Otto von Taube

Otto von Taube - drawing by Joachim Lutz 1950

Otto Adolf Alexander Freiherr von Taube (born June 9 ^{. Jul} / 21st June  1879 ^greg. In Reval ; † the thirtieth June 1973 in Gauting ) was a German writer , lawyer , art historian and translator .

biography

Otto von Taube was a descendant of the old German-Baltic noble family of the von Taube and grew up in his grandfather's castle in Estonia . The memories of this time are reflected in later works ( From old Estonia (1944) and Wanderjahre (1950)).

After completing school, he first studied law in Leipzig , but switched to art history because he refused a career as a civil servant intended for him. Soon he began a wandering life. He processed his experiences with Tippelbrüdern and craftsmen in his novel Die Metzgerpost , which was completed in 1935 .

From 1910 he worked as a freelance writer, also intensively for the Leipziger Insel Verlag . In the island library there he gave a. a. Transmissions of selected sonnets by the Portuguese national poet Camões (IB 264) and Calderón's piece Der Schulze von Zalamea (IB 354). Taube was friends with the publishing authors Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rudolf Alexander Schröder . The encounter with them and with Rainer Maria Rilke , who was also published by Insel Verlag, he described in his autobiography Encounters and Pictures , published in 1967 .

Taube made his debut as a novelist in 1913 with The Hidden Autumn . In 1921 he published the memoirs of Helene Freifrau von Taube, At the Russian court in the years of the establishment of the German Empire , in the Berlin Kentaur publishing house and in 1925 published a biography of Rasputin with CH Beck .

Taube was friends with Gregor Strasser . After the Kapp Putsch , he left the DNVP . In 1923 Taube confessed to National Socialism in the magazine Der Türmer :

“Especially in those days of desperation I find a community […] which […] represents the idea of ​​Germanness on a purely ethnic basis, […] which finally strives to assert the healthy Bavarian - and German - popular will […]. I find all of this with the National Socialists, including the realization that in times like today only constant willing is pious and 'against extremes only with extremes' […] Here I find the saving ruthlessness and, for which I have long been crying out, a leader . In Adolf Hitler I not only find the sparkling word that makes a movement popular, but also the will to suffer and to conquer for the word; [...] I find the will to act [...]. "

But in the face of the Hitler putsch in the same year, Taube recognized his mistake and renounced National Socialism. He immediately began to work on the novel The Festival of Sacrifice , a humorous and bitter satire published in 1926 in which he exposed the peculiarities of the German tummy. His two-volume History of Our People (1938 and 1942) was published during the time of National Socialism . He was in contact with Adam von Trott zu Solz and was in 1940 at a conspiratorial meeting a. a. with Reinhold Schneider “about bringing about a change of government”. In 1943 the von Taube family hid a Jewish child.

The polyglot dove - he is said to have mastered eight languages ​​- was a much sought-after translator. In addition to the Calderon already mentioned, he translated authors such as Saint Francis of Assisi , William Blake , Stendhal , D'Annunzio and Nikolai Leskow into German. Otto von Taube's bibliography comprises 1172 entries (books, articles in newspapers and anthologies, etc.).

Since October 14, 1918 he was married to Marie Freiin von Doernberg (born April 7, 1891 in Altona; † March 23, 1961 in Munich). The couple had two children: Christian (* 1919 in Weimar, killed on May 3, 1945) and Maria (* 1922 in Gauting; † July 29, 2013 in Starnberg). Maria Taube lived with her father after her mother's death.

From 1921 until his death Taube lived in Gauting near Munich , where he was also buried.

Honors

From 1949 to 1953 Otto von Taube was a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

The grammar school in Gauting has been called Otto-von-Taube-Gymnasium since 1975 .

Works (selection)

• Poetry collections
  • Verses (1907)
  • Poems and scenes. Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1908.
  • Light of the world. A collection of poems. Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1946.

• Novels
  • The hidden autumn. Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1913.
  • The lion's paw. Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1921.
  • The festival of sacrifice. Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1926.
  • The butcher mail. Friedrich Stollberg publishing house, Merseburg 1936.

• Documentation
  • Lament and cheers. Letters about the death of a young Christian. Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1946.

Awards

• 1961: Bavarian Order of Merit

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Genealogical manual of the Baltic knighthoods. Part 2, Volume 1.2: Estonia. Publishing house for kin research and heraldry CA Starke, Görlitz 1930, p. 386, item IX .
2. ↑ Manor Jerwakant in the parish of Rappel, Harrien, Estonia
3. ^ Negotiations of the Historical Association for Lower Bavaria. Volumes 110-113, 1985, p. 130.
4. ↑ Frank-Lothar Kroll (ed.): The totalitarian experience: German literature and the Third Reich. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, p. 64.
5. ↑ Otto von Taube: My connection to the National Socialists. In: Der Türmer , vol. 25 (1923), p. 184 f., Here p. 185.
6. ↑ Claudia Mosbach: The powerlessness of desperation. "Inner emigration" using Otto von Taubes as an example. In: Frank-Lothar Kroll (Hrsg.): Word and poetry as a place of refuge in difficult times. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1816-7 , pp. 55–74, here pp. 56 f., 70.
7. ↑ Michael Garleff : Between distance and adaptation. Baltic German authors in the Third Reich ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Lecture at the conference “The Baltic States. Literature, History, Politics ”of the Hessian State Center for Political Education in Frankfurt am Main on March 12, 2008. 
8. ^ Marie Margarethe Hermine Karoline Adelheid Freiin von Dörnberg
9. ↑ Maria von Taube died at the age of 90. Merkur Online , August 1, 2013.
10. ↑ Gerd Otto-Rieke: Graves in Bavaria. Alabasta-Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-938778-09-8 , p. 112.

literature

• Carola L. Gottzmann , Petra Hörner: Lexicon of the German-language literature of the Baltic States and St. Petersburg . De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019338-1 , p. 1271-1280 .
• Regina Mosbach: Otto von Taube (1879-1973). Visionism between art autonomy and commitment. Frankfurt am Main 1995 (also Munich, Univ. Diss., 1994).
• Manfred Rosteck: "This tiresome time": Studies on the work of the Baltic German poet Otto Freiherr von Taube. Hamburg 1996 (also: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 1996).

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto von Taube in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Otto von Taube  in the German Digital Library
• Otto von Taube and Hertha Koenig , Pendragon
• Otto von Taube's estate in the Bavarian State Library
• Waldemar Fromm:  Taube von der Issen, Otto Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-11206-7 , pp. 799-801 ( digitized version ).
• Baltic Historical Commission (Ed.): Entry on Otto von Taube. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital