Oskar Wohrle

Theodor Oskar Wöhrle (born January 26, 1890 in Saint-Louis in the French department of Haut-Rhin (then: Sankt Ludwig in the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine , German Empire ); † January 31, 1946 in Glottertal ) was a German poet, writer and publisher from Alsace with an eventful life. Wöhrle was one of 131 writers whose books were either burned by the National Socialists on May 10, 1933 ( book burning ) or removed from the public libraries six days later. However, he later collaborated with Nazi authorities.

Life

Oskar Wöhrle was born in Saint-Louis, Alsace, in 1890 as the eldest son of five children of the shoemaker Theodor Wöhrle. From 1904 he attended secondary school in Colmar and then began training as a teacher. For disciplinary reasons he left this training and began, with only the violin in his luggage, a vagabond and bohemian life in France (Paris, southern France) and in Italy, he was also a stoker on a Mediterranean ship.

For material reasons he joined the Foreign Legion , came from Algiers to fight on the Moroccan border, contracted typhus and deserted from the hospital in Marseille. After fleeing through the forests of France, Italy and Switzerland, he returned to Alsace. There he worked as a silk dyer in a factory.

In 1911 he was called up for military service as a gunner in the Prussian army. Wöhrle wrote down experiences from his vagrant life, poems and prose sketches. Some poems have been published by "The literary Alsace". In the army he had discipline problems again and was eliminated.

In 1912 Oskar Wöhrle became a journalist for the literary magazine "Dielesen", Munich. At the same time he presented his first novel The Baldamus and his pranks , which was very successful and also received a lot of attention from fellow writers. However, there was a dispute with the harvesters about his reward and despite a change to the editorial office in Stuttgart, he left on June 30, 1914.

With the beginning of the First World War he was drafted into the German army as a gunner. After a year and a half at the front, Woehrle became editor of the 10th Army newspaper in Vilnius and Minsk . He dealt with the culture of Lithuania and published in 1916, based on his war experiences, the book Querschläger, Das Bumserbuch, Notes of a Gunner , a collection of drastic, sarcastic, gallows-humorous war stories and poems. Some of the stories found in the estate were rejected by the military censors.

During the war he also became active as a publisher in 1916 - the Julie Schrader publishing bookshop was opened in Schiltigheim (Lower Alsace near Strasbourg) under the maiden name of his wife .

After the war ended, Wöhrle was a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council and produced leaflets in Stuttgart. In 1920 he founded a bookstore with an antiquarian bookshop in Konstanz am Bodensee, Hussenstraße 18, and shortly afterwards the Oskar Wöhrle Verlag and the See-Verlag , and later a printer. His house became a meeting place for many artists (painters, musicians, writers), which even gave him the chairmanship of the Konstanzer Kunstverein. During this time the house received its expressionist painted facade by Hans Breinlinger, which is still there today . Wöhrle's publishers became known for “left” and liberal literature. Mismanagement and inflation led to bankruptcy in 1925, and in 1926 he also lost his house and property.

Wöhrle went deeply in debt to his sister and her husband in Stuttgart, then to Berlin, wrote advertising slogans and radio reports, wrote the novel "Das Rattennest" and the story: "Splitterspiegel der Jugend".

For his historical novel "Jan Hus" he received the Czechoslovakian Literature Prize and was invited to a longer study visit to Prague in 1932 to continue the "Hus" ("The Cup").

In 1933 Wöhrle moved to his family in Schiltigheim in Alsace, which is now French again.

He worked as a packer at Oetker in Strasbourg. During this time he wrote “The Schiltigheim Harvest”, poetry about his Alsatian homeland. Expelled by the French, Wöhrle moved to Freiburg im Breisgau.

The National Socialists burned his book “Querschläger” on May 10, 1933. Wöhrle initially fled to Prague via Alsace. However, he returned to Germany in 1937 and initially settled in Baden. In his work he tried to adapt to the Nazi cultural policy. He worked as a research assistant for German authorities in Mulhouse . He offered the German radio in Berlin texts about Alsace and the political mood there (correspondence with Artistic Director Adolf Raskin ).

In 1941 the “Sundgau Book” was created ( Sundgau is a landscape in southern Alsace) and in 1942 an illustrated book about Alsace. Before the front approached, he fled to Basel in 1944 and then to the Black Forest. Wöhrle died in the Black Forest Clinic Glotterbad after a leg amputation as a result of diabetes , which he had been suffering from since the 1920s.

Oskar Wöhrle was married to Juliette Wöhrle, b. Schrader.

Artistic creation

Wöhrle's literary career began with songs and poems from his vagabond days. Several volumes of poetry followed. His first great success was the novel "The Baldamus and His Pranks", 1912, 1916.

Most of Wöhrle's estate has been in the Saar-Lor-Lux-Alsace literature archive at Saarland University in Saarbrücken since 1999 ; some holdings are in the Fritz-Hüser-Institut in Dortmund, in the university library in Frankfurt am Main (especially letters) and in his hometown of Saint-Louis .

Awards

• 1932 Czechoslovakian Literature Prize
• 1940 Erwin von Steinbach Prize from the FVS Foundation (for “Alemannic folkism” in Alsace, Switzerland and the German Empire. It was awarded by the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg i. Br.)

Works

• The Baldamus and his pranks . Roman, Stuttgart 1913 (new edition: Der Bücherkreis , Berlin 1927. New, modified final version: Der Bücherkreis, Berlin 1931)
• As a soldier in rank and file . Poems. Fleischel, Berlin 1915
• The fuck book . Fleischel, Berlin 1916 (new edition as: ricochet. Notes of a gunner , Berlin 1929)
• A German craftsman from the Biedermeier period. On the roller through the Balkans and the Orient . Retold by Oskar Wöhrle, The Reading, Stuttgart 1916
• Johann Hus . The last day. Historical novel . Bücherkreis, Berlin 1932
• The Schiltigheim harvest. Poems . Joseph Heissler, Strasbourg 1934
• Kamrad in the gray army. A soldiers' breviary. Printed as a manuscript. Bär & Bartosch, Freiburg 1939
• Pömperle's excursion into the world. Alsatian novella . German Bushel Association, Karlsruhe 1940
• The Sundgaubuch. Alsatian stories . Colmar 1941
• Alsace. A hymn . With 64 illustrations, Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld 1942
• Six poems in: Die Frucht - Alsatian poetry of the present . Hünenburg-Verlag, Strasbourg o. J. (1976), p. 21 ff.

literature

• Manfred Bosch : Oskar Wöhrle, publisher and author. In: Ders .: Bohème on Lake Constance. Literary life at the lake from 1900 to 1950. Lengwil 1997.
• Iris Grob: The restless life of the writer Oskar Wörle . In: The Latest Melusine , Issue 2/2007 ( Internet Version ( Memento of 17 May 2008 at the Internet Archive ))
• www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de - University Library Frankfurt / Main: Oskar Wöhrle estate
• Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (Ed.): Westphalian Author's Lexicon 1750–1950, 4 volumes, 1993 to 2002 in Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn, Vol. 3,
• Saar-Lor-Lux-Alsace literature archive at Saarland University in Saarbrücken: extensive estate of Oskar Wöhrle
• Günter Scholdt: The literature archive Saar-Lor-Lux-Alsace and its most important legacies
• Thomas Mann Studies, Vol. 10 - Years of Unmut - Thomas Mann's correspondence with René Schickele 1930 - 1940, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, pp. 122, 361
• Friedrich Lienhard & René Schickele: Alsatian writers between Germany and France . by Michel Ertz, Olms, 1990, p. 403
• Adrien Finck, Alexander Ritter, Maryse Staiber: René Schickele from a new perspective: Contributions to German-French culture . Olms Presse, 1991, p. 274
• Manfred Bosch: Stayed here: Or home and other imaginations: essays, portraits, essays and speeches from twenty years . Edition Isele, 1997, p. 78 ff.

Web links

• Literature by and about Oskar Wöhrle in the catalog of the German National Library
• Oskar Wöhrle in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
• Estate in the University Library in Frankfurt am Main
• Oskar Wöhrle - The Correspondence (1909 to 1944)
• Works by Oskar Wöhrle in the Gutenberg-DE project

notes

1. ^ Verlag des Friedrich Spieser , named after Hüneburg (Alsace) , one of his autonomist projects in the 1930s until 1945
2. ↑ 12 Poets, compilation by Raimund Buchert