and the culture and works committee of the city council each voted unanimously to rededicate Langbehnstrasse. Numerous residents of the street protested against this decision, at a Pucher citizens' meeting in 2016, the majority of those present defended Langbehn's person and work to representatives of the city council and expressed their displeasure.

In 2018, the city council finally decided against renaming it and voted to put an explanatory information board in the street.

Works (selection)

  • Wing designs of the oldest Greek art . Munich 1881, digitized
  • Rembrandt as an educator. 1890
  • 40 songs by a German. 1891 (collection of poems)
  • The Rembrandt German from a friend of the truth. 1892
  • Low German. A contribution to national psychology . Buchenbach 1926
  • Dürer as a leader. (“From the Rembrandt German and his assistant” [= Benedikt Momme Nissen]), 1928
  • The spirit of the whole. ed. v. Benedikt Momme Nissen, 1930+
  • Songs . Munich 1931
  • German thinking. A seer's book. Stuttgart 1933
  • Letters to Bishop Keppler. ed. v. Benedikt Momme Nissen, 1937

literature

  • Bernd Behrendt: August Julius Langbehn, the "Rembrandt German". In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Saur, Munich a. a. 1999, ISBN 3-598-11421-4 , pp. 94-113.
  • Bernd Behrendt: Between paradox and paralogism. Philosophical basics of a cultural criticism in the nineties of the 19th century using the example of August Julius Langbehn (=  European university publications. Series 1, vol. 804). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1984, ISBN 3-8204-5604-X .
  • Hans Bürger-Prinz: About the artistic work of schizophrenics In: O. Bumke (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Geisteskrankheiten . Volume IX (Special Part V: Schizophrenia). Julius Springer, Berlin 1932, pp. 668-704.
  • Hans Bürger-Prinz , A. Segelke: Julius Langbehn the Rembrandt German: A pathopsychological study. Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1940.
  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 435-438.
  • Thomas Gräfe: Rembrandt as an educator (August Julius Langbehn, 1890) , in: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.), Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Anti-Semitism in Past and Present, Vol. 6: Publications. De Gruyter, Berlin 2013, pp. 595-598.
  • Johannes Heinßen: Cultural criticism between historicism and modernity: Julius Langbehn's “Rembrandt as an educator.” In: Werner Bergmann , Ulrich Sieg (ed.): Antisemitic historical images (=  antisemitism: history and structures. Volume 5). Klartext, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0114-8 , pp. 121-138.
  • Jörg Hobusch: German lessons in the beginnings of bourgeois reform pedagogy (=  studies in German and English. Vol. 5). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1989, ISBN 3-631-41883-3 .
  • Helmut Ibach :  Langbehn, Julius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , pp. 544-546 ( digitized version ).
  • Hubertus Kunert: German reform pedagogy and fascism. Schroedel, Hanover a. a. 1973.
  • Ulf-Thomas Lesle : bestseller of the bourgeoisie and course book of the Low German: "Rembrandt als Erzieher" by August Julius Langbehn. In: Kieler Blätter zur Volkskunde 32, 2000, pp. 51–83.
  • Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Julius Langbehn's “Rembrandt as an educator”. Discursive traditions and conceptual threads of a dangerous book. In: Marcus Müller, Sandra Kluwe (eds.): Identity drafts in art communication. Studies on the practice of linguistic and multimodal positioning in the interaction space 'art' (=  language and knowledge. Vol. 10). De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027831-6 , pp. 295-318.
  • Konrad Lotter: Philosophical local history: Julius Langbehn, the "Rembrandt German", in Puch near Fürstenfeldbruck. In: contradiction - Munich journal for philosophy . Issue 56 (2012), p. 157 ff.
  • Benedikt Momme Nissen: The Rembrandt-German Julius Langbehn. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1927.
  • Benedikt Momme Nissen: The Rembrandt German and my way to the church. In: Joseph Eberle (ed.): Our way to the church . Lucerne 1948.
  • Johannes G. Pankau: ways back. On the history of the development of restorative thinking in the German Empire. An investigation of culture-critical and German-language ideology education (=  European university publications. Series 1, Vol. 717). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1983, ISBN 3-8204-7663-6 .
  • Vincenzo Pinto: Apoteosi della germanicità. I sentieri di Julius Langbehn, critico della cultura tedesco di fine Ottocento . Icaro, Lecce 2012, ISBN 978-88-95377-23-0 .
  • Vincenzo Pinto: Afterword. In: August Julius Langbehn: Rembrandt come educatore . Freeebrei, Torino, 2013, ISBN 978-88-909147-3-7 .
  • Martin Schewe:  Julius Langbehn. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 1084-1085.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Fritz Stern : Cultural pessimism as a political danger. Scherz, Bern a. a. 1963 / dtv, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-04448-9 / Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-608-94136-3 ( Review Deutschlandradio Kultur ).

Web links

Commons : Julius Langbehn  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: August Julius Langbehn  - Quotes

Remarks

  1. ↑ Matthias Piefel: anti-Semitism and racial movement in the Kingdom of Saxony from 1879 to 1914. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2004, p. 86f.
  2. ↑ Ulrich Raulf: "In underground concealment". Secret Germany - Mythogenesis and Mycelium. Sketches for a story of ideas and pictures. In: Barbara Schlieben u. a. (Ed.): Historical images in the George circle. Paths to Science . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2004, p. 93ff., Here p. 99f.
  3. ↑ Birger Solheim: On the historical thinking of Theodor Fontanes and Thomas Mann or the criticism of history in "Der Stechlin" and "Doktor Faustus". Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, p. 65.
  4. ↑ Ulf-Thomas Lesle: Identity Project Low German. The definition of language as a political issue. In: R. Langhanke (Ed.): Language, Literature, Space. Fs. For Willy Diercks. Bielefeld 2015, p. 719.
  5. ↑ Street names polluted by the Nazi era on trial. January 5, 2015, accessed April 22, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Peter Bierl Fürstenfeldbruck: Nazi street names should disappear . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2015, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on April 22, 2019]).
  7. ^ Peter Bierl Fürstenfeldbruck: Pucher want to keep Langbehnstrasse . In: sueddeutsche.de . June 1, 2016, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed April 22, 2019]).
  8. ^ City of Fürstenfeldbruck refuses to change street names. April 26, 2018. Retrieved April 22, 2019 .
  9. ^ Digitized 16th edition. UB Paderborn ; Digital copy of the 72nd – 76th Edition (DjVu format); ( Digitized by Google (only readable with US proxy) )
personal data
SURNAME Langbehn, Julius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Langbehn, August Julius; the Rembrandt German
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and cultural critic
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Hadersleben (today Haderslev )
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1907
Place of death Rosenheim