Karl Ludwig Schneider

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Karl Ludwig Schneider (born September 25, 1919 in Hamburg-Wellingsbüttel ; † July 9, 1981 in Hamburg) was a German German philologist, poet and expressionist researcher. He was one of the persecuted opponents of the regime who were called the " White Rose Hamburg " after 1945 . In 1946 he founded the renowned student cultural magazine Hamburger Akademische Rundschau as a licensee and editor in charge, and in 1960 he received a professorship for philology and German studies at the University of Hamburg . He published several historical-critical editions of works by German poets.

Life

Karl Ludwig Schneider came from a family that was hostile to National Socialism . He was in the Bündische Jugend and from 1935 attended the Lichtwark School (today Heinrich Hertz School) in Hamburg-Winterhude , which aroused his interest in Expressionist art and poetry. Even as a schoolboy he mistrusted the political teachings of National Socialism. His opposition path led him consistently in the resistance against National Socialism. With like-minded people he took up the leaflet campaigns of the Munich “ White Rose ” in Hamburg at the end of 1942, and from November 1943 suffered brutal persecution by the Nazis.

Member of the White Rose Hamburg

After graduating from high school, which Schneider took in 1938, he was first obliged to do Reich labor service, then drafted into military service and then directly had to take part in the war against Poland, France and Russia. In mid-1940 he met Hans Leipelt in France and formed a close friendship with him. Leipelt, who had been released from the Wehrmacht as a “half-Jew”, began studying chemistry at the “Hanseatic University” in the autumn of 1940, but switched to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in the winter semester of 1941/1942 due to increasing harassment . Even during his school days in Hamburg, his unlawful attitude led to initial conflicts with the Nazi-compliant teachers. The gifted Leipelt tried as best he could to educate other people about the dangers of the Nazi rulers. This endeavor intensified under the impression of the persecution of the Jewish population after the annexation of Austria in March 1938. His grandparents, his uncle and many friends of the family in his native Vienna were part of the immediate disenfranchisement and persecution. In Munich, as in Hamburg, Leipelt established conspiratorial networks and, after the execution of Christoph Probst , Hans and Sophie Scholl, took up the actions of the “White Rose” in 1943 in order to oppose the murder of the students with resisting solidarity. During his stays in Hamburg, Karl Ludwig Schneider was his most important ally. Both were artistically gifted. Classical music, but also the forbidden jazz of Duke Ellington or Ella Fitzgerald as well as works of ostracized literature and modern art were part of a humane counter-world for them. Schneider and Leipelt exposed National Socialism to others with their special sense of irony and humor. Reacting linguistically sensitive to everything that was going on made her write in different ways over and over again. The poem was given a special meaning - whether as a reception or as an expression of one's own thoughts and feelings.

In the winter semester of 1941/42, Schneider received study leave and began studying German, English, philosophy and newspaper studies in Hamburg. He attended events by the philosopher and educator Wilhelm Flitner , as well as the students Reinhold Meyer , Heinz Kucharski , Margaretha Rothe and Albert Suhr . Another acquaintance from school, Traute Lafrenz , also a Lichtwark student, meanwhile studied medicine in Munich and was in close contact with the students of the "White Rose", who she fearlessly supported. In November 1942 she brought the third “White Rose” leaflet to Hamburg, gave it to her former classmate Heinz Kucharski, who immediately spread it, so that Schneider and Hans Leipelt also received it through him. Hans Leipelt forwarded the sixth and last leaflet from Munich to Hamburg, where it was copied and distributed again and again by various people from opposition circles, including by friends and schoolgirls Maria Leipelt and Ilse Ledien. Schneider, Kucharski, Rothe and other Nazi opponents met in the Agency des Rauhen Haus bookshop on Jungfernstieg, whose junior boss was Reinhold Meyer. They discussed National Socialism and the development of the war as well as possibilities of resistance that went beyond the distribution of leaflets. There were different positions, ranging from passive resistance to acts of sabotage based on the Resistance model.

On leave of absence from the Wehrmacht in November 1942 due to illness, Schneider immediately continued his studies in Hamburg, but switched to the University of Freiburg im Breisgau in the winter semester of 1943/44 . In September 1943, the Hamburg Gestapo arrested close friends of the opposition so that the decision to change location was intended to conceal connections. The arrests in Hamburg continued on November 9, 1943, including Heinz Kucharski, Margaretha Rothe and Maria Leipelt. On November 15, 1943, Schneider was also arrested by the Gestapo in Freiburg and transferred to the " Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison", which the Gestapo had used for years as a concentration camp for its "protective prisoners". Months of solitary confinement and torturous interrogation followed. From June 6 to October 16, 1944, Schneider and others were relocated with Reinhold Meyer Friedrich Geussenhainer , Felix Jud , Bruno Himpkamp to Neuengamme concentration camp , where the political prisoners were used for forced labor. After a short return to Fuhlsbüttel, he was sent to the Hamburg-Stadt remand prison on October 27th . The transfer to the regional court prison in Stendal began on November 10th with a collective transport, where he remained until the American troops attacked Berlin on April 12th, 1945 until he was liberated. The Oberreichsanwalt at the People's Court in Berlin had meanwhile completed his indictment against Schneider and the co-defendants Maria Leipelt, Dorothea and Emmy Zill , Ilse Ledien and Riko Graepel and on February 23, 1945 - almost two years to the day after the execution of the Scholl and siblings Christoph Probst - sent to the People's Court in Potsdam. The Second Senate of the National Socialist Court then traveled to Hamburg in April 1945 to hear - along with three other trials - against two of Schneider's co-defendants, Ilse Ledien and Riko Graepel. It was April 20, 1945. During these days the surviving resistance fighter Schneider in distant Bismark in the Altmark received written permission from the military government to travel through the American and British occupation zones to his hometown. After spending three weeks on the nearby farm of fellow inmate Otto Böse, he returned to Hamburg on May 5, 1945.

After the war

After the end of the war, Karl Ludwig Schneider was a former politically persecuted member of the first Central Committee of Hamburg Students (ZA) , the forerunner of the General Student Committee (AStA) . Going back to earlier plans, Schneider founded the Hamburger Akademische Rundschau in 1946, which was published by his childhood friend Joachim Heitmann's Hansisches Gildenverlag and for which both received a license on June 6th as the first student magazine in the British occupation zone. Schneider was the editor in charge until 1950, Hans-Joachim Lang the “second man” and Hermann Tiemann the third member of the editorial team. The magazine's employees included Conrad Ahlers , Jürgen Ponto , Ralf Dahrendorf and Walter Boehlich , among others . With original articles by authors such as Max Brod , Hermann Broch , Egon Friedell , José Ortega y Gasset , Bertrand Russell , Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann and its good connections to exiles in Switzerland, London and the USA, the magazine soon became one of the most renowned of its kind in post-war Germany. Schneider's friendship with the writer Wolfgang Borchert , which began in the winter of 1946/47, dates back to this time .

In 1950 Schneider received his doctorate on the subject of pictorial expression in the poems of Georg Heyms , Georg Trakls and Ernst Stadler . Studies on the lyrical style of German Expressionism . In 1960 he completed his habilitation on the subject of Klopstock and the renewal of the German poetic language in the 18th century and accepted a substitute professorship for modern German literary history at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster . In October 1960 he was appointed full professor of German philology and literary studies at the University of Hamburg . He was visiting professor in Stanford / California (1965), Bloomington / Indiana (1969) and Paris / Sorbonne (winter semester 1971/72).

1962 Karl Ludwig Schneider member of the jury of the magazine Stern ausgelobten German Tell price . He belonged to the so-called “Stimbekhof-Kreis” and was, with six others from this group, a signatory of a “Declaration of the Seven: For Example Bonn” published on December 4, 1964 in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , with which an active and morally true dispute with the role of the German universities in National Socialism. At the Germanistenag 1966 in Munich, Schneider was elected to the board of the association, the new chairman of which was the Stimbekhofian Karl Heinz Borck. The sometimes very blanket and ignorant, all the more hurtful allegations, combined with the distressing disruption of his events during the student protests of the late 1960s against the Nazi entanglement of professorships, such as the attacks on his research on expressionism, hit Schneider personally deeply. The institution of the University of Hamburg did not use his history of resistance and persecution as an opportunity to stand up for its integrity member against the agitated students in an enlightening and solidarity manner. Lifelong impaired by the experience of the “ Third Reich ” and the personal health consequences, he increasingly withdrew from his active social engagement.

Karl Ludwig Schneider found particular recognition as the editor of the entire text-critical editions of the poems and writings by Ernst Stadler and Georg Heym , which were first published by the Hamburg publishing house Heinrich Ellermann and later taken over by the Beck publishing house . In 1954 Schneider published the Stadler edition. Between 1960 and 1968 he edited the poems, writings, diaries and letters of Georg Heym in four volumes. In this context, Schneider arranged for the Hamburg State Library to purchase the Heym estate that Erwin Loewenson had saved to Israel. Together with Adolf Beck and Hermann Tiemann, Schneider founded a historical-critical edition of the works and letters of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock . In lectures and essays, he devoted himself to Expressionist writers as well as ETA Hoffmann , Heinrich von Kleist , Gotthold Ephraim Lessing as well as Kurt Schwitters , Thomas Mann, Heinrich Böll , Peter Huchel and Joseph Breitbach . In 1976 Schneider gave the laudation for Siegfried Lenz on the occasion of the award of an honorary doctorate by the University of Hamburg.

Karl Ludwig Schneider was on the board of the New European College Hamburg, on the board of trustees of the Hamburg Scientific Foundation , on the board of the Hamburg International Society for Freedom of Culture as well as in the Goethe Society Hamburg and the New Literary Society.

Fonts (selection)

  • Thistles and thorns. Thoughts and poems from the time of political imprisonment. Hamburg: Hansescher Gildenverlag 1946.
  • The good news of death. A sonnet wreath. With woodcuts of the dance of death by Hans Holbein. Hamburg: Hansescher Gildenverlag 1947.
  • Tobias Runkel [pseudonym], Bumke poems. Hamburg: Ellermann Verlag 1957.
  • The pictorial expression in the poems of Georg Heyms, Georg Trakl and Ernst Stadler. A contribution to the characterization of the expressionist style. Phil Diss. Heidelberg: Carl Winter 1954.
  • Ernst Stadler. Seals. Poems and transmissions with a selection of small critical writings and letters. Introduced, critically reviewed and explained by Karl Ludwig Schneider. 2 vols. Hamburg: Ellermann 1954.
  • Georg Heym, marathon. Based on the poet's manuscripts, ed. and explained by Karl Ludwig Schneider. Hamburg: Maximilian Society 1956.
  • Klopstock and the renewal of German poetry in the 18th century. Heidelberg: Carl Winter 1960.
  • Georg Heym - Seals and Writings. Complete edition in four volumes, Hamburg: Ellermann Verlag. Volume 1: Poetry. With Gunter Martens with the help of Klaus Hurlebusch and Dieter Knoth, 1964; Volume 2: Prose and Drama. With Curt Schmigelski, 1962. Volume 3: Diaries, Dreams and Letters. With the help of Paul Raabe and Erwin Loewenson, 1960. Volume 4 (announced as Volume 6): Georg Heym. Documents about his life. With Gerhard Burkhardt with the participation of Uwe Wandrey and Dieter Marquardt, 1968.
  • Broken shapes. Word and image in expressionism. Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe 1967.
  • The artist as a rogue. On the relationship between the Bildungsroman and picaresque novel in Thomas Mann's Felix Krull. On the 100th birthday of Thomas Mann on June 6, 1975, Hamburg: Hauswedell & Co. 1975
  • Address on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the “Reichskristallnacht” on November 9, 1978 at the memorial plaque for the dead of the “Hamburg White Rose” in the Auditorium Maximum of the University of Hamburg. In: ZAS - Central Gazette for the Training Sector No. 10 (December) 1978, p. 3.
  • Günter Dammann, Karl Ludwig Schneider, Joachim Schöberl: Georg Heyms poem "The War". Manuscripts and documents; Investigations into the history of origin and reception. Heidelberg: Carl Winter 1978 (supplements to Euphorion 9).
  • Skepticism as a literary method. An interpretation of the work of Joseph Breitbach. In: Exchange speech. Joseph Breitbach on his 75th birthday. Frankfurt / Main: S. Fischer 1978, pp. 325-384.
  • Peter Huchel. In: The German poetry from 1945–1975 between message and play, ed. by Klaus Weissenberger. Düsseldorf: August Bagel Verlag 1981, pp. 177-185.

literature

  • Hamburg Academic Review. Emphasis. Accompanying volume, reports, documents, registers, ed. by Angela Bottin, Hamburg 1991.
  • Hans-Harald Müller, Joachim Schöberl: Karl Ludwig Schneider and the Hamburg “White Rose”. A contribution to the resistance of students in the "Third Reich". In: Eckart Krause, Ludwig Huber, Holger Fischer (eds.): Everyday university life in the “Third Reich”. The Hamburg University 1933–1945. Part I. Berlin and Hamburg 1991, pp. 423-437.
  • Angela Bottin: CLOSE TIME. Traces of displaced and persecuted people at the University of Hamburg. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg from February 22 to May 17, 1991. Hamburg Contributions to the History of Science, Volume 11, Hamburg 1992.
  • Nina Schneider: Hamburg students and The White Rose. Resist in National Socialism. Booklet accompanying the exhibition at the Hamburg State and University Library Carl von Ossietzky. Hamburg 2003.
  • Epilogue Egon Vietta and the political resistance in Hamburg during the Nazi dictatorship. In: “To feel up to death…” Hermann Broch and Egon Vietta in their correspondence 1933–1951. Edited by Silvio Vietta and Roberto Rizzo, Göttingen 2012, p. 338 f.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Mann: For example Bonn: Declaration of the Seven. In: Die Zeit, No. 49/1964
  2. ↑ Jörg Schönert: Missed lessons? 1968 and German studies in the FRG in its reform phase 1965–1975. literaturkritik.de, No. 8, August 2008
  3. ^ Heym estate. Desire for doom. In: Der Spiegel, June 1, 1960 ( https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-43065884.html ) and Walter Killy, A new Georg Heym stands in front of us. In: Die ZEIT, No. 20, May 14, 1965 ( https://www.zeit.de/1965/20/vor-uns-estand-ein-neuer-georg-heym ).
  4. ↑ The pact with the reader. Laudation for Siegfried Lenz. In: Deutsches Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt, July 4, 1976


personal data
SURNAME Schneider, Karl Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German member of the White Rose, editor, university professor for German studies and philology
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg-Wellingsbüttel
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1981
Place of death Hamburg