Rudolph Beck-Duelmen
Rudolph Beck-Dülmen ( April 1, 1885 - March 22, 1956 ) is the name of a fictional person who was staged as an April Fool's joke in 1984 and 1985 with considerable effort .
To the formation
On April 1, 1984, the fictional person was apparently torn from oblivion in an ARD television discussion led by Dieter Ertel , the television director of Südwestfunk Baden-Baden . The importance of Beck-Dülmen should be recognized by the fact that that nocturnal discussion round was contested by personalities beyond any doubt, namely the Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Lothar Späth , the Tübingen rhetoric professor Walter Jens and the music professor and general manager Wolfgang Gönnenwein .
According to their statements, Rudolph Beck-Dülmen was allegedly a versatile Swabian scientist who made a name for himself as a neurologist , philosopher , musicologist , composer , performing musician and writer , but who was forgotten for decades after his death.
On April 1, 1985, Drumlin Verlag Weingarten published a book with photos, written by Dieter Käfer and entitled "Rudolph Beck-Dülmen - Thinker in Dark Times", which was the subject of a project in which Professors Ulrich Hötzer ( Pedagogical University Weingarten), Hans E. Hornung and Wolfgang Krueger (University of Applied Sciences for Libraries, Stuttgart). In 1985 the SWF broadcast Roman Brodmann's documentary In the Footsteps of Rudolph Beck-Dülmen . In the following years, the media placed Rudolph Beck-Dülmen in line with Ernst August Dölle , Gottlieb Theodor Pilz , Jakob Maria Mierscheid , Friedrich Gottlob Nagelmann , Edmund Friedemann Dräcker and others. a.
According to the state bibliography of Baden-Württemberg, the invention of the person is said to go back to the musicologist Prof. Wolfgang Krueger from the Stuttgart Media University . In fact, Rudolph Beck-Dülmen was invented by one of the sons of Prof. Wolfgang Gönnenwein, who also created the bust that is shown in the TV discussion.
Beck-Dülmen's fictional life
Life dates
The date of birth as well as the place of birth of Rudolph Beck-Dülmen cannot be clearly determined: depending on the source, he died on February 29, 1884, March 31, 1886 or (according to the latest findings) April 1, 1885 as the son of bank director Heinrich Beck and his Born to wife Katharina from Dülmen . The inglorious " dispute between the seven cities " ( Mölln , Dülmen, Aulendorf , Michelbach-Bilz and the Stuttgart suburbs of Kaltental, Heslach and Zuffenhausen) broke out over his place of birth . Today it is certain that his cradle was in one of the three Stuttgart suburbs mentioned. He died on March 22, 1956 in Stuttgart-Kaltental, and on March 30, 1956, his urn was buried at sea near the island of Helgoland .
Youth and academic years (1885 (?) - 1911)
Beck-Dülmen left Germany for the first time at the age of 13: his father was transferred to Prague for a year in 1898 and Beck-Dülmen was a schoolmate of Franz Kafka at the Old Town German State High School . In 1903, when he returned to Stuttgart, he passed his Abitur. This is followed by a dispute with his father about the job to be chosen: The father would like to make a lawyer out of Rudolph, but he enrolled at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg for medicine in the winter semester 1903/04 in clear recognition of his calling , and also studies philosophy and medicine Sociology and also takes private music lessons. He was deeply impressed by Max Weber , whom he heard from 1904 to 1906, but then fell out with him in a fundamental dispute. In 1906 he moved to the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen , where he completed his studies in sociology and philosophy with a Dr. phil. from.
In the same year, 1907, he moved to Berlin , where he continued his medical studies at the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Akademie for military medical education , took the exam in 1911 and obtained the academic degree of Dr. med. attained. During this formative time he met Gottfried Benn and Ludwig Wittgenstein and led a " double life " as a committed medical student and poetic bohemian.
Professional years (1911–1945)
In 1911, when he began his military medical practice, there was a serious accident: Beck-Dülmen fell from his horse, suffered a spinal injury and was released into civilian life “unfit for the military”. He finds a job as an assistant doctor in the neurological department of the Berlin university clinics, where he can carry out important studies on the relationship between music and medicine. In the Café des Westens he met the young Expressionist poets who frequented there, and in 1912 he had a lasting encounter with the ten-year-old Else Lasker-Schüler . Beck-Dülmen now publishes some poems under the pseudonym Sindbad. In 1913 Beck-Dülmen became a senior physician and saw Franz Kafka again while on vacation in Riva on Lake Garda.
During the First World War, Beck-Dülmen served as a ship's doctor (“doctor on the seas”) in the Imperial Navy and ended up in English captivity, which he spent in Scapa Flow until 1919 .
After returning from captivity, Beck-Dülmen settled as a country doctor ("father of single mothers") in Mannshaupten in the Remstal near Stuttgart , his "Swabian exile", from 1920 to 1925 , visited Rudolf Steiner in Dornach in 1922 and maintained an intensive one Correspondence with Thomas Mann , Ernst Bloch and Rainer Maria Rilke . In Beck-Dülmen's work this is the period of the so-called "lyrical reduction", the attempt to let the "cosmopolitan nature" of silence, silence, and omission become language in the medium of the poem (see under secondary literature in Dieter Käfer, p. 96 ). Beck-Dülmen's ingenious discovery of the fact that inaudible "glowing tones" exist between audible tones, which enable very idiosyncratic compositions such as the posthumously discovered "Kaltenthal Elegy", also fell during this period.
In 1926 he returned to Berlin and continued his “double life” while deepening his friendship with Gottfried Benn. He becomes a student of Arnold Schönberg , who recognizes and encourages his talent. In 1926 there was also a brief homoerotic relationship with medical officer Dr. med. Magnus Hirschfeld , the founder of the "Institute for Sexual Science" in Berlin. Beck-Dülmen's father dies on Christmas Eve and leaves him and his younger brother Wilhelm an important fortune that was acquired through stock speculation and saved over the inflationary period , which will give him independence for many years.
Beck-Dülmen spends the years 1927 to 1931 on trips to Italy , Greece and North Africa ; his literary and musical work experienced a creative break. After his return to Germany in September 1931, he moved into his abandoned father's house in Stuttgart-Heslach and wrote a novel-like biography of the great German poet, “Der trübe Gast”, with a view to the Goethe year of 1932, which had long since made an important contribution to it represents due demythologization. The publication was not without consequences: his literary opponents instigated an intrigue against him in 1932, which led to his ostracism and ultimately his suppression.
He experienced the seizure of power by Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933 first hand in Berlin and he decided to evade the Nazi regime through internal emigration. He returns to Württemberg and resumes his work as a country doctor in order to survive for the "thousand years" from 1933 to 1945, whereby he has to change his place of residence seven times for safety reasons ( Königsfeld , Upflamör , Wäschenbeuren , Welzheim , Gruorn , Mössingen and Biberach ) . His commitment at the time as a theater doctor and researcher in the field of music neurology as well as his literary achievements as a novelist, with which he definitely puts himself on the level of Hermann Hesse, have remained permanently visible .
In 1945 Beck-Dülmen settled in Schorndorf and found a loyal friend in Georg von der Vring . He now settles accounts with his opponents and, moreover, leads a secluded life.
Fateful year 1950
1950 became a decisive year for him for the rest of his life: the 65-year-old met and fell in love with the most famous harpist in Europe, Fee von Clausener, at a Mozart concert in Stuttgart. She is a member of an impoverished East Westphalian aristocratic family from Bielefeld and 35 years younger than Beck-Dülmen, but this does not detract from his deep inclination. For him it is “music made into form” and the “embodiment of art as a woman, the sound made flesh”. At the end of a European tour on which he accompanies her, he proposes marriage to his lover, but is rejected.
Last years (1951–1956)
On the tour with Fee von Clausener, Beck-Dülmen was exhausted in every respect. All his means, including the rest of his father's fortune, have been used up. In 1951 he returned to Stuttgart, completely impoverished, where he took a furnished room in the Kaltental district. Here he spends the last five years of his life completely isolated, forgotten by his friends (as far as they are still alive), penniless and sick in body and soul. With the words “Now I could speak! Amen ”he died on March 22nd, 1956 in his barren room in Kaltental. A Catholic pastor has stayed by his bed; he saw Rudolph Beck-Dülmen fall asleep in peace.
Thinker in dark times
Written works (selection)
- Autobiographical
- Praise and criticism of the origin (fragment of the autobiography)
- A German on call (autobiography, 1956)
- Scientific papers, treatises and essays
- On the sense of social action and inaction (written exam, Heidelberg 1904)
- Action or failure - attempt of the historical and ethical foundation of a sociological theory of non-action with impractical intent (dissertation, Tübingen 1907)
- Psychopathology of pubertal epilepsy (essay, 1910)
- About the frequency of diabetes mellitus among the population in Berlin-Kreuzberg (dissertation, Berlin 1911)
- Sound image, symbolism, association (essay on the connections between music and neurology, 1913)
- Creativity and Psychopathology in the Field of Musical Creation (1914)
- On the theory of the convergence of tones (1914)
- Nevertheless ship's doctor - maritime considerations (1914-1919)
- Bibliography of fiction received by Gottlieb Daimler (1924)
- Proscenium - Notes on the Theater (essay, 1923)
- About the divergence of discordant tones (1925)
- On the influence of criticism on the physique and psyche of the arts (essay, 1926)
- Silence and Language (Main Philosophical Work in Two Parts, 1926)
- Matrilinear structures of polyphonic sound images (1926)
- A missing note in a fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach (music theory essay on the Goldberg Variations, 1938)
- Psychopathology of the sense of acquisition (essay, 1939)
- About the Swabian tribal character (study, 1940)
- Walking upright in dark times (treatise, 1946)
- Thinking, Speaking, Silencing (1956)
- Novels
- The gloomy guest (novel-like Goethe biography, 1932)
- The silent mouth (1934)
- The Wind Organ (1942)
- Missa Cum Nomine (1952)
- Volumes of poetry
- Sonnets of a Wanderer (1904)
- Fall Foliage (1905)
- Surf (1906)
- Quarry (1912)
- Lyre and bow (1913)
- Songs of Doubt (1914)
- Songs of Hope (1919)
- Harp sounds (sonnets for Fee von Clausener, 1950)
- The Snow King (op. Posth.)
- Plays
- Clenched Fists (one-act play, 1934)
- Moritat from the good Kaspar Paul (1938)
Musical compositions
- String quartet in B flat major (1903)
- Sextet for string quartet, double bass and harmonium No. 1 (1904)
- Sextet for string quartet, double bass and harmonium No. 2 in F minor (1905)
- Symphony BA-Es-F (1905)
- Autumn Day - oratorio based on the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke for three voices, two concert harps and twenty-three solo strings (1908)
- The Magic Slipper (Symbolist Chamber Opera, 1922)
- Te Deum - Nonet for alto voice, harp and seven-part recorder choir (1924)
- Kaltenthal Elegy for voice, male quartet, three violins, violoncello, double bass and harmonium (op. Posth.)
Medical technology inventions
- Ear brush according to Beck-Dülmen (1920)
- Beck-Dülmenscher blood cell counter (1923)
literature
- Dieter Käfer: Rudolph Beck-Dülmen - thinker in dark times . Drumlin, Weingarten 1985, ISBN 3-924027-30-7 .
- Johannes Lehmann: Beck-Dülmen - thinker in dark times: nowhere. In: Baden-Württemberg curious. Tübingen, Lahr / Schwarzwald 2010, pp. 156–159.
- Rainer Moritz: A case for Heidenreich: poet anniversaries. The Rudolph-Beck-Dülmen year is approaching. In: Börsenblatt No. 42, October 19, 2005, p. 11 ( online ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thinkers in Dark Times. Rudolph Beck-Dülmen and his life's work ( Memento of the original from October 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (1984). SWR Media Services.
- ↑ TV praise. In: Die Zeit No. 15, April 6, 1984
- ↑ In the footsteps of Rudolph Beck-Dülmen ( Memento of the original from October 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (1985). SWR Media Services.
- ↑ ID number: 2347711 . State bibliography of Baden-Württemberg
