Paul Heinzelmann

Paul Heinzelmann (pseudonyms Heinz Elm, Heinz Elm-Mann, Heinz Elmann ; born April 28, 1888 in Berlin , † May 2, 1961 in Munich ) was a German writer , printer and publisher .

Life

Paul Heinzelmann was born in Friedrichshain , the first of four children of a railway worker, and grew up in Lichtenberg . During his painting apprenticeship he started a youth association and then worked for many years in the youth workers' movement. In the Berlin section of the German Workers' Abstinents Association , he fought for an alcohol-free upbringing for young people and against alcohol abuse among the workers. At the age of 20 he joined the SPD , but gave his party book back in protest in 1914 after the war loans had been approved. First of all, he now joined Julian Borchardt's light rays group .

During the First World War he went to Galicia as a stretcher , and later to France. Under the impression of the experiences at the front, the verses of a common man against the war were written, which were passed from hand to hand in the trenches. Paul Heinzelmann was sentenced to imprisonment for a fortress for distributing an anti-government leaflet.

From 1919 he belonged to the circle around the Spartakusbund and helped to organize the Free Socialist Youth (FSJ). The first attempts at publishing were made during this period. His youth comrade house (youth education center, bookstore and publishing house) in the Brüderstraße was "captured" by the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade during the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 .

After brief studies at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg , the establishment of a workers' children's home in the Black Forest and a stay in the socialist educational establishment Schloss Tinz , Paul Heinzelmann opened the Werktat publishing house in Spandau in 1922. From then on, he produced self-printed poems and contemporary thoughts on a hand press - including the first volume of poetry by Kurt Huhn , who later co-founded the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers (BPRS). Around 1922/1923 he was involved in the realization of his life reform ideals in the development of an autarkic living and educational community at Lake Boddensee near Birkenwerder , at the same time he was involved in the reform pedagogical Spandau school struggle at the side of Tami Oelfken . In between he was drawn to the Tyrolean Paznaun Valley for two years , where he and friends turned uninhabited farmhouses into Alpine youth homes. Further stations in his youthful life were the land drivers (Volkswandervogel), the Strom group, the Heideschar and the Fysiocratic youth.

The group of working people he initiated in Berlin was close to the Brotherhood of Vagabonds and their leader Gregor Gog . He had a long friendship with the vagabond poet Jakob Haringer and the young poet Herbert Fritsche .

Paul Heinzelmann found his political home with his brother-in-law Adam Scharrer in the Communist Workers' Party (KAPD). In addition, he maintained a wide range of contacts, especially with the anarchists Rudolf Geist , Erich Mühsam , Artur Streiter and Kurt Zube . With the latter he published the first issue of the magazine Der Steinklopfer in 1932 .

After the Reichstag fire , his apartment on Althoffstrasse in Steglitz was visited by ten SA attackers in the course of the persecution of opponents of the regime, who, as he writes in a sketch from the age of 70 , “first destroyed the stone knocker in the printing works, then destroyed the manuscripts and mail, as well as confiscated all publications and reduced my library by almost 200 books of 'unwanted' authors. ”The first edition of the book Das Leichenfeld was also destroyed during the action, the publisher was arrested, the company, which had meanwhile been renamed Steinklopfer-Verlag, was shut down.

In the years that followed, Paul Heinzelmann devoted himself entirely to genealogy research on building sites in and around Berlin, in addition to his actual professional activity as a painter, and built up the Heinzelmann family archive. Became known in 1937 through an article about the abuses in the painting trade in the building world and then appointed as an expert for painting, he was employed as a painting technician at the air base in Prostějov in Moravia during the war years . However, he was fired there after four years of activity because he resisted the invitation to join the NSDAP.

At the end of the war he set up his domicile in Fürstenfeldbruck , the hometown of his second wife Julia, daughter of the painter Henrik Moor . In 1953 he revived the publishing house and published the 35-volume Steinklopfer series of outsiders from 1955 until his death, including titles by Willy Alante-Lima (translated by Ludwig Harig ), Robert Browning (translated by Hermann Melchers Jantzen ), Rudolf Geist, Jakob Haringer, Friedrich Markus Huebner , Louise Labé (in the translation by Max Rieple ), Monika Mann , Erich Mühsam, Hans Pflug-Franken , Arno Reinfrank , Cornelius Streiter (d. I. Bernhard Doerdelmann ), Hans Winterl . The comma series of the Munich Comma Club also appeared here ( Jürgen Beckelmann , Gert Ledig , Wolfdietrich Schnurre and Herbert Spiecker).

Works

selection

• A childhood friend's hiking trip . Berlin 1919
• The star god . Berlin 1923
• The current of time . Critical thoughts. Berlin 1932
• The burial island . Verses and sayings. Berlin 1932
• The corpse field . War verses 1915-1918. Fürstenfeldbruck 1957

Editions

selection

• Socialist Youth Library , Berlin 1919
• Red sheets for youth, politics and literature , Berlin 1919
• Religio. Call of the Working People , Berlin 1923
• The stone knocker. Call of the Working People , Berlin 1932 (with Kurt Zube)
• The Heinzelmännchen , Berlin 1934
• The stone knocker. Journal of outsiders and polemics. Free radical poetry and world voice . Fürstenfeldbruck-Emmering, 1953 (Editor: Rudolf Geist)

literature

• Artur Streiter: The war traitor Heinz Elm-Mann. To the verses of a soldier . Werk-Tat Verlag, Berlin [1932].
• W. Schuder (Ed.): Kürschner's German Literature Calendar 1958. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1958.
• Peter Heinzelmann (Ed.): Because we ourselves are the unrest. Paul Heinzelmann - a life for peace . A documentation for the 100th birthday. With a foreword by Arno Reinfrank. Ludwigshafen / Rhine 1988.
• Bernhard Heinzelmann: Be human! - An experiment about the youthful years of the printer and small publisher Heinz Elm in Berlin . In: Rochow Museum and Academy for Educational History Research eV at the University of Potsdam (ed.): Journal for Museum and Education , No. 59/2003 ( Life stories - Educational stories ), pp. 64–89. LIT, Münster 2003.
• Bernhard Heinzelmann: Paul Heinzelmann . In: Angelika Mundorff, Eva von Seckendorff (Eds.): Fürstenfeldbruck - literarisch , pp. 118–123. Allitera, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-86520-054-0 .
• Lutz Hagestedt (Ed.): German Literature Lexicon. The 20th century . Biographisch-Bibliographisches Handbuch, Volume XVI, columns 112–114. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023162-5 .

broadcast

Lisbeth Exner: we preach di unrest - the painter, publisher and lyricist Paul Heinzelmann . Bavaria 2 ( Land and People series ), April 13, 2008

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Heinzelmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and information on the work of Paul Heinzelmann at Literaturport

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The stone knocker. No. 2/3.