Max Herrmann-Neisse

Max Herrmann-Neisse

Max Herrmann-Neisse , also Herrmann-Neisse , (born May 23, 1886 in Neisse , Silesia , † April 8, 1941 in London ) was a German writer .

biography

Early days and literary beginnings

Even as a high school student, Max Herrmann-Neisse (actually Max Herrmann) was distinguished by his extraordinary literary ingenuity. He wrote poems and plays; He also made a close friendship with Franz Jung , who was also from Neisse . The years of childhood and adolescence - as well as later life - were overshadowed by the fact that Herrmann-Neiße suffered from hyposomy , i.e. was short.

From 1905 to 1909 he studied literature and art history in Munich and Breslau. In Munich he came into contact with the local bohemians and often went to variety shows and cabarets. In 1909 he left the university without a degree and went back to Neisse to live as a freelance writer. After the first, little noticed publications, it appeared from 1911 in the journal Die Aktion Gedichte Herrmann-Neißes, edited by Franz Pfemfert , and soon afterwards in Pan, edited by Alfred Kerr . Both magazines were among the leading organs of modern literature and quickly made the young author known.

For his first large volume of poetry, Sie und die Stadt , published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1914 , he received the Eichendorff Prize in 1924 . The First World War ruined his parents. His father died in 1916 and his mother drowned herself in the Glatzer Neisse in 1917 . In March 1917 Herrmann-Neisse and Leni Gebek, who was also from Neisse and whom he married in May 1917, moved to Berlin, where he was in close contact with Jung, Pfemfert and socialist and anarchist circles. During this time he added that of his hometown to his name.

Memorial plaque in Neisse

Memorial plaque on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm

Years of Success (1919 to 1933)

In 1919 alone four books by Herrmann-Neisse were published (three volumes of poetry and one play), which were enthusiastically received by critics and authors such as Else Lasker-Schüler and Oskar Loerke . However, this was not enough for the livelihood, which he had to secure through journalistic work and a job as a proofreader at S. Fischer. Also in 1919, his comedy Albine and Aujust premiered in Berlin.

In the 1920s, Herrmann-Neisse began to write more stories and other prose in addition to poetry. In 1920 the autobiographical novel Cajetan Schaltmann was published . Most of the texts of this period are still strongly influenced by Expressionism . With the volume of stories The Encounter (1925) a turn towards the New Objectivity became apparent. During this time he began to appear regularly in cabarets, where he usually performed his own texts; This resulted in contacts u. a. to Claire Waldoff and Alfred Polgar . In 1927 Herrmann-Neisse received the Gerhart Hauptmann Prize .

In the late 1920s Herrmann-Neisse was one of the best-known Berlin writers, to which, in addition to his texts, the striking shape and appearance also contributed. Numerous artists, including George Grosz and Otto Dix , portrayed him at this time.

In exile

Shortly after the Reichstag fire in 1933, Herrmann-Neisse left Germany with his wife and first went to Switzerland, then via the Netherlands and France to London, where he settled in September 1933. The cost of accommodation and food was borne by a benefactor - the wealthy jeweler Alphonse Sondheimer. In 1936 he also made it possible to publish the volume Um uns die Fremde , which was published by Oprecht in Zurich.

Herrmann-Neiße founded the exile PEN at the end of 1933 together with Lion Feuchtwanger , Rudolf Olden and Ernst Toller , but otherwise he remained largely isolated in England. In 1938, after being expelled from Germany, he applied for English citizenship without success.

Even in exile he wrote a lot, including poems considered among his best, but few options for publication remained. In 1940 the poem Litany of Bitterness was written :

"It is bitter to eat the stranger's bread,

bitter nor the bread of grace,

and to be a burden to one's neighbor.

I cannot forget my better years;

but now they are dead

and the last wine is drunk. "

In this poem Herrmann-Neisse alludes to the triangular relationship in which he lived as the weakest part, after his wife had started a love affair with Alphonse Sondheimer, whom she married after the poet's death. In April 1941 he died in London of complications from a heart attack and was buried in East Finchley Cemetery in London. The volume Last Poems was published posthumously by his wife Leni, who committed suicide shortly after the death of her second husband in 1960. Like many writers of the time, Max Herrmann-Neisse was quickly forgotten. It was not until the late 1970s that his works were gradually rediscovered and reissued (and then forgotten again).

Works

Individual works

• A little life. Poems and sketches. 1906
• The book of Francis. 1911
• Portraits of the Provincial Theater. Sonnets. 1913
• You and the city. 1914
• Outrage, devotion, eternity. Poems. 1918
• The Bernert-Paula. A 1918 novel
• Exile. A book of poems. 1919
• The disclosure. Poems. 1919
• Joseph the victor. Three pictures. 1919 (later under the title Albine and Aujust )
• The arbor of the blessed. A comical tragedy. 1919
• Cajetan counter man. 1920
• Helpless eyes. Prose poems. 1920
• The refugee. 1920
• The last man. A comedy before the end of the world. 1922
• The history of bourgeois literature and the proletariat. 1922
• In the star of pain. A book of poems. 1924
• The encounter. Four stories. 1925
• The death row inmate. Narrative. 1927
• Lonely voice. A book of poems. 1927
• Farewell. Poems. 1928
• Music of the night. Poems. 1932
• I was once a German poet. Poems. 1934
• To us the stranger. Poems. 1936
• Last poems. From the estate, ed. by Leni Herrmann, London 1941
• I keep my song. Selection from unpublished poems from the estate ed. by Leni Herrmann, London 1942

Complete edition

• Collected works in ten volumes. Edited by Klaus Völker , Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1986–1988 (second edition: 1990)
  • Prose 1 - Cajetan counter man. The Bernert-Paula
  • Prose 2 - The death row inmate
  • Prose 3 - Unhappy love
  • Poems 1 - In the star of pain
  • Poems 2 - To us the stranger
  • Poems 3 - Shadowy Lure
  • Poems 4 - I have my song
  • The new decision - essays and reviews
  • Cabaret - Writings on cabaret and the visual arts
  • Panoptikum - plays and writings on the theater
• Letters. Published by Klaus Völker and Michael Prinz, Verbrecher Verlag, Berlin 2012
  • Letters 1 , 1906–1928
  • Letters 2 , 1929-1940

Others

• with Leni Herrmann: love community abroad. Poems and notes . Edited by Christoph Haacker. Arco Verlag, Wuppertal 2012.
• That we forgot all the hardships of the time. Travel album autumn 1937. Edited by Klaus Völker . Ulrich Keicher Publishing House, Warmbronn 2012.

Letters

• George Grosz / Max Herrmann-Neisse: “Life is great”. The correspondence. Edited by Klaus Völker, Berlin 2003.

Audio book

• Max Hermann-Neisse - I was once a German poet . Kaleidophon-Verlag, Berlin 2012, 79 min.

literature

• Yvonne-Patricia Alefeld (Ed. In connection with Eckhard Grunewald and Nikolaus Gussone): The poet and his city. Max Herrmann-Neisse on the 50th anniversary of his death. An exhibition by the Eichendorff Institute at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the Upper Silesian State Museum Ratingen-Hösel, Ratingen 1991.
• Richard Dove: "The city is strange and empty ..." Five German and Austrian writers in exile in London 1933–1945. Translated from English by Hellmut Roemer, Parthas, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-932-52959-6 .
• Jutta Kepser: Utopia and Satire. The prose poem by Max Herrmann-Neisse, Würzburg 1996.
• Else Lasker-Schüler : Max Herrmann. In: Prose and Drama , 1962.
• Rosemarie Lorenz: Max Herrmann-Neisse. 1966.
• Rosemarie Lorenz:  Herrmann-Neisse, Max. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , p. 692 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Jelko Peters: "I was once a German poet." Max Herrmann-Neisse in exile in London. In: German authors of the East as opponents and victims of National Socialism. Contributions to the problem of resistance. Edited by Frank-Lothar Kroll , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-428-10293-2 , pp. 189-201
• Sibylle Schönborn (Ed.): Eccentric Modernism: Max Herrmann-Neiße (1886–1941) . Lang, Bern 2013, ISBN 978-3-0343-1408-4 ( Yearbook for International German Studies , Series A: Conference Reports , Volume 111).
• Klaus Schuhmann : “I go as I came: poor and despised.” Life and work of Max Hermann-Neisse (1886–1941). Bielefeld 2003 ISBN 3-89528-413-0
• Jörg Thunecke: "Woe to me that I'm a lyric poet and a German one at that." On Max Herrmann-Neisses' exillyric. In: German-language Exillyric from 1933 to the post-war period. Ed. Jörg Thunecke (Amsterdam Contributions to Newer German Studies. Volume 44), Amsterdam 1998, pp. 235–249
• Klaus Völker : Max Herrmann-Neisse: artists, pubs, cabarets - Silesia, Berlin, in exile . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1991 ISBN 3-89468-007-5 (= German Past , Volume 56: Places in Berlin's History )

Web links

Commons : Max Herrmann-Neisse  - Collection of Images

Wikisource: Max Herrmann-Neisse  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Max Herrmann-Neisse in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Max Herrmann-Neisse in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Max Herrmann-Neisse in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
• Max Herrmann-Neiße on the page "Stiftung Kulturwerk Schlesien"
• Max Herrmann-Neisse on the website of the exile archive
• The Max Herrmann Neisse Institute
• Collection Max Herrmann-Neisse in the University and State Library of Münster

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Jörg Thunecke: Exillyrik Herrmann-Neißes, 241.
2. ↑ Max Herrmann-Neisse: Last Poems, London 1941, 172.
3. ↑ Herbert Hupka in “Embassy in London let Max Herrmann-Neisse's grave fall into disrepair”: Archived copy ( memento of the original from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.