Karl Meier (Author)

Karl Ernst Meier ( Karl Meier-Lemgo , born January 29, 1882 in Detmold , † July 31, 1969 in Lemgo ) was a teacher, local researcher, author and draftsman. In large parts of the Lipperland and beyond, Karl Meier became known as a nature lover and writer. Its extensive bibliography includes a total of 287 books, essays and newspaper articles.

biography

Karl Meier was born in 1882, the same year his father emigrated to America. In 1885 his mother moved with her children to Lemgo, where her family lived. Karl spent his childhood and youth here and attended the Fürstlich-Lippische Humanist Gymnasium in Lemgo, which owes its current name to Engelbert-Kaempfer-Gymnasium . His school days there shaped him for his later life and was decisive for his career choice as a teacher. After graduating from high school , he studied philology in Berlin and Marburg , where he received his doctorate in 1906. phil.

He got his first job in Hörde before he was appointed to the Schillergymnasium in Münster in 1908 . Karl Meier returned to Lemgo in 1920 and taught at the grammar school there in the subjects German, Latin, Greek, history, art history and sport. He was married to Dorothea Ernst, a marriage that resulted in three children. The son Reinhard fell in World War II , his two daughters Ursula and Gertrud now live in Lemgo. In 1947 he retired.

During his lifetime he was awarded the title of professor by the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia in recognition of his services as a local researcher . He died in 1969 at the age of 87.

The teacher

His love and enthusiasm for history was already revealed as a schoolboy. As a teacher, he later understood how to bring his students closer to the world of antiquity and the Middle Ages and to captivate them in such a way that they forgot school and time. Nobody could avoid his demand for attention and consistent cooperation. He was an extremely versatile teacher. His subjects were not only German, but also Latin and Greek. He was also an excellent sports teacher who could not only give commands, but also performed on the machines himself. There was an excitement emanating from him that was contagious. He tried to awaken the aesthetic sensibility of the students and to train their sense of language. What made him stand out in all of this was his respect for young people. He was not just a teacher who imparted knowledge, but an educator who cared about building the students' personality.

The homeland friend, local explorer and writer

Mittelstrasse in Lemgo

When Karl Meier returned to his hometown Lemgo in 1920, he began to work in the home movement . In August of the same year he called for the founding of an association with the aim of preserving the city's valuable antiquities or bringing them to light . He wanted to prevent old half-timbered houses from being demolished or rebuilt. Another task was to uncover plastered gables, which in the previous century had been clad with slate or plaster because the owners were ashamed to own a house made of wood instead of stone. Karl Meier became the first chairman of the “Alt Lemgo” home association.

Meier and his friends went to work painstakingly, brushing the plaster off the old gables and numerous splendid old facades came to light. Almost all the half-timbered gables in Mittelstrasse that tourists admire today were hidden under a layer of gray plaster in the 1920s. In addition, Meier supported the activities of the association with articles in the regional press and thus aroused public interest in the building fabric worth preserving. In the following years he developed into an important representative of the city when it came to urban history or cultural-political issues. He came up with the idea of setting up a local museum in the witch mayor's house, which was realized in 1926. He wrote the first articles about the Lemgo artist Karl Junker and his house, the so-called Junker House .

By far the greatest success was his book “Wanderfahrten durch Lippe”, which he illustrated with his own drawings. It appeared in 1922 and was printed in four editions, the last time in 1950. Meier wrote plays about important events in the city's history, for example Die Rebellische Stadt , which deals with the Lutheran Lemgo's fight against the attempt of Count Simon VI. goes to the lip to force the city to the reformed faith.

Engelbert Kaempfer

The most important themes in Karl Meier's work were undoubtedly the biography and life's work of Engelbert Kaempfers (1651–1716) and the Lemgo witch trials . When he began researching Engelbert Kaempfer in the 1920s, the Japanese traveler was almost forgotten. The title of his first publication is aptly named: Engelbert Kaempfer, a great stranger . Meier traveled to the British Museum in London at the end of the 1920s to inspect Kaempfer's extensive written estate. It is thanks to the Englishman Hans Sloane , personal physician to the English king and passionate collector, who acquired the manuscripts from Kaempmer's heirs in 1723 and 1725, that the documents were preserved for posterity at all. Kaempfer had written his writings in German and Latin. They were translated by Karl Meier and published in excerpts, for the first time in 1933 in Engelbert Kaempfer, Strange Asia (Amoenitas exoticae) . In Meier's bibliography, 65 titles can be found that deal with the subject of Engelbert Kaempfer. The main work was published in 1968, The Travel Diaries Engelbert Kaempfer , so Meier was able to complete his scientific work on Engelbert Kaempfer a year before his death.

Witch trials

For Meier, the subject of witch tracking was closely linked to local research. This dark chapter in the history of the city of Lemgo has evidently moved him and no one else has worked out the inhuman side of these witch trials as vividly as he has. In 1932 he published an article about the villainous pranks of the Lemgo witch mayor . In 1935 the story Maria Rampendahl and the Witch Mayors was written , the story of a brave woman who resists the agony of torture and who has the courage to even take legal action against the Lords of Lemgo before the Imperial Court . Other publications were Lemgo, a stronghold of the Witch Inquisition (1938), Witches, Executioners and Tyrants (1949) and the short story The Witches Mayor of Lemgo (1951). In his work History of the City of Lemgo (1952), Meier dealt extensively with the persecution of witches in Lemgo in the chapter Lemje, dat Hexennest . As studies on the history of the witch trials, however, Meier's writings are outdated by recent research.

The drawer

In addition to his writings, Karl Meier bequeathed an extensive work of drawings to posterity. In the Institute of Lippe customer 's drawings, mostly were pen and ink drawings and lithographs , collected and arranged. The collection also allows conclusions to be drawn about Meier's drawing development. He himself did not see his pen drawings as art; they were intended to complement the textual description. This becomes particularly clear in his volume Wanderfahrten durch Lippe , which was so popular not least because of the illustrations from Meier's pen. He had previously visited the towns on foot or by bicycle and collected the motifs in his sketchbook. With increasing age Meier turned more to his scientific work and the number of his drawings decreased.

Works

• A trip to the moon, children's book, Stuttgart 1921.
• Hiking trips through Lippe, Lemgo, 1922.
• Engelbert Kaempfer 1651-1716. Strange Asia (Amoenitates exoticae), 1933.
• Small town youth, Roman, Detmold 1933.
• Maria Rampendahl and the witch mayor. Stories 1935.
• Engelbert Kaempfer, the first German explorer. Biography, Detmold 1937.
• Witches, executioners and tyrants. The last bloodiest witch hunt in Lemgo 1665-1681, 1949.
• The witch mayor of Lemgo. The memoirs of Herr von Kleinesorge. Roman, Rinteln 1951.
• History of the city of Lemgo, Lemgo, 1952.
• Guide through Lemgo and the surrounding area, Lemgo, 1960.
• Engelbert Kaempfer's travel diaries, Wiesbaden, 1968.

literature

• Imke Tappe and Ernst Tappe: Karl Meier-Lemgo 100 years. His life, his work, his drawings. Published by the Lippischen Heimatbund, Detmold 1982. ISBN 3-921428-39-4
• Dr. Herbert Hitzemann: Preservation of monuments - an order to the citizen in home country Lippe, February 1982. Publisher: Lippischer Heimatbund eV
• Werner Schütz: Lively memory of a teacher in his home country Lippe, February 1982. Publisher: Lippischer Heimatbund eV
• Imke Tappe: The draftsman Karl Meier-Lemgo in his home country Lippe, February 1982. Publisher: Lippischer Heimatbund eV
• Ernst Tappe: Dr. Karl Ernst Meier - the founder of the Alt Lemgo association in Heimatland Lippe, June / July 1982. Publisher: Lippischer Heimatbund eV
• Wilhelm Theopold: Memory of a former pupil in his home country Lippe, February 1982. Publisher: Lippischer Heimatbund eV

Web links

• Karl Ernst Meier
• Karl Ernst Meier: Literature (PDF file; 16 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Karl Ernst Meier
2. ^ Wilhelm Theopold: Memories of a former student in his home country Lippe, February 1982. Editor: Lippischer Heimatbund eV
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Imke Tappe and Ernst Tappe: Karl Meier-Lemgo 100 years. His life, his work, his drawings. Published by the Lippischen Heimatbund, Detmold 1982. ISBN 3-921428-39-4
4. ^ Karl Ernst Meier: Literature (PDF; 17 kB)