Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl around 1910

Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl (born May 31, 1874 in Vienna ; † August 13, 1950 in Starnberg ) was an Austro-German entrepreneur , publicist and writer . For his literary work he took his mother's name and also published under the pseudonym Pankratius Pfauenblau.

RFP signature

Life

Robert Friedlaender was born in Vienna as the eldest of two sons of the engineer Josef Friedlaender (1836–1905) and Beatrix Prechtl (1853–1919). The Jewish line of the paternal ancestors came from Silesia and had received Prussian citizenship around 1814. An ancestor of the Christian mother, the physicist and chemist Johann Joseph Ritter von Prechtl , was the founder of the Vienna Polytechnic (today Vienna University of Technology ) in 1814 . To get married, the father entered the Evangelical Church and his children were baptized Evangelicals. 1884-1892 Friedlaender-Prechtl attended the Humanist High School in Vienna, where he met Hugo von Hofmannsthal . In 1895 he left the local technical college with a diploma as a businessman. In early 1900 he met his future wife, the mezzo-soprano Magda von Dulong ; she had started her career under the name Magda Lossen. The twins Ingeburg (1897–1935) and Irmela von Dulong (1897–1985) came from the first marriage with the singer Henry von Dulong. On November 15, 1909, Friedlaender-Prechtl's civil marriage with Meta Cleophea took place in Berlin-Schöneberg. In 1906 Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl fell ill and since then was “paralyzed” and dependent on a wheelchair. In 1912/1913 he had the architect Otto Bartning build a villa on a double plot of land in the newly developed Miquelstrasse 88/90 in Berlin-Dahlem. Friedlaender-Prechtl left active business life in the mid-twenties. He moved to the Würm - now Starnberger See - where he had the Ruland house built by the Munich architect Carl Sattler near Kempfenhausen and farmed on the Sattlerhof, which was also leased. In 1932 he sold the villa to the Aachen wagon manufacturer Gustav Talbot, built a smaller wooden country house on the now divided property, but moved to Starnberg in 1937 because of the nearby Nazi celebrities and moved into a house in Wilhelmshöhenstrasse in 1938. He socialized with fellow writers from the region: Friedrich Alfred Schmid Noerr (1877–1969); Hans Ludwig Held ; Mor von Weber, Charlo, originally Charlotte Weber (1898-1984); Albert Talhoff (1888-1956); Hermann Uhde-Bernays ; Long-term correspondence and conversation partners were the cultural philosopher Leopold Ziegler , the Munich librarian Hans Ludwig Held and the Lübeck entrepreneur Heinrich Dräger . After the start of the war and the confiscated automobile, he lived “interned” like “Hieronymus in a case; but since the case has been preserved there is no reason to grumble ”.

He tried to help persecuted Jews from his circle of friends and relatives. a. the painter Hilde Countess Vitzthum, b. Goldschmidt (suicide May 1942), Anna Lehmann, b. Friedlaender (1864–1942 Theresienstadt) and her emigrated daughters Hanne Angel Dora Höllering; His connections to opponents of National Socialism such as the diplomats Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff and Friedrich von Prittwitz and Gaffron or the lawyer Dr. Walther Schreiber , who was employed from 1938 to 1945 as administrator of the “hostile” Friedlaender-Fuld property of the emigrated wife and mother Milly Friedlaender-Fuld and daughter Marie-Anne von Goldschmidt-Rothschild (1892–1973) on behalf of state authorities, as well as the long-standing Business partner and trusted friend, the Swede Dr. Ing.Richert von Koch.

In 1946 he responded to allegations that he had been a supporter of the National Socialists because of his economic theories, with a self-accusation for a trial chamber procedure in Starnberg; on July 28, 1947, the Chamber decided to discontinue the practice on the grounds that it was "partly a matter of misunderstandings, but the rest of the usual village gossip".

He died four months after the death of his wife on May 13, 1950. The grave site at the Hanfelder Strasse cemetery has been abandoned today.

The singer Magda Lossen 1901

Entrepreneur

After training as a businessman, he joined his father's factory for agricultural machinery. In 1905 his cousin, the Upper Silesian coal wholesaler and mining industrialist, brought him to the central administration in Berlin, and in 1906 Fritz von Friedlaender-Fuld ennobled him . There he worked as a general representative in numerous company holdings of the group. After the death of his cousin in 1917, he was appointed executor for the heirs, in addition to the Oberfinanzrat Dr. Ernst Springer (1860–1944 Theresienstadt) and the lawyer Dr. Franz Oppenheimer (1871–1950 New York), now one of the two partners in Emanuel Friedlaender & Comp. In 1918 he started his own business at Behrenstrasse 7 in Berlin, taking over Industrieverwaltung AG; he and Dr. Richert von Koch formed the board. According to his concept - I was always particularly interested in inventions that should free Germany from importing essential products - he founded companies for which he also sat on the supervisory board until 1937 (Braunkohlen-Produkte AG in Berlin, Natronzellstoff und Papierfabriken AG, Berlin ). In a consortium for coal chemistry, he supported the chemist Friedrich Bergius . In 1924 he left the Industrieverwaltung AG and dedicated himself to new tasks.

As early as 1919 he founded the Spiegel publishing house in Berlin, in which he now also publishes the magazine Der Spiegel in addition to his own works . Published articles on moral and artistic culture and announced in the first issue: The SPIEGEL should be a platform for those intellectual people who believe in the resurrection of German culture in a new, purer atmosphere with all their fervor and do not want to help build it with all their might Thinking time is too difficult and confusing . In it he had bourgeois-conservative authors write controversial on contemporary issues. The publishing company ended in April 1921 after 26 issues.

In 1920 Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl leased the Schlosspark-Restaurant (Schlossstrasse 48) in Berlin-Steglitz for 30 years and financed the conversion to the Schlosspark-Theater , which opened in May 1921 with the tragedy Timon by Shakespeare , newly translated by Friedlaender-Prechtl has been. To disseminate his theoretical economic concerns, he again published a periodical: Die Wirtschafts-Wende. Journal for German Economic Renewal . He named the motivation for the publication in a letter to Leopold Ziegler: It is high time [...] that the hopeless split: here intellectual, here economic problems, finally ends and the realization comes to life that all sides of human activity, including which are economic, ultimately in the spirit. The last issue appeared in February 1933.

Signet of the Spiegel publishing house around 1920, Berlin

publicist

Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl commented on the political, economic and cultural issues of the time not only with the help of his own publishing houses and magazines, but also published reviews of theater, literature and music in many art and culture magazines. He regularly wrote an emphatic obituary for the murdered Walther Rathenau in the Vossische Zeitung, there also on political issues, on June 27, 1922 . With the increasing economic crisis, he brought his entrepreneurial experience to concepts for dealing with them in contentious articles and the book Wirtschafts-Wende (1931). He belonged to the narrow circle of bourgeois reformers in the study society for money and credit management (Wilhelm Grotkopp, Heinrich Dräger et al.), And was one of the first to demand maximum sums for job creation measures to eliminate rising unemployment. To what extent the National Socialists resorted to his program in 1933 is controversial in the scientific literature. His last contributions appeared in early 1933. After the first boycott measures by the National Socialists, he wrote in a bitter letter from April 1933 to fellow campaigner Dr. Hans Lambrecht, member of the Reich Board of Trustees for Economic Efficiency:

From the beginning of my life I felt like a German and only a German. In my public work, I have always been a passionate believer in the idea of ​​'Germany'. […] But now I have become homeless and peopleless. I can't get over that. I can no longer and no longer want to contribute to the faring of this country, which I have previously seen as my mother - but which now turns out to be a hateful stepmother.

He did not appear in the media until 1946, especially since membership of the Nazi Reich Chamber of Culture applied for in 1934 was rejected.

Impressed by the hunger years he experienced himself after the war, he dedicated the first and only issue of a new series of Wirtschafts-Wende to the British economist Thomas Malthus and formulated thoughts that are current again today:

The overvaluation of industry with its fundamentally expansive and conflict-leading tendency has alienated people from mother earth. [...] The connection with even a small piece of their own land, from which people gain nourishment through voluntary work in an intensive culture, makes them materially and morally resilient, gives them a sense of home: a fact of political and social importance that cannot be overestimated .

The mirror 1920

writer

In literary terms, Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl came out with relatively few works, but these were always meant as programmatic, sometimes theory-heavy statements. In 1914 he published the poems of the time , which he described in a letter to Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff as "war poems". The drama Alcestis , which was written after his near-death illness, became a recurring theme in life . The tragedy of life in which the existential questions of freedom and responsibility in the modern age are asked. Written in 1908, he published it for the first time in 1917 in a special edition, further, partly changed editions appeared from 1918 to 1924 in various publishers. The play was premiered on April 18, 1918 at the Royal Theater in Dresden with Friedrich Lindner and Melitta Leithner in the leading roles.

In 1935/36 Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl wrote a novel with the original title Titanensturz , which was published by Saturn Verlag in Vienna in 1937, crushed after the so-called annexation of Austria and then in London in 1938 (Martin Secker) and in New York in 1940 (EP Dutton) and Stockholm (Skoglund) under the more marketable title Titanic . Editions in the Federal Republic appeared in various publishers until the 1970s. The motif of the novel was the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic in 1912: the author describes in a culture-critical manner the moral sinking of the business bosses and bankers, as he may have experienced this social class himself; love and art save him from the crisis of meaning into which the protagonist has got himself.

In 1946 he sent friends a list of the unpublished works made after 1933. The plan was to narrate a comprehensive Jewish-Western past using the example of individual religions, peoples and people, and to make the present clear as a crash. Of these (no longer available) manuscripts, only Giordano Bruno and Galilei have appeared. Processes around a world view (1947) and the later revised version of the former three-volume manuscript Gospel Harmony , published posthumously in 1954 under the title The story of Jesus of Nazareth .

Works

  • Robert Prechtl: Poems from that time. 1914 (printed as a manuscript for my friends); Copy of the German Literature Archive Marbach
  • Robert Prechtl: Alkestis. Die Tragödie vom Leben, written in 1908, (private print Charlottenburg 1917, several later editions in various publishers)
  • Robert Friedlaender: Fritz von Friedlaender-Fuld and German economy. O. O., undated, [Berlin 1918]
  • Robert Prechtl: The Night of Jenny Lind. A happy and serious game. Berlin 1919
  • Robert Prechtl: game and interlude. Attempts at human and artistic education. Berlin 1920
  • The women state. Comedy in three acts / after Aristophanes by Pankrazius Pfauenblau. Berlin 1920
  • Robert Prechtl: Trilogy of Passion. Ysot. Brand. Tristan. Munich [1922]
  • Robert Friedlaender: Chronic work crisis. Their cause, their fight. Berlin 1926
  • Robert Prechtl: Italy trip. A German fate. Leipzig 1930
  • Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl: Economic turnaround. The causes of the unemployment crisis and how to combat them. Leipzig 1931
  • Robert Prechtl: The Fall of the Titans. Novel of an age. Vienna 1937
  • Robert Friedlaender: "OPPELN / from a life review", undated [1944]; Mach. reproduced, 7 pages, 1944, German National Library Leipzig, Coll.Exil-Literatur: Exil 2004 B 5
  • Robert Prechtl: The song of life. Requiem for all dead of this war. Printed as Ms., Starnberg, self-published; Ex. In the Berlin State Library , Prussian Cultural Heritage
  • Robert Prechtl: Giordano Bruno and Galilei. Processes around a worldview. Munich 1947 (Trials of World History, edited by Kurt Pfister)
  • Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl (ed.): Malthus? Economic transition, 1st volume. Stuttgart 1948
  • The story of Jesus of Nazareth. Compiled from the 4 Gospel texts. Edited by Robert Friedlaender-Prechtl. Munich 1954 (posthumous)

literature

  • Vieweg, Richard: Robert Prechtl's Alkestis and her Greek archetype. Berlin [1920]
  • Starnberger See-Stammbuch. Collected and edited by [Baroness] Grunelia Grunelius. Munich 1950
  • Grotkopp, Wilhelm: The great crisis. Lessons from overcoming the economic crisis of 1929/32. Düsseldorf 1954
  • Kroll, Gerhard: From the world economic crisis to the state economy. Berlin 1958
  • Keynesianism I and II. Ed. By G. Bombach, H.-J. Ramser, M. Timmermann, W. Wittmann. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1976
  • Barkai, Avraham: The Economic System of National Socialism. Ideology, theory, politics 1933–1945. Cologne 1977
  • Kissenkoetter, Udo: Gregor Straßer and the NSDAP. Stuttgart 1978
  • Köster, Werner: The "German culture" and the "downfall" as a model. Three Titanic novels from the Nazi era. In: Rudolf Sieverts, Heinrich Lingemann: Concise Dictionary of Criminology, Vol. 5, 1998
  • Schober, Gerhard: Early villas and country houses on Lake Starnberg. In memory of a cultural landscape. Waakirchen-Schaftlach: Oreos Verlag 1998, p. 326f
  • Vierneisel, Beatrice: The castle park ensemble in Steglitz 1880–1949, in: Before. After that. Contributions to the history of National Socialism and the post-war period in Steglitz and Zehlendorf. Edited by the Steglitz-Zehlendorf Cultural Office. Berlin 2008, pp. 11–33
  • Janssen, Hauke: National Economy and National Socialism: The German Economics in the 1930s. Marburg, 3rd revised. 2009 edition (contributions to the history of the German-speaking economy; 10),
  • William M. Calder III , Alexander Košenina : Poetry, philology and politics: Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorffs (1848–1931) correspondence with Robert Friedlaender (1874–1950) , in: Antike und Abendland (1990). Edited by Dihle, Albrecht u. a. Berlin, New York 2009, pp. 163-186
  • Meihsner, Marie: Alkestis - “A Tragedy of Life”? On the reception of the Euripides tragedy around 1900, housework University of Göttingen, 2009.
  • Barkai, Avraham: Experienced and Thought. Memoirs of an Independent Historian. Göttingen 2011, pp. 78-104

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Opole 1944
  2. ↑ State Archives Munich, SpkA K 4573: Questionnaires 1947
  3. ↑ Certificate, private property
  4. ↑ State Archives Munich, SpkA K 4573: Questionnaires 1947
  5. ↑ Leaves for Architecture and Crafts , 27.1914
  6. ↑ Schober, 1998
  7. ↑ Monacensia. Literature archive, Hans Ludwig Held B 128
  8. ↑ Landesarchiv Berlin, B Rep. 025
  9. ↑ State Archives Munich, SpKa K4573
  10. ↑ City Archives Starnberg
  11. ↑ State Archives, A Rep. 342-02, No. 22957
  12. ↑ LAB A Rep. 342-02, No. 20426
  13. ↑ State Archives Munich, SpkA K 4573: Questionnaires 1947
  14. ^ Archives Drägerwerk BS IV February 5, 1910, Letter from Friedlaender to Bergius dated January 21, 1937
  15. ↑ Vierneisel 2008
  16. ^ Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, NL Leopold Ziegler, letter dated September 2, 1931
  17. ↑ Grotkopp 1954
  18. ^ Archives Drägerwerk, Lübeck, BS IV January 5, 1913
  19. ↑ Malthus ?, 1948, p. 6
  20. ↑ Lower Saxony State & University Library Göttingen, Cod. Ms. Wilamowitz 413
  21. ↑ Meihsner 2009
  22. ^ Program booklet, private possession
  23. ^ Austrian National Library, Vienna - Musicians' Letters, 1162, 817 / 36-10
personal data
SURNAME Friedlaender-Prechtl, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friedländer, Robert (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-German entrepreneur, publicist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1950
Place of death Starnberg