Percy Gothein

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Grave in Heidelberg

Percy Paul Heinrich Gothein (born May 22, 1896 in Bonn ; † December 22, 1944 in Neuengamme concentration camp ) was a German writer and Renaissance researcher .

Life

Percy Gothein was a son of the economist Eberhard Gothein and his wife Marie Luise Gothein and a nephew of the politician Georg Gothein . He lived first in Bonn, then in Heidelberg . It was here that the famous poet Stefan George noticed him on the street in 1910 . There were several encounters, in May 1911 Gothein was even allowed to visit George in his home town of Bingen . Gothein fell more and more under the spell of George's poetry and personality. He kept a diary about his encounters with the poet and was finally invited to a private reading for the first time in 1914 - he was now able to feel like a confidante.

After graduating from high school, Gothein volunteered in the First World War and was shot in the head in 1915. Discharged from military service, he first studied philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg , Berlin and Göttingen , then Romance studies with Karl Vossler in Munich . On the occasion of a Whitsun meeting from June 7th to 9th, 1919, to which Stefan George had first invited to Heidelberg after the First World War, Gothein was finally "officially" accepted into the George Circle together with Erich Boehringer and Woldemar von Uxkull . In the George circle his nickname was "Peter". After his dissertation in Munich was rejected because “the usual external form of such a work was not preserved”, he finished his studies in 1923 with Leonardo Olschki in Heidelberg. His dissertation was entitled The ancient reminiscences of the Chansons de geste .

The beginning of the friendship with Wolfgang Frommel and the formation of a mutual group of friends who felt committed to the spirit of George, prompted Gothein to complete a 450-page typescript (only published in excerpts in the journal Castrum Peregrini ) in Berlin and Wertheim in 1923/24 which was mostly dubbed in the circle as "Opus Petri". As a memory book, it was intended to explain the understanding of development and education through poetry that prevailed in the George Circle. But then George separated from him - probably also because Gothein was too open about his homosexuality. In conclusion, George is said to have remarked that Gothein "looked too long into the sun [...] and therefore [stumbled] blinded through the streets. He saw himself blindly in him [George] and lost sight of reality. " After Gothein invited George over to Bonn in 1931, he is said to have "laughed extraordinarily" about it, and it was "all forgiven". This close relationship between Gothein and George was in turn very important to Wolfgang Frommel in his friendship with Gothein: Frommel, who wanted the Castrum Peregrini to be understood as the successor to the George circle, had not been in contact with George himself. Gothein and his friendship with him served him as evidence of a direct line between the two circles. Gothein's notes from the time with Stefan George, the so-called Opus Petri, were guarded like a treasure in Amsterdam and not published.

A first habilitation project on Dante led to no result. That is why Gothein taught at the Odenwald School in 1926 , before he worked as a research assistant at the Romance Department at the University of Bonn and then with Leo Spitzer at the University of Cologne . His habilitation thesis on Guarino Veronese and Francesco Barbaro , Italian scholars of the 15th century, was not accepted. Nevertheless, he published his study in 1932 in the publishing house Die Runde , which he had founded two years earlier in Berlin with Edwin Maria Landau and Wolfgang Frommel. For the historian Stephan Schlak, Gothein's failed career is exemplary for an entire generation:

“But it is precisely his academic failure that makes Percy Gothein a worthwhile subject of research. Failure is the big topos of the twenties. Disappointed hopes and failed expectations were a mass phenomenon in the period of upheaval between the wars. Percy Gothein's stuck career reflects a young, “superfluous” generation that pushed onto the overcrowded job market after the war. "

Gothein translated Francesco Barbaro's book about marriage and wrote a lengthy text on the ranks in the world from 1934–1935 by Stefan Georges . Initially “slightly tanned”, he soon ran into difficulties during the National Socialist era because of his father's descent; He was also investigated several times on the basis of Paragraph 175 , which made homosexuality a criminal offense, until he finally left Berlin. He crossed large parts of Germany, Switzerland and Italy on a motorcycle. A friend described a trip with Gothein: “For Percy, motorcycling was a passion; he said there was something 'mythical' about it. [... on Percy's machine] I was shaking. He took his hand off the handlebar, held it in front of his mouth and called over his shoulder: 'If we fall now, only a grease stain will be left!' He then lived for a long time in Italy, especially in Venice and Florence . During this time he worked on Zacharias Trevisan , the statesmanlike model of Francesco Barbaros, and his pupil Ludovico Foscarini .

After visiting Frommel's Castrum Peregrini in Amsterdam in November 1943, he returned to Amsterdam in February 1944 - also “on behalf of the German resistance” or the Kreisau Circle , to which Theodor Haubach belonged. This visit is often guaranteed, but Gothein's connection to the Kreisau Circle - despite his friendship with Theodor Haubach - less so. Even Ulrich Raulff had it expressed doubts, and also in the 2016 published second edition book Stefan George and his circle "not definitively proven links to the resistance (Kreisau Circle, even indirectly, to conspiracy to Stauffenberg)" speaks cautiously of Gotheins.

During this last stay in Amsterdam, Gothein's poem Tyrannis was published in 1944 , which is about tyrannicide and the ethos of friends and was therefore disguised as a translation from Greek by a certain Peter of Uri, which appeared in 1939.

On July 25, 1944, Percy Gothein traveled to Ommen to meet young friends. The night after arriving, “Percy and Simon were already asleep, there was a knock. The police asked for the IDs of the new arrivals. The papers were to be picked up at the mayor's office in the morning. Percy's German passport was in order, the reason for his trip legitimate. He turned and fell asleep again. But he had underestimated the heightened vigilance that began in the days after July 20, which for the first time was particularly directed at Germans. […] Half an hour later there was another knock, this time violently and with kicks on the door. The commandant of the 'Erika' camp himself drove up in the car. ”Gothein, Vincent Weyand and Simon van Keulen were arrested and initially taken to the Kamp Erika camp in the Netherlands . “The half-Jewish Vincent Weijand was first transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and then to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he died on February 22, 1945 at the age of 23. […] Simon Van Keulen, whom Gisèle was able to visit in the Erika camp with the help of a lot of bluff and bravery, managed to escape against all odds. He jumped out of the train, which transported him to Germany, and was able to return in the Herengracht 401, where he spent the rest of the war years. "Percy Gothein came from Kamp Erika made in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and finally on 16 October 1944 as a political prisoner to Neuengamme concentration camp , where the big, strong man died two months later.

As tragic as the story of these arrests is, it is also the subject of legends. It starts with the description of the reasons that led to the arrests.

“There are different reports about the cause and course of the arrest. The official version assumes that Gothein's arrest is related to his connection to the Kreisau district and Stauffenberg. The certificate on which it is based comes from the Dutch FC Gerretson, who had received his doctorate from Gothein's father in 1917 and was now a professor in Utrecht. Chris Dekker, who came to see him after the war in 1945, learned from Gerretson that Gothein had come to him at the time to talk about a secret station that Gerretson owned (or that Gothein thought he had) To convey the message of the German resistance with the proposal of a separate peace (Herzer 2003). This version was taken over by Claus Bock, who incidentally also states that Frommel and his friends only heard of this secret assignment after the war, but knew that Theodor Haubach had arranged for Gothein's travel permits (Bock 1985: 96ff, 92). How Haubach was able to regulate this remains unclear. "

As mentioned above, there is no or only vague evidence for this "political reading", which makes a second reading more important:

" Cordan , who lived in the summer of 1944 also in Ommen and homosexual tendencies, had been listed on July 30, another version in his diary: Gothein is < red-handed caught> and arrested," with his two boys - one of which in the true sense of the word was the corpus delicti. ›(Cordan 2003a: 13) However, Cordan's speech about" boys "sounds tendentious at this point, since Simon van Keulen was 18 years old, Vincent Weyand was 22 years old. Cordan's statement could be matched by the fact that Gotheín has been targeted by the Berlin police and the Gestapo several times since 1935 for “unnatural fornication”, incidentally without a conviction or even a trial. "

The fact that this last version was not made out of thin air is partly due to the fact that Simon van Keulen later at least partially confirmed it. In a conversation he “emphatically denied having been caught 'in flagrante' with Percy, but added that there was only one bed in the little house.” However, Keilson-Lauritz also mentions that Wolfgang Cordan was his Had only written the version down in his diary and did not repeat it later. “In his autobiography, in which the events in Ommen are not mentioned, Cordan speaks of Gothein - whom he is rather critical of in his diary - full of respect: he was' killed by inhumane Germans in an extermination camp. […] He did not hate Germany, he suffered for Germany ›.“ Francesca Rheannon, the daughter of tenants in Herengracht 401 during the time of the German occupation, nevertheless tends towards the version handed down by Cordan and also brings a possible denunciation into play . Bock had already indicated that Gothein and his companions must have noticed "the inhabitants of the row village and the rather anti-German Dutch gendarmerie" when they arrived in Ommen and that Gotheim probably underestimated the vigilance of the gendarmes after the events of July 20th after the first police visit could have.

In 1945 a publication with the name Castrum Peregrini appeared for the first time in Amsterdam with an edition of 400 copies . It was a memory book for Percy Gothein, Vincent Weijand and Liselotte Brinitzer, who drowned in a swimming accident in August 1945 . The poems contained in the volume "resulted in a threefold memorial filled with religious devotion". With reference to Brinitzer's death, however, Joke Haverkorn is far more critical of this book: “Normally you bury such a dead person - Frommel, on the other hand, made her a cult founder. Like Percy Gothein and Vincent Weyand, who were killed by the Nazis - he based the castrum myth after 1945 on these three dead. ”Haverkorn describes this“ cult foundation ”or instrumentalization for a new cult elsewhere as a result of the memorial book and the role assigned in particular to Liselotte Brinitzer. “In the memorial book that appeared in 1945, you are remembered through text and poetry. And it is represented there as one of the three corner stones on which the Castrum Peregrini building, W.'s dream of a society of friends, was to rest. The other two important personalities are Percy Gothein and Vincent Weyand. ”For Anaïs Van Ertvelde, this memorial book laid the foundation stone for the foundation of Castrum Peregrini magazine .

Percy Gothein's tomb is located in the Heidelberg mountain cemetery .

Publications

author

  • The ancient reminiscences in the Chansons de Geste. In: Journal of French Language and Literature. 50, 1927, ISSN  0044-2747 , pages 39-84 ( digizeitschriften.de ).
  • Francesco Barbaro. Early humanism and statecraft in Venice. Die Runde, Berlin 1932, urn : nbn: de: s2w-6320 .
  • Zaccaria Trevisan il vecchio. La vita e l'ambiente. La Reale Deputazione Editrice, Venezia 1942, urn : nbn: de: s2w-6333 .
  • Zacharias Trevisan - life and surroundings. Pantheon, Amsterdam 1944.
  • Peter Uri (di Percy Gothein): Tyrannis. Scene from ancient Greek city. From the Greek. Pegasos, o. O. 1939 [in reality: Pantheon, Amsterdam 1944], urn : nbn: de: s2w-5891 .
  • The poems. In: Castrum Peregrini [memorial]. Amsterdam 1945, pp. 9-47.
  • Encounters with the poet. From a memory book. Castrum Peregrini Press, Amsterdam 1953.

translator

Letters

from or to Percy Gothein are in the Letterkundig Museum , The Hague; Stefan George Archive, Stuttgart; German Literature Archive , Marbach.

literature

  • Claus Victor Bock : In hiding among friends. A report. Amsterdam 1942-1945. 5th edition. Castrum-Peregrini-Presse, Amsterdam 2004, ISBN 90-6034-053-1 ( preview in Google book search).
  • Günter Baumann: Poetry as a way of life. Wolfgang Frommel between George-Kreis and Castrum Peregrini. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, chap. 3 and passim .
  • Stefan George, Friedrich Gundolf: Correspondence. Edited by Robert Boehringer with Georg Peter Landmann. Küpper, formerly Bondi, Munich / Düsseldorf 1962.
  • Lothar Helbing, Claus Victor Bock (eds.): Stefan George. Documents of its effect. From the Friedrich Gundolf archive of the University of London. In: Castrum Peregrini. 111-113, Amsterdam 1974, ISSN  0008-7556 .
  • Thomas Karlauf : Stefan George. The discovery of the charism. Pantheon, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-570-55076-2 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201111036117 .
  • Karlhans Kluncker: Percy Gothein. Humanist and educator. The nuisance in the George Circle. In: Castrum Peregrini. 171-172, Amsterdam 1986.
  • Marita Keilson-Lauritz : Centaur love. Sideways of love for men in the 20th century. Männerschwarm Verlag, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86300-143-8 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201406091299 .
  • Perdita Ladwig: Venice as the norm. Traces of self-thematization in Percy Gothein's work. In: Claus-Dieter Krohn u. a. (Ed.): Autobiography and academic biography. edition text + kritik, Munich 2005, pp. 195–207.
  • Wolfgang Leiser: Gothein, Percy Paul Heinrich. In: Bernd Ottnad (Ed.): Badische Biographien . New episode. Vol. 1. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1982, pp. 140-141 ( leo-bw.de ).
  • Donald O. White: Castrum Peregrini and the Heritage of Stefan George. Diss., Yale University 1963.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ To the first phase in the relationship with George v. a. Karlauf: Stefan George, pp. 420-426.
  2. ^ Marie Luise Gothein: Eberhard Gothein. A picture of life, retold in his letters. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1931, p. 260.
  3. ↑ On the study in Munich in 1921 and 1922 cf. Gerda Walther : To the other bank. From Marxism and Atheism to Christianity. Reichl, Remagen 1960, pp. 297-320.
  4. ^ Percy Gothein: Last University Years ... In: Castrum Peregrini. 6, 1956, H. 26, P. 7-32, here: P. 26.
  5. ↑ See Castrum Peregrini. Issue 1, 1951; Issue 11, 1953; Issue 21, 1955, and Issue 26, 1956. However, the excerpts are "partly heavily edited and 'cleaned'" (Karlauf: Stefan George, p. 718, note 82).
  6. ↑ On the separation from George cf. Karlauf: Stefan George, pp. 540-546.
  7. ↑ See Rudolf Eilhard [d. i. Wolfgang Frommel], in: Castrum Peregrini. 21, pp. 57-72, here: p. 71, cit. n. Karlauf: Stefan George. P. 546.
  8. ↑ H.-J. Seekamp u. a .: Stefan George. Life and work. A timetable. Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam 1971, p. 377.
  9. ↑ Cf. for example Ulrich Raulff: Circle without a master. Stefan George's afterlife. C. H. Beck, Munich 2009, p. 214.
  10. ↑ Victor Klemperer : Collect life, don't ask why and why. 2 volumes. Edited by Walter Nowojski . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1996, volume 1, p. 881 f.
  11. ^ Stephan Schlak: Percy Gothein and the discovery of political humanism. In: Andreas Ranft , Markus Meumann (Ed.): Traditions - Visions. 44th German Historians' Day in Halle an der Saale from September 10th to 13th, 2002. Report. Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, p. 152.
  12. ^ Edgar Salin : To Stefan George. Memory and testimony. 2., ext. Edition. Küpper, formerly Bondi, Munich / Düsseldorf 1954, p. 312; see. Percy Gothein: Cavour and Mussolini. In: Berliner Tageblatt . July 15, 1934; Baumann: Poetry as a form of life, pp. 194 f., 317 f .; Karl Löwith : My life in Germany before and after 1933: a report. Metzler, Stuttgart 1986, p. 19; Michael Philipp: "On the fate of the German spirit". Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1995, pp. 130-132.
  13. ^ Karlauf: Stefan George, pp. 546, 744, notes 113, 114.
  14. ↑ Michael Thomas [d. i. Ulrich Holländer]: Germany, England above all else. Return as an English occupation officer. Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 192, 199; quote here. n. Ulrich Raulff : Circle without a master. Stefan George's afterlife. C. H. Beck, Munich 2009, pp. 188 f., Note 2.
  15. ↑ Friedrich W. Buri: I gave you the torch in the jump. W. F. A memory report. Edited by Stephan C. Bischoff. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2009, p. 147; see. Claus Victor Bock : In hiding among friends. A report. Amsterdam 1942-1945. In: Castrum Peregrini. 166-167, Amsterdam 1985, pp. 96-98; Frederik Carel Gerretson and Pieter CA Geyl: Briefwisseling. Vol. 5. Bosch & Keuning, Baarn 1979–1981, pp. 60 and 62, note 20; Karlhans Kluncker: Secret Germany. About Stefan George and his circle. Bouvier, Bonn 1985, pp. 141, 144 f.
  16. ↑ Ulrich Raulff: Circle without a master. Stefan George's afterlife. dtv, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-423-34703-7 , p. 218.
  17. ↑ Achim Aurnhammer , Wolfgang Braungart , Stefan Breuer and Ute Oelmann (eds.) In collaboration with Kai Kauffmann: Stefan George and his circle. A manual. 2nd Edition. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston, 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-044101-7 , p. 1229.
  18. ↑ Claus Victor Bock: Untergetaucht unter Freunde, p. 116.
  19. ↑ See Anaïs Van Ertvelde: The Many Manifestations of Castrum Peregrini. Historiography, heritage and the possibility of representing the! Past. Thesis on obtaining a “Master in Comparative Women's Studies in Culture and Politics”, Utrecht University, 2011–2012, p. 39: “Vincent Weijand, who was half Jewish, was first transported to Bergen-Belzen and then to Buchenwald, where he died at the age of 23 on the 22nd of February 1944. […] Simon Van Keulen, whom Gisèle had managed to visit in camp Erica with the help of a lot of bluff and bravado, succeeded against all odds in escaping. He jumped out of the train transporting him to Germany and managed to get back to the Herengracht 401, where he spend the remainder of the war years. "
  20. ^ Archives of the Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme concentration camps; in detail at Castrum Peregrini. 'The pilgrim's castle'. Wolfgang Frommel. In: Gays and Lesbians in war and resistance ( memento June 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: bevrijdingintercultureel.nl, accessed on February 13, 2019.
  21. ↑ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe, p. 153.
  22. ^ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe, pp. 153–154.
  23. ↑ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe, p. 154.
  24. ↑ Marita Keilson-Lauritz: Kentaurenliebe, p. 155.
  25. ↑ Gays and Lesbians in War and Resistance. Castrum Peregrini section . 'The pilgrim's castle'.
  26. ↑ Claus Victor Bock: Untergetaucht unter Freunde, p. 116.
  27. ^ Günter Baumann: Poetry as a way of life, p. 328.
  28. ↑ Joke Haverkorn van Rijsewijk: "It was an incessant drama". Interview with Joke Haverkorn van Rijsewijk. In: The time . No. 22/2018, May 24, 2018.
  29. ↑ Joke Haverkorn van Rijswijk: Removed memories of W. Daniel Osthoff Verlag, Würzburg, 2013, ISBN 978-3-935998-11-6 , p. 32.
  30. ^ Anaïs Van Ertvelde: The Many Manifestations of Castrum Peregrini. Historiography, heritage and the possibility of representing the past. Universiteit Utrecht, 2011–2012, p. 41 (PDF; 874 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Gothein, Percy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gothein, Percy Paul Heinrich (full name); Gothein, Peter (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and Renaissance researcher
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1944
Place of death Neuengamme concentration camp