Leonhard Stark

Leonhard Stark

Leonhard Stark (born November 3, 1894 in Schamhaupten / Upper Palatinate , † after 1982 in Stockholm ) was initially a primary school teacher and, as a traveling preacher in the 1920s , a representative of the so-called inflation saints .

Life

Until 1919

According to his own account, Stark was born the son of a landowner. His colleague in the 1920s, Franz Kaiser , on the other hand, described his family as "rural proletarians". After finishing the seven-grade elementary school, the Catholic educated Stark attended the teachers' seminar in Amberg (today Max-Reger-Gymnasium Amberg ) from 1907 , where he passed the first elementary school teacher examination in 1912 and then completed his teaching internship. In 1913 he was called up for compulsory military service, which dragged on until 1918 when the First World War broke out . According to a "self-report" from 1918, Stark suffered from depression since the beginning of the war. Due to illness, he was with a replacement unit for a long time and was released from the army prematurely in April 1918 after he had lost speech and hearing in November 1917 after a grenade impact. Stark later asserted that all of these symptoms were only simulated.

Since he had passed his second teacher examination during his military service, he now worked as a primary school teacher. In December 1918 he married the wealthy entrepreneur's daughter and piano teacher Clara Bantlin , with whom he had their daughter Primula in 1920 . He was indifferent to the revolutionary political situation in Germany. Instead he occupied himself with consolidating his self-confidence, which had been shaken by external circumstances, and read Nietzsche , Rousseau , Goethe and finally the Bible.

As "inflation saint"

The decisive factor for Stark's final breakout of bourgeois life was the meeting with Ludwig Christian Haeusser , probably the most famous traveling preacher of the time, in August 1919. Under his influence, Stark increased the “I cult” common to all inflation saints up to Caesarean megalomania and the Desire to become one's own “God”: “I am my father, I am my heaven, I sanctify my name, I establish the kingdom in me. My will be done in the spirit and in the flesh! ”Was his“ Our Father ”. Outwardly, too, he changed. “Unshaven up there, shaggy and rough like a pre-deluge (sic!) Hedgehog”, as he is described by contemporary newspapers, “a tanned man, dressed in a kind of coffee-brown penitent shirt, on his feet sandals, on his head nothing but a flowing one Hair bush. "

Announcement in the early 1920s

In February 1920, Stark gave up teaching, went to Haeusser in Munich as an “apostle”, and from late summer 1920 competed with his master as a traveling preacher. He quickly rallied his own following of economically and spiritually uprooted people, predominantly of left political origin. Leading representatives of the youth movement rejected Stark and the other inflation saints, however. Walter Hammer declared in 1922 that the youth movement had to "protect itself from complete ruin by keeping such madmen away."

In the propaganda effect of his announcements, Stark soon surpassed his role model Haeusser as the “dictator of the Christ government of Germany”. In 1921 he attracted attention with large posters sensation that looked like tracing calls to the police: "RAPE MURDER commit I to the darkness powers of the world." He compared himself to Jesus, Nietzsche, Lao Tzu , claiming to be more than the then anthemic revered Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore .

In his events, he addressed as many audience groups as possible thematically: “Christ (for all those interested in religion). Spartacus (political). Sexualism (that concerns everyone). Nietzsche (for all those interested in philosophy). Stark en Tao (for connoisseurs of Chinese literature). ”In doing so, his sexual theory of a“ strong ”female and male side in every person gave him a considerable number of female followers. However, the self-proclaimed “King of Women” demanded “dedication” from them - and he meant it physically. After numerous sexual affairs, Stark finally separated from his wife after he had spent her inherited fortune on his "cause". The divorce followed in September 1923. Since 1922 he lived with Charlotte Schlicht , whom he had met in the Haeusser area. A son was born in 1924 and married in 1927.

Like Haeusser, Stark was subjected to official bans on speaking and expulsions from the very beginning of his preaching activity , particularly in Bavaria, to which he responded with public counter-attacks. Psychiatric examinations and prison sentences followed, including a. for libel. In the meantime, despite some reservations, he also saw similarities with Adolf Hitler , with whom he sought contact in 1923 "in order to promote the truth that was jointly championed". In 1924 posters and the title of his magazine “Stark” adorned not only the hammer and sickle , but also the swastika . Stark didn't just want to preach, he wanted to "rule". In 1924 he ran for the Reichstag elections with the “Stark Bund” , and in 1925 he applied to be President of the Reich - without any public response.

At the height of inflation, Stark believed that his supporters would always pay for him. When the crisis subsided in 1924, the inflationary saints' movement lost its foundation. Stark's income dried up, he was no longer able to support his family, his son was sent to an infant home, and he himself had to serve a brief prison term. On this occasion, he finally parted with the Christ beard and long hair. Without a permanent residence since 1922, Stark moved on through Germany, Austria and Italy until he and his wife temporarily settled in Munich in 1927. The plan to found a rural settlement community with Franz Kaiser failed in 1925, as did his attempt to take over the leadership of the "Haeusser Association" after Ludwig Christian Haeusser's death in 1927. Stark's career as a traveling preacher was over.

Further life

Stark lived briefly in Stuttgart and Berlin and from 1930 in Hamburg, where he claims to have worked as a journalist, his wife worked for radio. According to Stark, both lost their jobs in 1934, reasons for this are not known. In 1936 he emigrated to Holland without his family, then in 1937 together with them via Denmark to Sweden, where they settled forever. The family was fed by his wife Charlotte, while Leonhard Stark took care of the further development of his teachings as a househusband. He recorded the fundamentals of this so-called "Second Reformation" in four books. Despite contacting such diverse groups and people as the few remaining Haeusser supporters, Renate Riemeck , Gustav Wyneken and Otto Strasser , he did not succeed in finding allies for his ideas in post-war Germany. The Haeusser novel he had announced and the autobiography “The Meaning of My Life” were never published.

Conclusion

“A good fifty years ago Leonhard Stark was a big sensation in the German public, today he is an unknown man. Yet it is very relevant today. Why? Because he already lived the future that is present today fifty years ago ", wrote Stark in 1975 in his (unpublished) memoirs, trying to establish a continuity between himself and the youth revolt of the 1968s :" Just like the youth today revolted against the big lie in the state, church and society, in politics, religion and morality and tore everything down, ... the then 26 year old Leonhard Stark tore down the mask of mendacity in all areas of German life. ”This self-assessment, however, holds up to a test did not stand. Stark was less the pioneer of the rebellious youth of the Federal Republic of Germany, but rather a “symptom of the disease of the time” after the lost First World War, according to the judgment of the historian Ulrich Linse.

Fonts

• My me !!! Cologne 1921
• My me, my you, my you !, I will! Berlin 1929
• The gender morality of tomorrow . Stockholm 1956
• The German of tomorrow . Stockholm 1958
• The god of tomorrow . Stockholm 1959
• Aristocratic democracy . Stockholm 1963

Remarks

1. ↑ Linse 1983, p. 216.
2. ^ Robert Hirschfeld: Strange speech and hearing disorder as a hysterical reaction, with a self- report , in: Zschr. Fd Gesamt Neurologie und Psychiatrie 39 (1918), pp. 300–306.
3. ↑ cit. in Linse 1983, p. 253 A103.
4. ↑ Kölner Tageblatt 1921, Berliner Morgenzeitung v. May 24, 1922, both cit. n. Linse 1983, p. 220f.
5. ↑ Insanity or rascality? , in: Junge Menschen 3 (1922), H. 9/10, P. 138ff.
6. ↑ Quotations from Linse 1983, p. 226 and 221; on Tagore, who was in Germany for the first time in 1921 and triggered a real Tagore wave, see p. Rita Panesar: Expectations of Salvation in the Twenties (Lecture at the HfBK Hamburg , SS 2003).
7. ↑ so Stark himself according to the psychiatric report of Dr. Specht (Erlangen) in: Leonhard Stark observation files (1922), Neurosurgery Hospital, District Upper Palatinate (Archive District Hospital Regensburg); s. a. Lens 1983, p. 220.
8. ↑ cit. n. Linse 1983, p. 226; Fig. Ibid., P. 39 and 226.
9. ↑ s. Lens 1983, p. 227ff.
10. ↑ Quotations from Linse 1983, p. 215.

literature

• Hinrich Jantzen: names and works. Biographies and contributions to the sociology of the youth movement. Vol. 4, Frankfurt / M .: Dipa 1977, pp. 276-279 ISBN 3-7638-1254-7
• Ulrich Linse: Wandering Prophet of the Twenties , in: Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Ed.): Residence: Nirgendwo . Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann 1982, pp. 191-208 ISBN 3-88725-070-2
• Ulrich Linse: Barefoot prophets. Savior of the twenties . Berlin: Siedler-Verlag 1983 ISBN 3-88680-088-1
• Friedrich Wencker-Wildberg : Uncrowned kings. Attempt of a world history of the adventurer. Das Bergland-Buch, Graz 1934, pp. 649–652

Web links

• Literature by and about Leonhard Stark in the catalog of the German National Library
• Photos, posters and writings by Leonhard Stark