War confession of Westphalian poets
War confession of Westphalian poets was the title of a meeting of Westphalian writers on March 29 and 30, 1941 in Soest in support of the National Socialist war policy.
Party official participants were high-ranking representatives of the South Westphalian National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) such as the Gauleiter Westphalia-South and Reich Commissioner Josef Wagner and his deputy Heinrich Vetter , Hermann Brust, regional cultural warden of the NSDAP, and Fritz Nölle , the new regional director of the Reichsschrifttumskammer Westfalen-Süd. The reporter for the magazine Heimat und Reich , the organ of the Westphalian Heimatbund , was Wilhelm Vernekohl . Invited representatives of the Westphalian writers' scene publicly expressed their consent to National Socialism by participating.
The war confession gave authors the role of “the torchbearers in time” who would profess “to the people and their leader”. The writer Fritz Nölle explained "the meaning of the gathering" with a reference to "the Führer" who had "awakened the bloody faith". In contrast to the Weimar years , "today [...] the seeds are planted for the centuries to come". One has to contribute to this. The writer Walter Vollmer demanded "obedience" from "German poetry".
Participants in the conference were Lene Bertelsmann , Adolf von Hatzfeld , Maria Kahle , Heinrich Luhmann , Walter Gottfried Klucke , Wilhelm Meyer-Mölleringhof , Fritz Nölle, Walter Vollmer and Max Wegner who supported the conference with mainly war propagandistic contributions at the readings . "Warm greetings" conveyed the war confession of the author Josefa Berens-Totenohl on her 50th birthday, celebrated at the same time in her home town. The authors Martin Simon , August Kracht and Ludwig Wegmann were excusedly absent due to the war effort. They could have announced their "war confession of action".
Individual evidence
- ↑ All information according to: Wilhelm Vernekohl: War confession of Westphalian poets. In: Heimat und Reich , born 1941, no. 3, p. 124 f.