Otto Schönfeldt

Otto Schönfeldt (born March 8, 1912 in Rostock , † September 3, 1994 in Düsseldorf ) was a German theater director, publicist and politician of the Federation of Germans, Party for Unity, Peace and Freedom (BdD).

Life

Origin, education, Nazi period and occupation

Otto Schönfeldt grew up as the son of a carpenter in Hamburg . There his father died when he was 12 years old. Franz Stuhlmann , the head of the Hamburg World Economic Archive at that time, became his foster father . Through Stuhlmann, Schönfeldt found access to German literature, especially Heinrich Heine . He decided to pursue a stage career and studied at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus Hamburg . However, his career was cut off early by the National Socialists ; He was arrested in 1936 as a "resistance member", imprisoned for three months in a concentration camp and was then only allowed to perform in small provincial theaters. During the Second World War he was called into military service late as part of the so-called "last contingent", which resulted in spastic paralysis in both legs.

After 1945 Schönfeldt built two theaters and a guest stage. He had to stop his work as artistic director at Theater Hagen in 1947 after a "conflict [...] with the local authorities" had arisen because of his "educational left-wing program". Since then he has worked as a freelance director, writer and journalist. Since the 1950s he lived in Düsseldorf with his wife Edith, an actress; the marriage was childless. Edith Schönfeldt died in Düsseldorf in 1988 after a long illness, Otto Schönfeldt died there himself in 1994 at the age of 82.

Political activity

As a member of the neutralist League of Germans of the Reich Chancellor a. D. Joseph Wirth ran Schönfeldt for the federal election of 1953 on the list of the All-German People's Party . From 1956 to 1966 he was a member of the federal executive committee of the BdD. In 1957 he acted as the state chairman of this party in the city-state of Hamburg, and since 1966 in North Rhine-Westphalia . In the federal election of 1957, he ran unsuccessfully for the BdD in Hamburg. In 1966 he appeared in Darmstadt at the so-called "German Conversation 1966" together with representatives of the GDR block parties as a speaker. As a partner in the Monitor publishing house, Schönfeldt had been part of the editorial team of the BdD-affiliated Deutsche Volkszeitung since 1954 . Schönfeldt took part in the development of several citizens' initiatives that were judged by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to be communist . He became particularly prominent in the 1960s, when he appeared publicly together with Wolfgang Abendroth and Helmut Ridder as part of a campaign for the lifting of the KPD ban and for the re-admission of the Communist Party of Germany . Soon after reunification, the then board of the Heinrich Heine Society in Düsseldorf saw the opportunity to expose Schönfeldt as a former agent of the GDR regime. The suspicion expressed at the time that he was "cooking an eastern soup in the name of Heine" was, however, after research in the documents of the State Security Service of the German Democratic Republic (research application II.7-00476 / 04Z at the so-called Gauck and Birthler authorities in Berlin) do not harden.

Activities to name the University of Düsseldorf after Heinrich Heine

Students and conservative professors prevented the Düsseldorf University, founded in 1965, from being named after Heinrich Heine. Schönfeldt initiated a "citizens' initiative Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf " and was appointed its spokesman in 1968. At the time it struck him as particularly worrying that many students at Düsseldorf University declared that they could not say anything about Heinrich Heine because they had not read his works: “Of course, 80 percent of them are medical professionals. Nevertheless, this ignorance is catastrophic. Our initiative aims to get people involved with Heinrich Heine. Because Heine has an important message for all of us. ”He held up against the opposition to the proposed renaming:“ For me, Heine [...] is the great champion for a modern Germany and Europe. Taking a stand against Heine means giving the forces of the past a fresh boost. ”In the year of the radical decree in 1972, Schönfeldt was interviewed by Eberhard Piltz on television (in the program Report Munich?) On July 3 in the contribution“ Controversy about a German poet. ” Schönfeldt collected thousands of signatures for the renaming of the University of Düsseldorf to Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, which finally took place in 1988. Because of his well-known political orientation (and that of Heinrich Heine) Schönfeldt's commitment also met with criticism.

He was one of the previous owners of the bronze Heine statuette, cast according to a design by Hugo Lederer from 1912, the life-size replica of which has been in front of the library of the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf since June 16, 1994 . Schönfeldt acquired the statuette in 1965 from the estate of the initiator and co-founder of the Heinrich Heine Society in Düsseldorf, Friedrich Maase . Arie Goral , who was a friend of Schönfeldt, showed the bronze statuette for the first time publicly in the exhibition "Heine Monuments 1900-1933" in the Museum of Hamburg History in the summer of 1980.

Publications

Otto Schönfeldt, Citizens' Initiative Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (ed.) And everyone loves Heinrich Heine ... Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Cologne 1972, DNB 730107361 .

Web links

Dr Rolf Kauffeldt And everyone loves Heinrich Heine 50jahre.phil.hhu.de (accessed on January 25, 2017)

literature

Wolfgang Abendroth , Helmut Ridder , Otto Schönfeldt (eds.): KPD ban or living with communists? (= rororo 1092 ). Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1968, DNB 457281758 .
Thomas Gutmann: On behalf of Heinrich Heine. The dispute over the naming of the University of Düsseldorf 1965–1988. Droste, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-7700-1087-6 (also master's thesis, Uni Düsseldorf 1996).

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Will Schaber : Portrait of the week: Heine pioneer Otto Schönfeldt . In: Structure . 36th year, no. 47 . New York City November 20, 1970 p. 9 ( archive.org ).
^ Susanne Heinke: Portrait . In: Deutsche Volkszeitung / die tat . No. 2 , January 6, 1989, p. 5 .
^ Susanne Schwabach-Albrecht: In Heine's society . Heinrich-Heine-Gesellschaft eV Düsseldorf 1956-2006. Ed .: Joseph A. Kruse. Grupello, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-89978-054-X , p. 50.85 .
↑ Just nothing . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1969, p. 85-88 ( spiegel.de ).
↑ Excerpt from a transcript made by the State Committee for Broadcasting in the GDR: 8:15 pm, July 3, 1972 “Our last topic: A dispute over a German poet […] Eberhard Piltz reports. […] 'I am for Heinrich Heine University However, I am of the opinion that the university and, above all, the university leadership is so narrow-minded that the name Heinrich Heine University is almost too good for the university. I see a direct connection between the reform of the university and the study reform and naming the university after Heinrich Heine. For me, that means greater democratization here at the University in Düsseldorf. Specifically speaking, it shows better parities in the new statutes. ' Otto Schönfeldt, retired theater director. He is the spokesman and initiator of a citizens' initiative for Heinrich Heine University. The campaign enjoys broad support at home and abroad. 'The opponents of naming after Heine, they don't discuss honestly with us. That is the difficulty. They don't tell you what they really object to. There are all sorts of pretexts against the proposed name, but in our opinion the main reason for opposition is that they have a different scientific term than Heine formulated it. You have the term, in our opinion the outdated term of a full-time university. ' Together with groups from the university, the citizens' initiative recently held a Heinrich Heine hearing. The guest was Hermann Kesten, President of the German PEN Center. He gave a fiery speech for Heinrich Heine. The question of whether anti-Semitism was involved with the opponents of this name arose and was discussed with great excitement; no one seriously wanted to claim it. In the end there was a resolution in which the responsible minister was asked to simply give the university the name Heine. Question: 'Minister Rau, how does one feel as a politician, especially a social democrat, when he is asked to give the university the name as a present?' Minister: 'You feel ashamed, and I don't know whether Heinrich Heine would like to be caught up in this way. I do not believe that an adoption procedure should be initiated by the state here. In the sense of the octroi. Although I have to say that I am extremely sorry that the university understands too little in its speakers and articulates too little itself, that not only its name is involved, but a piece of German history that we have to work through and that (? ? Hearing impairment) can. ' [...] The proponents of a Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf are politically a mixed society. Carlo Schmid and Erich Kästner, Günter Grass and Ernst Benda belong to them. So far, no German institution of any importance has borne the name Heinrich Heine. It is time to do that. That history catches up with us is more of a conservative than a progressive insight. It is a good tradition to name German universities after important representatives of intellectual life. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! ”( Sk.dra.de PDF).
^ Ernst-Adolf Chantelau: The historical Heine-Bozzetti by Hugo Lederer. (PDF; 1.7 MB) In: kunsttexte.de, Section Present, 1/2017. 2017, accessed April 6, 2017 .
↑ Otto Schönfeldt: The Senate has to put that down again. Documentation exhibition in Hamburg: "Heine Monuments 1900–1933" . In: Deutsche Volkszeitung . July 31, 1980.
↑ Torsten Casimir: The university has inaugurated its Heine monument. Rebirth of a "literary alien" . In: Rheinische Post . June 17, 1994.
↑ Susanne Schwabach-Albrecht: In Heine's society, Heinrich-Heine-Gesellschaft Düsseldorf e. V. 1956-2006 . Grupello, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-89978-054-X , p. 25 ff .
^ Ernst-Adolf Chantelau: "Heinrich Heine's German Monument" by Hugo Lederer . On the trail of the destroyed statue. In: S. Brenner-Wilczek (Ed.): Heine-Jahrbuch 2016 . tape 55 . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2016, p. 121-143 .
↑ Arie Goral (Ed.): Heine's return to Hamburg 198? -? Materials for the documentation exhibition "Heine Monuments 1900-1933" in the Museum for Hamburg History June 29-19, 1980. Hamburg 1980.

personal data
SURNAME	Schönfeldt, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German theater director, publicist and politician (BdD)
DATE OF BIRTH	March 8, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	Rostock
DATE OF DEATH	3rd September 1994
Place of death	Dusseldorf

[Aufbau-1970-11-20-1] Will Schaber : Portrait of the week: Heine pioneer Otto Schönfeldt . In: Structure . 36th year, no. 47 . New York City November 20, 1970 p. 9 ( archive.org ).

[2] Susanne Heinke: Portrait . In: Deutsche Volkszeitung / die tat . No. 2 , January 6, 1989, p. 5 .

[3] Susanne Schwabach-Albrecht: In Heine's society . Heinrich-Heine-Gesellschaft eV Düsseldorf 1956-2006. Ed .: Joseph A. Kruse. Grupello, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-89978-054-X , p. 50.85 .

[4] Just nothing . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1969, p. 85-88 ( spiegel.de ).

[5] Excerpt from a transcript made by the State Committee for Broadcasting in the GDR: 8:15 pm, July 3, 1972 “Our last topic: A dispute over a German poet […] Eberhard Piltz reports. […] 'I am for Heinrich Heine University However, I am of the opinion that the university and, above all, the university leadership is so narrow-minded that the name Heinrich Heine University is almost too good for the university. I see a direct connection between the reform of the university and the study reform and naming the university after Heinrich Heine. For me, that means greater democratization here at the University in Düsseldorf. Specifically speaking, it shows better parities in the new statutes. ' Otto Schönfeldt, retired theater director. He is the spokesman and initiator of a citizens' initiative for Heinrich Heine University. The campaign enjoys broad support at home and abroad. 'The opponents of naming after Heine, they don't discuss honestly with us. That is the difficulty. They don't tell you what they really object to. There are all sorts of pretexts against the proposed name, but in our opinion the main reason for opposition is that they have a different scientific term than Heine formulated it. You have the term, in our opinion the outdated term of a full-time university. ' Together with groups from the university, the citizens' initiative recently held a Heinrich Heine hearing. The guest was Hermann Kesten, President of the German PEN Center. He gave a fiery speech for Heinrich Heine. The question of whether anti-Semitism was involved with the opponents of this name arose and was discussed with great excitement; no one seriously wanted to claim it. In the end there was a resolution in which the responsible minister was asked to simply give the university the name Heine. Question: 'Minister Rau, how does one feel as a politician, especially a social democrat, when he is asked to give the university the name as a present?' Minister: 'You feel ashamed, and I don't know whether Heinrich Heine would like to be caught up in this way. I do not believe that an adoption procedure should be initiated by the state here. In the sense of the octroi. Although I have to say that I am extremely sorry that the university understands too little in its speakers and articulates too little itself, that not only its name is involved, but a piece of German history that we have to work through and that (? ? Hearing impairment) can. ' [...] The proponents of a Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf are politically a mixed society. Carlo Schmid and Erich Kästner, Günter Grass and Ernst Benda belong to them. So far, no German institution of any importance has borne the name Heinrich Heine. It is time to do that. That history catches up with us is more of a conservative than a progressive insight. It is a good tradition to name German universities after important representatives of intellectual life. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! ”( Sk.dra.de PDF).

[6] Ernst-Adolf Chantelau: The historical Heine-Bozzetti by Hugo Lederer. (PDF; 1.7 MB) In: kunsttexte.de, Section Present, 1/2017. 2017, accessed April 6, 2017 .

[7] Otto Schönfeldt: The Senate has to put that down again. Documentation exhibition in Hamburg: "Heine Monuments 1900–1933" . In: Deutsche Volkszeitung . July 31, 1980.

[8] Torsten Casimir: The university has inaugurated its Heine monument. Rebirth of a "literary alien" . In: Rheinische Post . June 17, 1994.

[9] Susanne Schwabach-Albrecht: In Heine's society, Heinrich-Heine-Gesellschaft Düsseldorf e. V. 1956-2006 . Grupello, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-89978-054-X , p. 25 ff .

[10] Ernst-Adolf Chantelau: "Heinrich Heine's German Monument" by Hugo Lederer . On the trail of the destroyed statue. In: S. Brenner-Wilczek (Ed.): Heine-Jahrbuch 2016 . tape 55 . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2016, p. 121-143 .

[11] Arie Goral (Ed.): Heine's return to Hamburg 198? -? Materials for the documentation exhibition "Heine Monuments 1900-1933" in the Museum for Hamburg History June 29-19, 1980. Hamburg 1980.