Rudolf Ahlers

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Rudolf Ahlers (born August 24, 1889 in Neubrandenburg ; † March 29, 1954 in Schwerin ) was a German author who was very popular during the Nazi era.

Life

Rudolf Ahlers, a son of the Stavenhagen doctor of the same name, Rudolf Ahlers (1857–1931) from Neubrandenburg , and his wife Anna, b. Raspe (1868–1901) came from a middle-class family and attended the Friderico-Francisceum grammar school in Doberan . Shortly before graduating from high school, he failed and accepted an apprenticeship as a businessman in Hamburg . He completed his military service in Munich and then worked in England as an export merchant. His first, unpublished prose pieces were written around this time. During the First World War he served on the Western Front and was taken prisoner by the French . There he first had to work in the quarry, but was then transferred to St. Gallen because of his war injuries . After his release, he worked at the German consulate and enrolled at a university. In 1919 he took up his old job again and worked in Hamburg and Magdeburg .

Ahlers started his writer activity until 1934, shortly after the " seizure " of Adolf Hitler . Ahlers was politically very active and a staunch National Socialist . He was political leader of the NSDAP in Magdeburg, head of the Reichsschrifttumskammer for Magdeburg-Anhalt, later for Mecklenburg, cultural advisor for the city of Schwerin and a member of the Doberan poet circle . From 1940 he took care of the book series Der Kamp on behalf of the Gau propaganda , in which various National Socialist authors such as Friedrich Griese and Theodor Jakobs published. From 1942 to 1943 he was editor of the Mecklenburg monthly magazine .

Between 1934 and 1945 four novels, eight dramas , radio plays and screenplays by Rudolf Ahlers were published. He also published a few short stories in magazines, such as Westermanns Monatshefte and Ostdeutsche Monatshefte . His novels Das weite Land (1934), Thomas Thorsten (1937), I see you in a thousand pictures (1938) and Between the Waters (1943) were published by Westermann Verlag and had editions between 14 ( I see you in a thousand pictures ) and 35,000 ( Wide Land ). Some of them have also been translated into Dutch .

After the war, Ahlers was interned by the Soviet secret service NKVD, among other places, in special camp No. 2 in Buchenwald and banned from writing. Only in 1953 Ahlers was under the October amnesty of Wilhelm Pieck dismissed and died the following year.

stylistics

Ahlers saw himself as a poet (in contrast to the writer ), more precisely as a local poet . In German studies he is seen today as a representative of a blood-and-soil literature and as a folk author . However, he differs from many of his contemporaries in his forward-looking optimism , which was not exactly typical of other authors in the Third Reich. The two artist novels Tomas Torsten and I see you in a thousand pictures are about the artist who can only be absorbed in the national community and who has to free himself from constraints such as religion and pity. His landscape novels Das wide Land and Zwischen den Wassern are caught in the mysticism of nature and shaped by Darwinist and racist motifs. Although Ahlers is clearly committed to the party line at the time, there are hardly any current political events in his works. The play Erde (1935) is probably his clearest political statement. The play is a plea for " euthanasia " in the sense of National Socialist racial hygiene . Ahlers also used racial stereotypes that corresponded to the then common Aryan ideal.

Ahlers was a German believer . Most of his writings therefore have a hidden reference to neo-paganism .

Fonts

Novels

  • Thomas Torsten . Novel. Braunschweig, Berlin, Hamburg: Westermann 1937.
  • I see you in a thousand pictures. The story of a summer. Novel. Braunschweig: Westermann 1938.
  • The wide country. Novel. Braunschweig, Berlin, Hamburg: Westermann 1940.
  • Between the waters. Chronicle of a landscape. Novel. Braunschweig, Berlin, Hamburg: Westermann 1943.

Short stories

  • Homeland. Five stories. Munich: Kulturpolitischer Verlag 1934.
  • People of the coast. 8 stories. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1944.

Plays

  • Earth. Play in four acts and one prelude. Leipzig: The young stage sales / Ralf Steyer Verlag 1935.
  • The way into the ice. Play in four acts. Leipzig: The young stage sales / Ralf Steyer Verlag 1935.
  • Peter plays with fire. Comedy in 6 pictures . In collaboration with Erich Ebermayer . Leipzig: The young stage sales / Ralf Steyer Verlag 1935.
  • The Heele-Krist. A Bernburg game. Leipzig: The young stage sales / Ralf Steyer Verlag 1936.
  • Need called us. Play in four acts. Leipzig: The young stage sales / Ralf Steyer Verlag 1937.
  • Storm on Lehst. Play in four acts. Leipzig: The young stage sales / Ralf Steyer Verlag 1937.
  • Education for Marriage. Comedy in four acts. Leipzig: The young stage sales / Ralf Steyer Verlag 1940.
  • The victim. Acting in 4 acts. Leipzig: The young stage sales / Ralf Steyer Verlag 1941.

literature

  • Christiane Caemmerer: Just one of them. The National Socialist author Rudolf Ahlers . In: Poetry in the Third Reich? On literature in Germany 1933–1945. Edited by Christiane Caemmerer and Walter Delabar. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1996. pp. 177-192. ISBN 3-531-12738-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudolf Ahlers was a grandson of a cousin of the meritorious Neubrandenburg mayor Wilhelm Ahlers (1810–1889).
  2. ↑ a b Christiane Caemmerer 1996, p. 177.
personal data
SURNAME Ahlers, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Neubrandenburg
DATE OF DEATH March 29, 1954
Place of death Schwerin