Paul Alverdes

Paul Alverdes, around 1938

Paul Alverdes (born May 6, 1897 in Strasbourg , † February 28, 1979 in Munich ) was a German writer .

Life

Alverdes came from an old Pomeranian family and was the son of Sergeant Hermann Alverdes and his wife Paula Arnold; he also had an older sister. Due to the transfer of his father, Alverdes finished his school days at a grammar school in Düsseldorf . He had already joined the youth movement as a schoolboy .

At the age of 17 he volunteered as a soldier in August 1914 and was soon deployed on the Somme . From there he returned from the war with a severe larynx injury . He spent most of his hospital stay in and near Berlin .

War-disabled , Alverdes began to study law at the University of Jena , but after a short time broke off this course in favor of German studies and art history at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . He was able to successfully complete this study on July 27, 1921 with his dissertation on Pietism .

From that time on, Alverdes lived and worked as a freelance writer in Munich. In 1925 he married Rose geb. Weidner. Alverdes made the acquaintance of Martin Bodmer and Herbert Steiner during his studies in Munich , who from 1930 onwards inspired him to work on their Corona magazine .

Alverdes worked there among others with Hans Carossa , Hermann Hesse , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Ricarda Huch , Max Mell and Emil Strauss . (According to Armin Mohler , Alverdes was one of the authors of the so-called Conservative Revolution ). In 1941 Alverdes participated in the Weimar Poets 'Meeting , at which the European Writers' Association was founded.

In addition to his own literary work, Alverdes also made a name for himself as a translator - including works by James Fenimore Cooper and Joseph Kessel . After the Second World War he worked primarily for the Bavarian radio . In 1961 Alverdes received the German Youth Book Prize and in 1963 he joined the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts .

reception

For him - as for many writers who have witnessed wars - life at the front was decisive in his literature. Paul Alverdes did not gloss over the brutal battles in his novels and stories, but neither did he question their meaning. He was firmly convinced that the war could bring about the positive transformation of a person and wanted to shape this also literarily.

He achieved his national breakthrough with his short story Die Pfeiferstube (first published in Frankfurt am Main in 1929 ). In it, four soldiers with injuries to the larynx, three Germans and one Englishman, find each other humanely in the hospital.

In the novel collection Reinhold or Die Verwandelte (published in Munich in 1931 ), the protagonist is a young volunteer who matures into a dutiful person in a hail of shells and gains the recognition of his comrades. For him, however, not only the maturation of a person was important, but also the responsibility for the fatherland. The young soldier felt "the eyes of the fatherland, which saw everything".

Two radio plays followed in 1934/35: The Volunteers and The Winter Camp . In both radio plays, the main theme was the duty to the community over individual desires and needs.

With his narrative report, an infantry division breaks through , he drew harsh criticism from Hans Grimm and literary functionary Hellmuth Langenbucher . Langenbucher quoted Alverdes in his volume on popular poetry from 1937 and attacked him violently. Paul Alverdes also came into conflict with the official literary policy of the National Socialists with the magazine “ Das Innere Reich ” published by him and Karl Benno von Mechow from 1934 to 1944 . However , the monthly was not an organ of intellectual opposition or even resistance .

After 1945 Paul Alverdes mainly published children's books and radio plays, but in his last novel, Grimbart's House (1949) , he told of a father who lost four sons in the war and therefore went mad .

Works (selection)

• In memory of Mozart. For the opening of the Mozart exhibition in Munich in 1941 . Schmidt Verlag, Munich 1941.
• Thanks and service. Speeches and essays . Albert Langen / Georg Müller, Munich 1939.
• German anecdote book. A collection of short stories from four centuries . Dtv, Munich 1966 (together with Hermann Rinn )
• December. The Christian month . Ehrenwirth, Munich 1964.
• The third candle . Publishing house Kiefel, Wuppertal 1968.
• The volunteers . Albert Langen / Georg Müller, Munich 1934.
• The little man in the middle, a fairy tale for children . Albert Langen / Georg Müller, Munich 1937.
• The letters of conduct. Experiences and encounters . Diederichs, Cologne 1951.
• Conversations about Goethe's trip to the Harz Mountains in winter . Südverlag, Constance 1950.
• Grimbart's house . Südverlag, Constance 1949.
• The house book of fables. Fables from all over the world . Ehrenwirth, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-431-03113-7 .
• The house book of picaresque pranks. From rogues and fools from all over the world . Ehrenwirth, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-431-03114-5 (previously under the title "List gegen List")
• An infantry division breaks through . Rather, Munich 1943.
• The mythical eros in the spiritual lyric poetry of pietism . Dissertation, University of Munich 1921.
• Come home . Verlag Kiefel, Wuppertal 1977, ISBN 3-7811-0176-2 .
• The Northern. Poems . 1922
• The pipe room and other stories . Langen Müller, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-7844-2040-0 .
• Reinhold or the transformed . Georg Müller, Munich 1931.
• About Rudolf Binding . Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt / M. 1927.
• The winter camp . Albert Langen / Georg Müller, Munich 1935.
• The little man in the middle , Albert Langen / Georg Müller, 1937.
• The conflicting face . Albert Langen / Georg Müller, Munich 1937.
• Seven son with colorful pictures by Beatrice Braun Fock, Südverlag 1948
• Stiefelmanns Kinder , Südverlag 1949

literature

• Günther Alverdes: New news from the Alverdes family up to 1987 . Self-published, Rheinbach 1987.
• Horst Denkler , Karl Prümm (Hrsg.): The literature in the Third Reich. Topics, traditions, effects . Reclam, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-15-010260-X .
• Marion Mallmann-Biehler: "The Inner Realm". Analysis of a conservative cultural magazine in the Third Reich . Bouvier, Bonn 1978, ISBN 3-416-01383-2 (also dissertation, University of Marburg 1977)
• Wolfram Wessels: Radio plays in the Third Reich. On the history of institutions, theory and literature . Bouvier Bonn, 1985, ISBN 3-416-01926-1 (also dissertation, University of Freiburg 1985)

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Alverdes in the catalog of the German National Library
• Eleonore Gürge: A Pomeranian family
• Alverdes' estate near Monacensia