Otto Gmelin

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Otto Franz Gmelin (born September 17, 1886 in Karlsruhe , † November 22, 1940 in Cologne ) was a German writer and member of the Bamberg circle of poets .

Life

Gmelin came from a scholarly family in Baden. His brother was the actor , theater director and director Helmuth Gmelin , his niece was Gerda Gmelin , who professionally followed in her father Helmuth's footsteps.

He passed his school leaving examination in Karlsruhe in 1906 and began studying mathematics and philosophy and natural science in Karlsruhe and Heidelberg . After completing the teaching traineeship in 1911/12, he went to Mexico until 1914 , where he worked as an educator for a German family. Due to his teaching activity, he was in the Baden state services, from which he was dismissed in 1914 at his own request.

At the beginning of the First World War he volunteered for military service, but was soon discharged from the army for health reasons.

In 1917 he received his doctorate in Heidelberg with a mathematical thesis for a doctorate in philosophy . In the year of his doctorate he became a teacher at the secondary school in Solingen-Wald . From 1936 he lived as a freelance writer in Bensberg near Cologne.

Otto Gmelin mainly wrote historical novels and stories on topics from the epochs of the Great Migration and the Middle Ages, mythically transfigured by the author . Thanks to his anti-democratic and ethnic attitude, Gmelin learned, without being a National Socialist himself , that government agencies were promoted in the Nazi state . During the last years of his life, however, he kept a certain distance from this appropriation and limited his literary work to the publication of souvenir and travel books.

After the end of the war, Gmelins Prohn fights for his people (1938) in the Soviet occupation zone was placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

Gmelin died in 1940 at the age of 54 of infectious rheumatoid arthritis in a Cologne-Kalk hospital. He had been married to Klara Ella nee Stegmann since 1918. His grave in the Karlsruhe main cemetery no longer exists.

Works

  • About perfect and friendly numbers , Halle (Saale) 1917
  • The Homunculus , Stuttgart [u. a.] 1923
  • Temujin, Lord of the Earth , Jena 1925
  • Landscape and Soul, in Die Tat , 17th vol., H. 1, April 1925
  • The face of the emperor , Jena 1927
  • Natural history of the citizen , Jena 1929
  • The new Reich , Jena 1930
  • The girl from Zacatlan , Jena 1931
  • Reminder to the church , Berlin 1932
  • Genghis Khan the Lord of the Earth, novel of a conqueror, Jena
  • Summer with Cordelia , Jena 1932
  • Spring in Germany , Oldenburg 1933
  • Konradin rides , Leipzig 1933
  • Prohn fights for his people , Jena 1933
  • The Empress's embassy , Gütersloh 1934
  • German train , Jena 1934
  • The Grail Castle , Leipzig 1935
  • Youth storms Kremzin , Jena 1935
  • The crown in the south , Jena 1936
  • The young queen , Jena: Eugen Diederichs 1936, 64 pp.
  • The call to the Reich , Munich 1936
  • The house of dreams , Jena 1937
  • The Reich in the South , Jena 1937
  • The trip to Montsalvatsch , Jena 1939
  • On the essence of poetry , Mainz 1939
  • Granada - Jajce - Dublin , Cologne 1940
  • Trips to Italy , Jena 1940
  • Wela Holt , Jena 1940
  • Conversations in the evening , Jena 1941
  • The green glass , Cologne 1942

Editing

  • Johann Georg Gmelin , Munich 1911
  • Choir of Friends , Cologne 1939

literature

  • German Literature Lexicon , founded by Wilhelm Kosch, column 343; KGSair Verlag Zurich and Munich 2008; ISBN 978-3-908255-00-0 (complete works)
  • About Gmelin's novel The Face of the Emperor in: Frank Westenfelder: Genesis, Problems and Effects of National Socialist Literature Using the Example of the Historical Novel between 1890 and 1945. Peter Lang, Frankfurt etc. 1989 ( full text online ), Chapter III.4.2.b. Leader and state .
  • Ulrich Helmke: Memorial sheets for three forgotten authors , Kassel 1989
  • Heinrich Lenk: The novels of Otto Gmelin and their salary , Vienna 1939

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Death certificate no. 683 from November 23, 1940, registry office Cologne Kalk. In: LAV NRW R. Retrieved on August 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-g.html
  3. ↑ Karlsruhe main cemetery. In: knerger.de. Retrieved August 9, 2020 .
  4. ↑ A concentrated expression of his folkish thinking
personal data
SURNAME Gmelin, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gmelin, Otto Franz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH 17th September 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1940
Place of death Cologne