Stephan Gans zu Putlitz

Stephan Gans zu Putlitz as a teenager

Stephan Gans zu Putlitz (born February 4, 1854 in Retzin ; † July 24, 1883 in Berlin ) was a German economist and possibly the archetype of Count Waldemar von Haldern in Theodor Fontane's novel Stine .

Life

Stephan Gans zu Putlitz was the son of the diplomat, writer and theater director Gustav Gans zu Putlitz and his wife Elisabeth born. Countess von Königsmarck. He received his doctorate as Dr. jur. and to the Dr. phil. and became a private lecturer at the Berlin University and later an associate professor in Halle an der Saale .

With Hans Delbrück he founded the magazine Politische Wochenblätter , which appeared only in 1882 and 1883 and was included in the Prussian yearbooks .

He was in contact with Otto Zacharias , who had written the book The Population Question in Its Relation to the Social Needs of the Present , which appeared in its fourth edition in 1883. In this work, Zacharias quoted from the correspondence with Putlitz: "[...] an excessive number of children must not be viewed as a blessing as before, but must be viewed as a flaw in the community."

Stephan Gans zu Putlitz married Elisabeth von Flemming on August 2, 1881 at Buckow Castle , whom he had met after completing his habilitation in Verona . The daughter Stephanie, born in 1882, emerged from the marriage and later married Hans von Raumer . When his wife wanted a divorce, Stephan Gans zu Putlitz shot himself in the summer of 1883. The family covered up the incident; the assertion was circulated that Stephan Gans zu Putlitz was killed in a duel . Apparently, however, these efforts had only limited success, as Theodor Fontane already stated in a letter to his wife on July 29, 1883 that the family was trying to conceal something fatal.

The unsuccessful marriage was judged by the fact that Stephan Gans zu Putlitz “with his boyish demeanor by no means suited the cool, reserved, demanding, hyper-aesthetic daughter of a diplomat”. In the foreword to his former wife's diary, there is talk of “the young, thoroughly idealistic companion, to whose nature the blood of his father, the author of What the Forest Tells , has provided”. The cause is called "the irrefutable awareness in the young woman's mind that some talents and powers in her had to wither in the strongly bourgeois life as a professor's wife".

Stephan Gans zu Putlitz as the archetype of a character in a novel

In the novel Stine , published in 1888, the hero of the story takes a look at the windows of the Königsmarckschen Palais in Berlin's Mauerstrasse , behind which he was chatting with a friend in happy, bygone times. The palace was the Berlin residence of the Gans zu Putlitz family, where Fontane frequented. Von Haldern's gaze can therefore be seen as a reference to Stephan Gans zu Putlitz or as an advance reference to the fate of the count in the novel. A parallel in the lives of Stephan Gans zu Putlitz and Count Haldern is also the riding accident, which cost both their health. While, according to the novel, Haldern suffered injuries in a military conflict and then fell under the horse when he fell, his former wife reports: “An accident shortly before the wedding - he fell badly in Hanover during a military riding exercise - had its consequences House damaged from a healthy and normal constitution and probably created the physiological basis for over-stimulated states that had previously been alien to him. In any case, in the very first few weeks after the wedding on the trip, the irritation was so profound that the young woman was close to returning to her father's house. "

Works

• Werth, Preis und Arbeit: A contribution to the teaching of Werthe . Berlin 1880, letterpress by Gustav Schade.
• JP Proudhon . His life and his positive ideas . Berlin 1881.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Professor Stefan Eduard Gustav Adolf Gans zu Putlitz, Edler Herr (geneagraphie.com)
2. ↑ Here and in the article on his wife in the German biography it is mentioned that he later became a professor; in some other sources this information is missing. The DNB states that he was a professor in Halle an der Saale, but at the same time does not record any publications from his hand.
3. ↑ Deissinger, Hans . In: Ostdeutsche Biographie (Kulturportal West-Ost) - only Putlitz 'position as private lecturer is mentioned there, not the professorship
4. ↑ quoted from: Hans Ferdy, The Malthusianism in Moral Relationship , Berlin / Neuwied 1885, p. 5
5. ↑ 100jia.net
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Elisabeth von Heyking, Diaries from Four Parts of the World , Koehler & Amelang 1925, chap. 2
7. ^ Franz Menges:  Raumer, Hans Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 205 f. ( Digitized version ).
8. ↑ biography of the wife
9. ^ So Johann Werner, quoted from: Eckhard Schulz:  Heyking, Elisabeth Baronin von, née Countess von Flemming. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 81 ( digitized version ).
10. ↑ cf. Theodor Fontane: Stine . With an afterword edited by Helmuth Nürnberger . dtv, Munich ³2005, ISBN 3-423-13374-0 , p. 100 f. and p. 124 f.
11. ↑ available online