Robert Boehringer

Robert Boehringer at the age of 21

Robert Boehringer (born July 30, 1884 in Winnenden ; † August 9, 1974 in Geneva ) was a German poet , publicist and entrepreneur .

Life

Robert Boehringer - son of a chemical manufacturer and brother of the archaeologist Erich Boehringer - spent his childhood and youth in Basel . He studied at the University of Basel and was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD. Until 1920 he managed the company CH Boehringer in Ingelheim . From the same year until his retirement from professional life in 1931, he played a key role in building up the Hoffmann-La Roche company in Basel. In 1930 he moved to Geneva.

After the outbreak of World War II , Boehringer gave up his German citizenship under external pressure and became Swiss. He founded the aid organization Commission mixte de Secours de la Croix Rouge Internationale and worked after the war at JR Geigy AG for chemical products for disease control.

Boehringer had been a member of the circle around the poet Stefan George since 1905 , one of whose closest confidants he was and who also designated him as heir and administrator of the estate . Together with Frank Mehnert and Berthold von Stauffenberg , he managed the literary and personal estate of the poet in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1959, in accordance with the mandate given in George's will, he founded the Stefan George Foundation as the future administrator and legal successor as well as the Stefan George Archive . He published several works on George. His two-volume work Mein Bild by Stefan George , which contains many pictures and testimonies about George, is particularly important . The correspondence he edited between George and Hugo von Hofmannsthal was also well received . Other works are On the Life of Poems , Portraits and Evidence and The Face of Genius .

Boehringer was buried in Florence.

Aftermath

Boehringer's estate is kept in the Federal Archives . In his hometown of Winnenden a secondary school, now a comprehensive school, was named after him.

Awards

• Honorary citizen of the city ​​of Winnenden (1954)
• Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Tübingen
• Decoration of honor of the German Red Cross
• Honorary citizen of the city of Bingen
• Honorary member of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI)
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Basel (1959)
• Honorary Citizen of the City of Ingelheim (1974)

Publications

author

• The face of genius. Plato . Shepherd, Breslau 1935.
• The face of genius. Homer . Shepherd, Breslau 1937.
• Homer. Portraits and evidence. Volume I: Roundworks . Together with Erich Boehringer. Wroclaw 1939.
• My picture of Stefan George . 2 volumes (picture and text volume), Helmut Küpper formerly Georg Bondi, Düsseldorf / Munich 1951 (2nd edition 1968).
• The master cousin. With drawings by Karl Dick. Solitude, Stuttgart 1954.
• The genius of the West. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1972 ISBN 978-3-608-98260-2

editor

• Correspondence between George and Hofmannsthal . Bondi, Berlin 1938.
• Stefan George. Friedrich Gundolf . Correspondence . Together with Georg Peter Landmann . Küpper formerly Bondi, Munich 1962.
• Erich Boehringer , Life and Work , Küpper, Düsseldorf 1973 ISBN 3-7835-0150-4

literature

• Stefan-George-Stiftung (Ed.): In memory of Robert Boehringer. On the 20th anniversary of his death on August 9, 1994 . Edited by Michael Stettler . Stefan George Foundation, Stuttgart 1994.
• Martin Leuenberger: Boehringer, Robert. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . 2002
• Bertram Schefold : Robert Boehringer: Entrepreneur and helper, scientist and poet . In: George-Jahrbuch , Volume 7, 2008/2009, pp. 240-263.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gudrun Sailer: Monsignorina. The German Jew Hermine Speier in the Vatican. Münster 2015. p. 327.

Web links

• CV on the website of the city of Ingelheim
• Literature by and about Robert Boehringer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Robert Boehringer in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library