Maximilian Harden

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Maximilian Harden (1911)
Berlin memorial plaque for Harden in Grunewald

Maximilian Harden (born October 20, 1861 in Berlin , † October 30, 1927 in Montana , Switzerland; originally Felix Ernst Witkowski ; numerous pseudonyms such as "Kent", "Aposta", "Kunz von der Rosen") was a German publicist , critic , Actor and journalist .

Harden was the editor of the weekly Die Zukunft (1892-1922). He initiated lawsuits against advisors and friends of Emperor Wilhelm II ( Harden-Eulenburg affair ), which led to several resignations.

Life

Imperial times

Harden was the son of the Jewish silk merchant Arnold Witkowski and his wife Ernestine. His brother was the influential banker and politician Richard Witting . Under pressure from his father, the twelve-year-old had to leave the French grammar school in Berlin. From 1874 he completed an apprenticeship as an actor and then performed with a traveling troupe in various places in Germany. In 1878 he converted to Protestantism . From 1884 Harden was a theater critic for numerous newspapers. Under the pseudonym Apostata , he also published articles on political topics in the journal Die Gegenwart . Other newspapers in which he published were Die Nation and the Berliner Tageblatt , there as an employee of Theodor Wolff . In 1889 he was one of the co-founders of the Free Stage Theater Association in Berlin and in the following years reorganized the German Theater in Berlin together with Max Reinhardt .

In 1892, Harden founded the weekly newspaper Die Zukunft , in which he published many essays on politics and art. In the very first issue he condemned all of his competition as a dumbfounding forger: “But because she has built her big dye store, her forgery temple in Berlin, because she dumbs down and corrupts a people of millions, that's why I'm denying this new Bel and announcing it Feud, without mercy, and shout as loud as the forgers' choir forces: Do not believe them. "For Maximilian Harden there was only one who seeks the truth: himself. Harden acted as an intellectual" fighting nature "and worked on the political, current social and cultural events. He was extremely active as a journalist, he filled thousands of pages of his magazine himself. Within a few years he became the “best-hated and at least best-known among all German writers”, as the magazine Berliner Leben judged in September 1898. With the future , he also offered a platform for progressive thinkers, such as the sex reformer Helene Stöcker .

Artistically he was involved in a number of disputes with Gerhart Hauptmann and Hermann Sudermann , among others . Harden was very important to the Friedrichshagener poet circle : In the first issue of his magazine he published the appeal of Ola Hansson and Laura Marholm to support August Strindberg . These 1,000 marks were the prerequisite for Strindberg's move to Friedrichshagen , but also the basis for Strindberg's falling out with Laura Marholm.

In Empire Maximilian Harden initially was a monarchist and admired Otto von Bismarck . Later he was critical of the new government under Wilhelm II, and especially what Bismarck called the " camarilla of the kinads ".

From 1906, Harden attacked the entourage in a series of articles and thus the emperor's personal regiment, also known by Harden (→ Harden-Eulenburg affair ). The revelations were directed primarily against the diplomat Philipp zu Eulenburg and the Berlin city commanders and wing adjutants of Emperor Kuno von Moltke . The “softening” of Wilhelm is favored by the homoerotic milieu of his “court camarilla”. His revelation, allegedly given by Bismarck over a bottle of wine, that Eulenburg, a close friend and advisor of the emperor, was homosexual and had committed perjury , led to particularly tough arguments . The outing campaign led to a state affair and resulted in an avalanche of lawsuits lasting several years. Despite the initial acquittal, the three sensational trials against Eulenburg severely damaged the image of the imperial family and were used by Harden's lawyer Max Bernstein to expose the apparently non-independent Prussian judiciary. The scandalous trial of Kuno von Moltke against Harden sent out similar shock waves. Because Maximilian Harden dragged the Count's private property to the public in this process, his former admirer Karl Kraus from Vienna calculated in the pamphlet Maximilian Harden in 1907 . A job to do. off with him.

World War and Republic

During the First World War , Harden initially advocated a victory peace . Gradually, however, he relativized his position and became more and more a critic of war policy. In 1918 he was awarded the Strindberg Prize for his essay collection War and Peace . In the course of the revolution after 1918 , Harden took socialist positions. In 1919 he married his longtime partner Selma Aaron.

When Germany revolted against the peace terms of the Versailles Treaty , Harden was one of the few who supported it because he was convinced that Germany was guilty of war . Harden found readers less and less inclined. As the number of future subscribers declined, its influence waned.

A few days after the assassination attempt on his former friend Walther Rathenau , on July 3, 1922, supporters of the Freikorps carried out an assassination attempt on Harden in front of his house in Berlin-Grunewald , which he barely survived with severe head injuries. The perpetrators fled to Vienna and were sentenced there as “hired assassins”. The masterminds were "swastika people" in Munich. Kurt Tucholsky criticized the treatment of the attackers a. a. in the world stage as too indulgent. Harden subsequently discontinued The Future . The last edition appeared on September 30, 1922, thirty years after it was founded. In 1923 Harden withdrew to Switzerland.

Death and grave

Grave of Maximilian Harden in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

Maximilian Harden died just ten days after his 66th birthday on October 30, 1927 in Montana-Vermala in Valais, Switzerland , of pneumonia that had developed as a result of persistent bronchitis. The illness had prevented him from returning to Berlin, where he had wanted to prepare a future edition planned for early 1928 .

In an obituary in the Vossische Zeitung , Georg Bernhard summed up :

“Basically, the fact that he couldn't give anything more to the new Germany can be traced back to the fact that the journalistic opponent of Wilhelm II felt that his own game was over with his fall. The inner tragedy of the last years of his life lay in the fact that he rebelled against this feeling. [...] And perhaps fate meant Harden particularly benevolently by calling him away from the certain disappointment that he would have experienced with the reappearance of the 'future'. "

The attack , the Gaunewspaper of theBerlin NSDAP , drooled after the dead man: “Maximilian Harden was executed due to pneumonia . We only regret about this man's death that he took away the opportunity to settle accounts with Isidor Witkowski in our own way. "

At the funeral service, which took place on November 4th in close family and friends in the Wilmersdorf crematorium , Ernst Deutsch performed poetry by Goethe and a monologue from Egmont . The urn was then buried in the Heerstraße cemetery in today's Berlin-Westend district . The grave monument in the form of a mock sarcophagus made of Rochlitz porphyry with a grave slab and the inscription "No conqueror's power lasts but thought" was created by the sculptor Ludwig Isenbeck . The wife Selma Harden born Aaron (1863–1932) is buried here.

Maximilian Harden's final resting place in the Heerstraße cemetery (grave location: 8-C-10-Reg. 335) was dedicated to the State of Berlin from 1990 to 2014 as an honorary grave . After the dedication and the associated protection expired, a grave godfather was found who agreed to maintain and care for the grave site.

Works

The future 1893 Titel.png
  • Die Zukunft , a weekly publication, appeared in 1892–1922.
  • Literature and Theater , 1896. Digitized
  • Heads , Verlag Erich Reiss, Berlin 1910. Bad.1 digitized , Bd.3 digitized
  • War and Peace , 1918.
  • From Versailles to Versailles , Avalun-Verlag, Hellerau near Dresden 1927 (autobiography). Digitized
  • Kaiser panorama. Literary and political journalism , ed. and with an afterword by Ruth Greuner , Buchverlag der Morgen, Berlin, 1983.
  • Maximilian Harden. Portraits and essays , Reclam, Leipzig 1990.
Correspondence and interviews
  • Correspondence 1897–1920. Maximilian Harden, Walther Rathenau . With an introductory study ed. by Hans Dieter Hellige. G. Müller, Munich; Schneider, Heidelberg 1983.
  • Frank Wedekind, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann - Correspondence with Maximilian Harden . Ed., Commented and with an introductory essay by Ariane Martin. Verlag Häusser, Darmstadt 1996. ISBN 3-89552-036-5 .
  • Interview with Maximilian Harden. In: Hermann Bahr , Hermann Greive (ed.): The anti-Semitism. An international interview. Jüdischer Verlag, Königstein 1979 (first 1894, new edition 2005), ISBN 3-7610-8043-3 , pp. 33-38.

literature

Web links

Commons : Maximilian Harden  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Maximilian Harden  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Stephan Wiehler: Falcon in felt slippers. In: Tagesspiegel.de. October 20, 2014, accessed February 18, 2019 .
  2. ↑ The Future, Volume 1, p. 40.
  3. ↑ Helene Stöcker: Memoirs. The unfinished autobiography of a pacifist who was passionate about women. (= L'homme archive, volume 5). Boehlau, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-22466-0 , p. 122.
  4. ↑ Karl Kraus: Maximilian Harden: An Erledigung. The Torch, October 1907, accessed December 10, 2017 .
  5. ^ The Hour , July 21, 1923
  6. ^ Bernhard Weck: Kurt Tucholsky and the trial of the assassination attempt on the publicist Maximilian Harden. In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1993, pp. 1436–1440.
  7. ^ Georg Bernhard : Maximilian Harden . In: Vossische Zeitung . Monday, October 31, 1927, evening edition. Pp. 1–2, here p. 1.
  8. ^ Bernhard: Maximilian Harden . P. 2.
  9. ↑ Maximilian Harden's funeral . In: Vossische Zeitung . Friday November 4, 1927, evening edition. S. 3. Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 487.
  10. ↑ Maximilian Harden. Writer, critic, actor, journalist . Short biography and description of the tomb at http://www.berlin.friedparks.de . Retrieved November 11, 2019.
  11. ↑ Carolin Brühl: Not for eternity . In: Berliner Morgenpost . Sunday November 22, 2015. Retrieved November 11, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Harden, Maximilian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Witkowski, Felix Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publicist, critic, actor and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1927
Place of death Montana , Switzerland