Rhenish Literature Prize

The Rhenish Literature Prize , also known as the Rhenish Poet Prize , was a literary prize that was awarded annually from 1935 to 1943 by the Governor of the Rhine Province .

history

The prize was awarded on April 9, 1935 by the Governor of the Rhine Province , Heinz Haake , NSDAP . At the instigation of the Düsseldorf Writers' Group in the Reich Chamber of Literature , a "Rhenish Poets Conference" took place in Düsseldorf and Krefeld from October 26th to 28th, 1935 . Such conferences have been held annually since the informal founding of the Association of Rhenish Poets , which took place in Koblenz in 1926 , and were considered an important social and cultural-political event in the Rhineland . At the start of this conference, the prize was awarded for the first time by Governor Haake in the Ständehaus of the Rhine Province on October 26, 1935. The connection to the "Rhenish Poets Conference" and thus to the idea of the Dichterbund was gradually abandoned in the following years in favor of an independent event with a self-presentation of National Socialist cultural policy . After the award ceremony in 1936 in the Stadttheater Düsseldorf , Governor Haake determined in 1937 that the Gürzenich in Cologne , the “capital of the Rhineland”, should be the location of all future awards ceremonies.

The prize was paid out annually on December 1st. The award winner was proposed by an advisory board whose ten members, according to the foundation charter, were:

• the regional head of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in the districts of Düsseldorf , Essen , Cologne-Aachen and Koblenz-Trier
• a head of a district association of German writers, who was proposed by the four association leaders
• the head of the Reich Office for the Promotion of German Literature
• the heads of the state advisory centers for popular libraries in Wuppertal and Cologne
• two writers who were appointed annually to the advisory board by the governor

Notwithstanding this regulation, the Gauleiter of the German Labor Front and the ban leader of the Hitler Youth for the Lower Rhine-Ruhr area also took part in the advisory board meetings. The governor was not bound by the advisory board's proposal. He could award the award at his own discretion or suspend the award.

In the years 1933 to 1938 there was an "inflation of literary prices". The Börsenblatt des Deutschen Buchhandels counted over 50 prices that had been launched during this period. This aroused great resentment in the Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels . On April 26, 1938, he announced that he intended to “arrange the existing prices according to uniform criteria”. As early as August 24, 1937, he had made it clear that “the award of art prizes from the public sector requires my consent and that for this purpose I must be informed about the person of the prospective winner in good time before the award”. As a result, Governor Haake lost his previously existing absolute decision-making authority about the literature prize. In accordance with this order, the Provincial Administrative Councilor brought Dr. phil. Hans Kornfeld obtained the necessary approval from the Goebbels Ministry. The intended awards were never endangered, however; the award enjoyed the special favor of the Reich Propaganda Minister.

Award winners

1935: Heinrich Lersch 1936: Josef Ponten 1937: Wilhelm Schäfer 1938: Heinz Steguweit 1939: Hermann Stegemann

1940: Curt Langenbeck 1941: Wilhelm Schmidtbonn 1942: Otto Brües 1943: Ernst Bertram

literature

• Rhenish Literature Prize . In: The Rhine Province . 11th year (1935), p. 245.
• Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann : The Rhenish Literature Prize 1935–1944 . In: Bernd Kortländer (Ed.): Literature Awards. Literary politics and literature using the example of the Rhineland / Westphalia region . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 978-3-476-01577-8 , pp. 67-100.
• Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann, Sabine Brenner, Carola Spies, Franz Steinfort: The Association of Rhenish Poets 1926–1933 . F. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, ISBN 978-3-506-71551-7 , p. 323 f.