Ludwig Friedel

Ludwig Friedel (born August 10, 1917 in Glatz , Province of Silesia ; † April 8, 2007 in Darmstadt , Hesse ), born as Karl Siegfried Ludwig , known as "Friedel", was a German industrial clerk , photographer , sculptor and painter . His name was reversed in 1943 during his emigration due to a mistake and was not a self-chosen pseudonym .

family

Friedel with his mother Paula Ludwig , around 1924/25

Siegfried Ludwig was born as the child of the publisher, printer co-owner and officer Walter Rose (1881–1962) from Neurode and the single Austrian poet and painter Paula Ludwig (1900–1974). Rose had met this in the summer of 1916, when she was standing next to his sister at Artur Wasner's (1887–1939) painting school in Breslau .

Friedel was raised alone by his very young mother. First he lived with her in a maternal home in Nymphenburg , then from 1918 to 1923 in Munich , then in Berlin at Hallescher Tor , later in an attic apartment and then in a back building on Kurfürstendamm . However, his mother often had to take care of him, spending two years in the Froebel house while she was without a place of residence, and later privately. Friedel therefore did not get to know family life in the traditional sense. His father occasionally supported the mother financially during this time and stayed in sporadic contact with his son during his childhood. As a baby, Friedel and his mother were portrayed naked in their arms several times.

School and education

From 1927 to 1934, his father financed Friedel attending the reform pedagogical school by the sea , founded and directed by Martin Luserke , which was strongly influenced by music, on the North Sea island of Juist . His mother visited him there by ship, accompanied by Carl Zuckmayer , one of her friends at the time, whose older brother Eduard Zuckmayer had taught at this boarding school since 1925 . Yvan Goll reported to his wife Claire in a letter from Berlin to Paris on February 22, 1931 about Paula Ludwig: “[…] She also has a son of 13 years who lives in a school community by the sea. Illegitimate offspring. [...] Now she is writing these poems to her boy. "

At the school by the sea , Friedel met his schoolmate Günther Leitz , with whom he later became a friend throughout his life. After Luserkes Landschulheim in the spring of 1934 against the background of anti-Semitism and the DC circuit closed, the 17-year-old Friedel would have on the outstanding in his matriculation examination have to switch to another school again, as for example, his schoolmates Felicitas Kestner , Beate Köstlin and Oswald Graf to Munster .

In view of the changed school conditions and the Nazi ideology to be expected there , however, he decided to advance vocational training. In the optical industry, at the Ernst Leitz company in Wetzlar , Hesse , he completed an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk and photographer from 1934. Through his friend Günther Leitz he knew that his father, the industrialist Ernst Leitz II , was left-liberal and democratic.

During his childhood and youth, Friedel got to know many well-known contemporaries through his mother's large circle of friends and in some cases also lovers: Waldemar Bonsels , Bertolt Brecht , Robert Forster-Larrinaga , Stefan George , Yvan Goll, Ludwig Hardt , Magnus Henning , Hermann Kasack , Friedrich Koffka , Else Lasker-Schüler , the siblings Klaus and Erika Mann , Max Pulver , Joachim Ringelnatz , Ina Seidel , Peter Suhrkamp , Siegfried von Vegesack and the brothers Eduard and Carl Zuckmayer.

Additional training, emigration and work

In 1934 his mother moved to her native Austria; it was an escape from the National Socialists , which she categorically rejected.

After successfully completing his professional training, Friedel was drafted into the Reich Labor Service (RAD), Dept. 2/221, in Frankenberg (Eder) in northern Hesse . Around 1938 his mother and part of her circle of friends were concerned about Friedel's future and considered bringing him to France. After the German annexation of Austria , his mother stayed in Paris . Subsequently, with the active help of Erika Mann , Friedel was induced to leave the German Reich illegally. As a result, he was also deserted because he had evaded military service in this way . In France, mother and son were recognized as stateless persons and applied for visas for Brazil , where Friedel's aunt Martha, his mother's sister, had lived since 1936.

In Paris Friedel attended sculpture courses at the Academie Ranson with Aristide Maillol . After France declared war on the German Empire after the German invasion of Poland , Friedel, who at that time was staying with his mother in Saint-Malo , first went to the nearby internment camp Fort de la Varde in Paramé, then to the internment camp Bassens near Bordeaux . His mother was able to visit him there before she voluntarily went to the Gurs internment camp in the spring of 1940 due to her state of health and lack of money . Friedel advised him to go illegally across the Pyrenees to Spain after his release . After the internees were released after the Wehrmacht marched into Paris on June 14, 1940, Friedel followed this advice and was arrested immediately after crossing the border. After a stay in the Spanish assembly camp Irun , he was supposed to register in the internment camp Miranda de Ebro and misinterpreted the Spanish term nombre as a family name ( Spanish apellido / apelativo ). As a result, when he was released in 1943, he received incorrectly issued personal documents that reversed his name and made the family name his future first name. There he received reading material from former SaM schoolmates and other friends, learned languages ​​and painted his surroundings. His mother even managed to visit him illegally there.

Freed again, Friedel was supported by the American Quaker Aid Committee , worked for three years as a language teacher in Madrid and studied sculpture at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes in San Fernando . In 1946 he succeeded in obtaining a permanent visa for Brazil. To do this, however, his documents, which identified him as an industrial clerk, had to be converted into those of a technician who is in great demand in Brazil. He reached Rio de Janeiro in December 1946 , where he was received by his mother and subsequently worked as a freelance photographer. At the end of 1947 he moved to live with his mother in São Paulo .

In 1956 Friedel returned to Germany from Brazil, where he found work with his former SaM schoolmate and friend Günther Leitz in Wetzlar, exactly where he had completed his training. As a Leica photographer well-known in specialist circles , he taught at the Leica Academy and trained photographers. In the periodical Leica Fotografie (today: LFI), published in several languages , a large number of his photos were printed, especially in the late 1950s and 1960s, including in photography literature. Until 1970, shortly after Günther Leitz's death, he lived with his mother in Wetzlar before they both moved to Darmstadt. In 2005 an exhibition in Idstein showed his photographic works. A photo during this exhibition shows the 88-year-old Friedel with his Leica.

He died at the age of 89. At the Waldfriedhof Darmstadt a broken plaque leaning against his mother's grave commemorates him ( see photo ).

exhibition

• 2005 - Ludwig Friedel - In the land of precious stones . July 28 to August 28, 2005 in Speicher, Idstein

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heide Helwig: Whether nobody calls me - The life of Paula Ludwig . Langewiesche-Brandt, Ebenhausen 2002. ISBN 978-3-7846-0182-3 , p. 29.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Barbara Glauert-Hesse (eds.), Claire Goll, Yvan Goll, Paula Ludwig: Only one more time will I be unfaithful to you - correspondence and notes 1917–1966 . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2013. ISBN 978-3835310469 , pp. 169, 432.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Heide Helwig: Whether nobody calls me - The life of Paula Ludwig . Langewiesche-Brandt, Ebenhausen 2002. ISBN 978-3-7846-0182-3 , pp. 69-70.
4. ↑ Paula Ludwig lived from 1927 at the address Kurfürstendamm 177 in an attic apartment, later on the 5th floor of a rear building at the address Kurfürstendamm 112, quoted from: Barbara Glauert-Hesse (ed.), Claire Goll, Yvan Goll, Paula Ludwig: Only once more will I be unfaithful to you - correspondence and notes from 1917 to 1966 . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2013. ISBN 978-3835310469 , p. 121.
5. ↑ Helmut Swozilek (ed.): Ulrike Längle, Jürgen Thaler (edit.): I look at myself from a thousand mirrors. Paula Ludwig 1900–1974 . Catalog for the exhibition of the Vorarlberger Landesmuseum and the Franz-Michel-Felder-Archive, Vorarlberger Landesmuseum, Bregenz 2004, p. 265.
6. ↑ Rosanna Vitale: Exile in Brazil 1933–1945. The experience of the stranger from the point of view of female self-testimonies . Eberhard Verlag, Munich 2003. ISBN 3-926777-64-8 , p. 90.
7. ↑ Heide Hellwig: Whether nobody calls me - The life of Paula Ludwig . CH Beck, Munich 2004. ISBN 978-3-406-61067-7 . P. 117.
8. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ulrike Längle : Paula Ludwig: Gedichte , on: planetlyrik.de, quoted from: Elisabeth Reichart (Hrsg.): Österreichische Dichterinnen . Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg 1993. ISBN 978-3701308637 .
9. ↑ Barbara Glauert-Hesse (eds.), Claire Goll, Yvan Goll, Paula Ludwig: Only one more time will I be unfaithful to you - correspondence and notes 1917–1966 . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2013. ISBN 978-3835310469 , pp. 363, 483.
10. ↑ Erika Mann described Paula Ludwig in a letter dated November 27, 1956 as follows: "I appreciate not only the important artist in her, but also a character whose incorruptible cleanliness proved itself particularly at the time when many of my acquaintances were moving around." to earn well under the Hitler regime. Paula Ludwig was and is what was called a 'full Aryan' in those years. But she took her Catholicism, like her general Christianity and humanity, too seriously to be able to work in Hitler's Germany. [...] I met the emigrant Paula Ludwig in Paris during the so-called 'Munich Crisis'. A return to the 'Reich' had long been an (inner) impossibility for her. ”Quoted from Ulrike Längle: Paula Ludwig: Gedichte , on: planetlyrik.de, quoted from: Elisabeth Reichart (ed.): Österreichische Dichterinnen . Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg 1993. ISBN 978-3701308637 .
11. ^ Christiane Quandt: Paula Ludwig: Emigrated from Berlin in 1933! 13 years in Brazil; 1953 homecoming - fatal! . P. 34.
12. ↑ Heide Helwig: Whether nobody calls me - The life of Paula Ludwig . Langewiesche-Brandt, Ebenhausen 2002. ISBN 978-3-7846-0182-3 , p. 198.
13. ↑ Heide Hellwig: Whether nobody calls me - The life of Paula Ludwig . CH Beck, Munich 2004. ISBN 978-3-406-61067-7 . P. 207 ff.
14. ↑ Heide Helwig: Whether nobody calls me - The life of Paula Ludwig . Langewiesche-Brandt, Ebenhausen 2004. ISBN 3-7846-0182-0 , p. 226.
15. ↑ Ludwig Friedel - In the Land of Precious Stones ( Memento of the original from December 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Exhibition from July 28 to August 28, 2005 in the warehouse in Idstein, at: kulturring-idstein.de, accessed on December 15, 2017. 
16. ↑ Photo: Ludwig Friedel in August 2005 in Idstein , on: kulturring-idstein.de, accessed on December 15, 2017.
17. ^ Waldfriedhof Darmstadt, grave site: R 14f 4/10.
18. ↑ Volker Weidermann : King when he shines , epilogue, in: Paula Ludwig: The dark god - An annual poem of love . CH Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3406675348 .