Philipp Gottfried painter

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Philipp Gottfried painter , actually Gottfried Stein , (born November 25, 1893 in Mayen , † February 21, 1969 in Königstein im Taunus ) was a German writer , educational reformer and hobby ornithologist , who was primarily an Eifel poet and with brochures for processing became known during the Nazi era.

Life

In his autobiographical development novel Philipp between Yesterday and Tomorrow , a key work for the history of the city of Mayen in the early 20th century, painter dealt with his childhood and youth between the strict Catholic and ambitious parents who ran a textile business and his early love for Literature. When the novel was published by Kösel- Verlag in 1935 , the reviewers, including Nazi journalists, were enthusiastic. The quarterly journal for youth studies said it was about the life story of "a representative of that generation who grew up in the frozen bourgeois world of the prewar period". The Neue Rundschau ruled that it was the "narrative form of an autobiography of a man who did not take the straight path to his profession, but the detours of the idiosyncratic". And in the Nazi teachers' association it was said that the painter had "dealt with the question of the internal upheaval in Wilhelmine Germany in a peculiar and fascinating way". After its publication, the book was read primarily as a history of decline in German society before the First World War, a typical, if not always appropriate, interpretation of the National Socialist era, especially since Maler was extremely hostile to the Nazi regime.

In fact, in this case the author took a critical look at Wilhelminism . In retrospect, Maler commented on his graduation ceremony at Megina-Gymnasium Mayen in 1913: “At the solemn hour when we were presented with the graduation certificate with the best of wishes, Emperor Wilhelm II's colorful portrait was still hanging in the auditorium: helmet on, hand on sword and the View from the Hohenzollern eyes. (...) I felt sorry for the man; it had to be very exhausting to stand in front of the painter so powerfully as if the whole world was afraid of his Majesty. ”Because painter was unsuitable for frontline service, he worked briefly in“ kitchen service ”during the First World War, but was soon released home . In 1918, the year in which his debut novel ends, a "time of emptiness" and a search for meaning begins for him. Painter studied literature, philosophy and classical languages, worked as a laborer and businessman and eventually became a teacher, like the hero of his novel. He worked in the school service in Frankfurt am Main at the model school , but was dismissed in 1933 because he was married to a Jewish woman. After the Second World War he worked on the Hessian State School Advisory Board, where he worked on the school reform and published numerous workbooks for political lessons . A particular concern of his was the education about the fateful continuity of anti-Semitic prejudices in German history, which he made the subject of articles for the journal Pädagogische Provinz .

In his books Thomas am Zaune und seine Kumpanei (1936) and Melodie auf dem Ast (1942), Maler proved himself to be an expert on birds and birdsong.

In tyranny. Chronicle and accounting , a text that he himself wrote between April and November 1945, painter deals in detail with the causes of National Socialism : “It is not easy and rarely beautiful to be a German; For a European, however, it is a hard lot to live in this country as his son. ”As a staunch Rhinelander and“ Ur-Mayener ”, painter Prussia blames Prussia for the idolatry of the state” and describes it with Friedrich Nietzsche as “the coldest of all cold monsters ”. He closes his analysis with the call for a "new pedagogy": "If we teach people to understand the ruins of our centuries-old culture as the result of German self-betrayal, as the result of National Socialist hostility to ideas and a mob all-too-this-sidedness, we will strengthen the willingness to To seek the connection to the cultural forces of our history, which from the spirit of Christian and humanistic ideas had once shaped a German world. "

In a letter to Norddeutscher Rundfunk from 1946, Maler claimed to have belonged to a "never founded, but existing secret lodge of human dignity" during National Socialism.

In 1946, in a brochure under his real name Gottfried Stein, painter defended the author Thomas Mann , who refused to return to Germany . The “reverence for an artist's existence” dictates the tolerance “to accept a decision by Thomas Mann without criticism”. Three years later, of course, Stein vehemently speaks out against awarding Mann the Goethe Prize from the city of Frankfurt am Main . Stein, a member of the responsible board of trustees, said he was disappointed with the Nobel Prize laureate, "because he was unable to forget his anger against Germany." Instead, Stein recommended that the award be given to Wilhelm Lehmann .

Works

  • Philipp Gottfried Maler: Student time , in: Frankfurter Zeitung , No. 500 (1935)
  • Philipp Gottfried Maler: Philipp between yesterday and tomorrow , Munich 1935
  • Philipp Gottfried Painter: Thomas am Zaune and his cronies , Berlin 1936
  • Philipp Gottfried Maler: The strange bird room , Leipzig / Bielefeld 1937
  • Philipp Gottfried Maler: Severein Specht, Sons , 1940
  • Philipp Gottfried painter: Frankenwein , in: Velhagen & Klasings MONTHLYhefte, year 1940, vol. 55/41
  • Philipp Gottfried Painter: Melody on the Branch , Essen 1942
  • Gottfried Stein: tyranny. Chronicle and accounting , Essen 1946
  • Gottfried Stein: Thoughts on guilt , Essen 1946
  • Philipp Gottfried painter: Thomas Mann and us. Two letters on the German situation , Essen 1946
  • Gottfried Stein: The educational province 5 , 1951
  • Philipp Gottfried Maler: Journey through the German vineyard , 1957

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Quarterly journal for youth studies , volumes 4-5, 1934, p. 251
  2. ^ Die Neue Rundschau , Volume 47, Part 1, 1936, p. 559
  3. ↑ Moritz Edelmann: Lectures at the Second History Conference of the Nazi Teachers' Association in Ulm from October 17 to 21, 1936 , Teubner 1937, p. 293
  4. ↑ Gottfried Stein: After twenty-seven years , p. 25 f., In: Non Scolae sed Vitae. 50 years of Abitur , Mayen 1960
  5. ^ Philipp Gottfried Maler , in: LitEifel . accessed on May 26, 2020.
  6. ↑ Renate Kingma: Traces of Humanity: Help for Jewish Frankfurters in the Third Reich , p. 106
  7. ↑ Peter Dudek: Looking back at the past cannot be avoided. On the pedagogical processing of National Socialism in Germany (1945-1990) , Opladen 1995, p. 166
  8. ↑ Review in: Negotiations of the Ornithological Society of Bavaria , Volume XXI., Issue 1, 1936, p. 85
  9. ↑ Gottfried Stein: Tyrannei. Chronicle and accounting , Essen 1946, p. 103
  10. ↑ Gottfried Stein: Tyrannei. Chronicle and accounting , Essen 1946, p. 164
  11. ↑ Peter Steinbach: Return to a foreign country? Remigrants and radio in Germany 1945-1955; a documentation on a topic of German post-war history; Book accompanying the exhibition of the same name in Leipzig 2000, p. 55
  12. ↑ Bettina Meier: Goethe in Trümmern: On the reception of a classic in the post-war period , Wiesbaden 1988, p. 137
personal data
SURNAME Painter, Philipp Gottfried
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stein, Gottfried (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author, educational reformer and hobby ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Mayen
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1969
Place of death Königstein im Taunus