Richard Wagner (journalist)

Richard Wagner ( pseudonym : Homo ; born November 22, 1868 in Odenhausen (Lahn) ; † March 13, 1927 in Kassel ) was a German journalist and writer.

Life

Richard Wagner was born in Odenhausen an der Lahn in the Kingdom of Prussia in 1868 . He began studying law at the University of Giessen , but broke it off. He joined the postal service as a clerk in 1889 , where he was promoted to civil servant. He was committed to socialist teaching and was dismissed from the postal service due to political agitation . Wagner subsequently worked as a journalist and in 1903/1904 worked as an editor for the Leipziger Volkszeitung . In 1908 he took over the editing of the Social Democratic People's Friend in Braunschweig . During the First World War he was initially enthusiastic about the war and belonged to the MSPD , but then changed to a radical social democrat. He later felt himself to be the "mouthpiece" of the main actors of the November Revolution in Braunschweig , August Merges and Sepp Oerter . The “desk revolutionary” Wagner was often at odds with both revolutionaries, as they accused him of an aggressive spelling. In the autobiographical novel Gypsy Blood in the Filing Cabinet , published in 1924 under a pseudonym, Wagner later vividly described the November Revolution in Braunschweig and the work of August Merges.

On the basis of an article published in 1914, Wagner was taken into preventive detention and banned from political activities. The adaptable journalist then wrote reports from 1914 to 1918 for the right-wing Braunschweigische Landeszeitung and in 1918/1919 for the Braunschweigische socialist state correspondence , the organ of the press and propaganda department of the Braunschweig workers 'and soldiers' council, first published on December 17, 1918 . Wagner lost his position at the Braunschweigische Landeszeitung due to the announcement of internals from the bourgeois camp. He subsequently worked again briefly for the people's friend . Wagner went to Kassel as a freelance writer at the end of 1919, where he died in March 1927 at the age of 58.

Fonts (selection)

• Aether and Wille or Haeckel and Schopenhauer. A new solution to the world puzzle . 1901.
• Novellas and sketches . CF Amelang, Leipzig 1921.
• Homo (pseudonym): Gypsy blood in the filing cabinet . Thüringer Verlagsanstalt, Jena 1924 ( digitized on private website )

literature

• Bergit Korschan-Kuhle: Wagner, Richard . In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Günter Scheel (ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 19th and 20th centuries . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 , p. 639 .
• Ernst-August Roloff : Braunschweig and the state of Weimar. Politics, economy and society 1918–1933. In: Braunschweiger workpieces. Publications from the archive, library and museum of the city, Volume 31, Waisenhaus-Druckerei, Braunschweig 1964, pp. 31–35. ( Digitized version )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Braunschweigische socialist state correspondence: official organ of the press and propaganda department of the workers 'and soldiers' council . Braunschweig; 1st year 1918/1919 ( digitized version )