Robert Reitzel

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Robert Reitzel

Robert Reitzel (born January 27, 1849 in Weitenau , † March 31, 1898 in Detroit ) was a German writer , journalist and editor of the magazine Der arme Teufel . Reitzel worked mainly in North America .

life and work

Robert Reitzel grew up in Weitenau in southern Baden (today part of Steinen ). While his father, the elementary school teacher and dialect poet Reinhard Reitzel (1812–1889), was “not a man of progress”, his mother, an educated woman, was committed to the revolutionaries of 1848 . It was she who named the son after Robert Blum , the hero of the failed revolution who was shot dead in Vienna at the end of 1848. Reitzel first attended the Mannheim Lyceum , then the Karlsruhe Gymnasium , but seems to have complied with the discipline of these institutions with difficulty, so that in 1869, two months before his Abitur, he was expelled for trivial reasons. His father was very sad about it: "The saddest thing is not that he has become nothing, but that he does not want to become anything." A high school graduation and a broken off studies of theology, which are often mentioned in reports about Reitzel, have so far been possible do not prove. Rather, Reitzel soon decided to emigrate to America. He arrived in New York in July 1870.

In America Reitzel made his way first as a tramp and migrant worker until he was able to advance to the position of preacher in a secessionist religious community in early 1871 . However, his experiences with the believers, as well as his confrontation with the doctrines on which he preached, soon made him a staunch enemy of the churches. Although he had had a family to support since 1872, he therefore strove to leave his lucrative position. Because he had discovered or developed an enormous rhetorical talent during his preaching activity, he was soon a sought-after speaker, who was in demand throughout the country in the numerous German workers' and civic associations - in which many Forty-Eighters still the revolutionary and liberal ideals of the suppressed revolution held high - found a field of activity that also secured him a livelihood. Topics he talked about again and again were, in addition to criticism of religion and anti-clericalism , questions of social criticism : socialist and anarchist ways to overcome capitalist misery. He published on these topics in the magazine Der Sozialist .

During the years as a speaker at liberal gatherings, Reitzel developed the plan for his own newspaper. He had a name long before he was able to start the paper: the poor devil. This is "the right name for a publication that understands the world in the sense of an unadulterated person." Reitzel was only able to realize his plan in 1884 with the help of a patron, and he succeeded in making the newspaper the "most widespread German-language literary journal that ever appeared in America “to develop. It appeared as a weekly newspaper until Reitzel's death and was continued by friends for a few years: sixteen volumes with a total of 822 issues. Max Nettlau , the “polyhistor of anarchism”, judged Reitzel as the main author of his newspaper: “He turned to everything beautiful and freely thought in German and international literature and in a few years came to an undogmatic anarchism . ... The poor devil is a treasure trove of serious and amiable liberal and rebellious feelings and thoughts and the most cutting social criticism and disheveling of authority in all its open and veiled forms. "Reitzel himself saw himself - in the program of his newspaper - at a friendly and ironic distance from anarchist contemporaries : “I leave it to my friends Tucker and Most to fight out who represents true anarchism ... I am just a poor devil who gives no thought to the society of the future, who fights every coercion, every injustice, cheers every truth , no matter how painful it ... and has managed to live independently despite the state, church and respectable public opinion. "

Fonts

  • The poor devil. Weekly, Detroit 1884-1900
  • The Reitzel book. In memory of a loved one Detroit 1900 on the Internet Archive
  • Selected Writings. First episode: Adventure of a Green. Chicago 1902 on the Internet Archive
  • The poor devil's collected writings in three volumes. Edited by Reitzel Club, Detroit 1913 (approx. 1500 pages)
  • "I just want to sleep on one ear so I don't miss a wake-up call to freedom ..." Text selection, ed. by Manfred Bosch . Karin Kramer Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-87956-292-X .

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Reinhard Reitzel . ( Wikisource ).
  2. ↑ Bosch 2004, p. 245
  3. ↑ ibid., P. 255
  4. ↑ Max Nettlau: History of Anarchy. Volume III. Bremen undated (reprint), p. 389
  5. ↑ Quotation from Oliver Hemmerle: "The poor devil." A transatlantic journal between the labor movement and educated bourgeois cultural transfer around 1900. Münster 2002, p. 185
personal data
SURNAME Reitzel, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES The poor devil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer in North America
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Weitenau
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1898
Place of death Detroit , USA