Otto Lautenschlager

Otto Lautenschlager (born September 17, 1900 in Cannstatt , † February 5, 1987 in Aichwald ) was a German writer and poet.

Life

Otto Lautenschlager, the eldest son of the Daimler racing driver Christian Friedrich Lautenschlager , wrote poetry at school. He studied literature and art history in Munich , where he found relatives in the Stefan George circle, to which Hermann Gmelin introduced him. Through his friend, the Swabian poet Paul Bühler, he came to the Urach district around Karl Raichle , where he met numerous personalities, including a. Johannes R. Becher , with whom he kept in touch.

He joined the German youth movement with their inner urge for freedom and their enthusiasm for nature and the wanderer bird. Their ideals: respect for nature, love for home and people, he made his own and held on to them throughout his life. With rucksack and guitar, he wandered through Germany and on via Thuringia to Prague and Budapest, through Austria, Switzerland to Italy to Rome. In Montagnola he visited Hermann Hesse , with whom he had a long-term pen friendship. After the end of the years of travel and return, he started a family and in 1926 bought a house on the Schurwald near Esslingen, where he settled down as a freelance writer.

He lived with the motto: "Lots of light, air, earth green and religion". For him, “light” means a positive attitude towards life. “Air” to live with nature and according to its laws. With “earth green” the love for home and nature is connected. By “religion” he understood the respect for the divine omnipotence that has become visible in nature and creatures.

The friendships he made in his youth lasted a lifetime and a. with the poets Martin Lang, Eduard Reinacher , Johannes Linke, Georg Schwarz, Otto Heuschele , Helmut Paulus, Otto Rombach , the painters Willo Rall, Reinhold Nägele , Otto Luick , Karl Demetz , the sculptors Heinrich Kirchner and Fritz Wrampe and the Stuttgart interior designer Rudolf Frank.

Otto Lautenschlager has published poems, novels, short stories, book reviews, anthologies and the like since the 1920s. a. He also worked as an editor and freelancer for various publishers. His contributions appeared in magazines and calendars. After the Second World War he belonged with Elly Heuss-Knapp and Ministerialrat Hassinger to the committee of the Württemberg Ministry of Culture for the redesign of the school reading books. In the 1950s he became known for home and school radio broadcasts on Süddeutscher Rundfunk.

In 1976 he was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his life's work .

Works

• 1922 first volume of poetry as Jupiter reprint, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart
• 1924 “Monte Freddo”, Tukan-Verlag, Munich
• 1931 “Earth in Light”, Alsatia Publishing House, Colmar
• 1939 “In God's Breath”, Truckenmüller Verlag, Stuttgart
• 1945 “In the circle of loved ones” (novel), Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart
• 1947 “Morgenrot - annual gift from our poets”, Karl Mayer Verlag, Stuttgart
• 1948 “Herder-Piper of Mankind”, Karl Mayer Verlag, Stuttgart
• 1949 “In the circle of loved ones” new edition
• In 1978 this novel "Im Kreise der Lieben" was published again by Kohlhammer Verlag Stuttgart under the title "Friedrich Silcher - A Life for Music"

From his poem "Homecoming over the Alb ":

"Mild blows the wind over the hills
and in the Star rooms spread angel
of silver clouds blackish shadow
Rosy songs
in the dark blowing night."

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Lautenschlager in the catalog of the German National Library and German Literature Archive Marbach

swell

• Lautenschlager family archive
• Esslinger Zeitung of September 17, 1980, page 4
• Esslinger Zeitung of February 12, 1987, page 7