Victor Manheimer

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Victor Manheimer (born December 7, 1877 in Berlin , † December 10, 1942 in Amsterdam ) was a German-Jewish Germanist , bibliophile and prominent member of the Schwabing artist and intellectual scene of the early 20th century.

“The seventieth birthday of Kommerzienrat Valentin Manheimer.” Painting by Anton von Werner, 1887.

Life

Youth and Studies

Victor Manheimer was the eldest of four children of the Jewish businessman Ferdinand Manheimer and his wife Betty nee. Jacoby. Ferdinand Manheimer's father Valentin (1815–1889) founded the clothing store V. Manheimer in Berlin . After his death, his three sons ran it, and Ferdinand Manheimer ran it alone from 1904 until his death in 1905. Ferdinand and Betty Manheimer had a wide range of cultural interests. The philosopher Max Dessoir , who went in and out of her house on Bellevuestrasse 7, writes of Ferdinand's stately apartment: “She was under the management of his wife Betty, who was very sociable and especially saw musicians and music lovers with her; three sons and a daughter grew up there. ”A painting by Anton von Werner in 1887 shows the celebration society in Bellevuestrasse on the occasion of Valentin Manheimer's seventieth birthday - an example of the life of the Berlin upper class during the early days , and of the assimilation of the Jewish citizens. All of Valentin Manheimer's grandchildren are shown, but it is unclear who ten-year-old Victor is.

Victor attended the Königliche Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin , where he passed the final exam in 1895 . He then studied at the philosophical faculties of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin , the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg , the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and again at the Berlin University. He mainly attended “events with professors whose teaching focuses already covered established research areas in German studies. In particular, Wilhelm Scherer's students , above all Erich Schmidt , [...] may have evoked a conservative understanding of his subject in him. ”He also wrote poems himself.

Doctorate and habilitation attempt

From the winter semester of 1898/1899, Manheimer studied for five semesters at the Georg-August University of Göttingen . His most important teacher there was Gustav Roethe . He became his PhD supervisor. He wrote about Manheimer's dissertation “Die Lyrik des Andreas Gryphius. Studies and Materials ":" The Cand. was lucky enough to discover what had been thought lost, especially the very important first edition of the sonnets; he has had the skill to use these finds appropriately without overestimating them. <...> He has convincingly described the entire career of the poet Gryphius, how he did something good for the interpretation of difficult passages. An independent, ingenious and encouraging study in all directions. ”The first edition of Andreas Gryphius ' sonnets is the Lissa sonnets . In 1903 Manheimer was promoted to Dr. Phil received his doctorate, and the dissertation was printed in 1904.

Manheimer's acquaintances during his studies and doctoral studies included the poet Richard Dehmel , to whom he presented "a few poems", the musicologist Werner Wolffheim , the art historian and bibliophile Otto Deneke , the writer Rudolf Borchardt and the Germanist Walther Brecht (1876–1950) who was also a doctoral student with Roethe in Göttingen and received his doctorate in 1902. The same enthusiasm for German literature made Manheimer and Brecht friends. Both later became bibliophiles; In Göttingen, according to Manheimer, when looking at the “splendid Renaissance prints” that Brecht needed for his dissertation, they did not yet come up with the thought “that one must have something like this in order to really enjoy it. The parchment and pigskin volumes of German baroque poets , which I got for cheap money in Göttingen at the time, were only meant to be a kind of tool. "

Manheimer aspired to the habilitation and went to the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität Strasbourg . His topic should be "The Relationship of Frauenlobs to His Predecessors". But it remained with the attempt, be it that he did not find enough support from the Strasbourg professors, or that personal difficulties predominated; the father died on March 17, 1905, whether by suicide remains unclear; two years later her mother married Werner Wolffheim, who was eighteen years younger than her. In 1906 Manheimer moved to Munich. A new life began for him. He gave up the professorial career. "Instead, he appeared as a host, as a bon vivant, bibliophile and protagonist of Munich's cultural and theater scene."

Bohemian

Manheimer lived in Schwabing , initially on Ainmillerstraße, from 1909 on Werneckstraße 5 (since 1955: No. 18), in the so-called "Stubenrauchschlößl". His residence was one of the "islands in the city" where the bohemians met. The writer Hermann Sinsheimer describes the ambience:

"First there was the Mannheimer house, more precisely: the villa of Dr., who was taught and interested in the history of literature and art. Victor Mannheimer, a former gentleman's house, located in a secluded park on the edge of the English Garden . The resident of this graceful eighteenth-century estate was the son of a wealthy Berlin factory owner, in love with interesting books, beautiful women and long conversations. Had he been less wealthy, he would probably have taught history of literature at some German university, and from time to time he would have turned his vast knowledge and his not-so-great wisdom into a book. But as it was, with all his money, good taste and great liking for people, he opened the small house and the large park to the small and large world of Schwabing and Munich, of Germany and Europe. Anyone who “frequented Mannheimer” before, during and after the World War had established themselves in art or life, at least for the Bannmeile Munich's success. The famous ones were, of course, the raisins, but the batter in which they pearled was as mixed as possible, albeit a selection itself. Whom God had given to speak in an original or attractive way or to be silent was welcome here. The landlord himself, an anima candida, never quite outgrown boyhood, although his tall appearance had been covered in a bald head for as long as anyone can remember, only seemed to be a guest in the house himself. The host in the background was his ancient, quietly growling and sparingly smiling servant Kaspar, a good and kind servant soul who knew a lot about people and wines.

A Munich elite dined, drank, danced, met and slept here, celebrated garden parties, made their judgments, satiated with their prejudices - in small, tastefully furnished rooms full of books and pictures or on the lawns of the park under the sun. sitting, moon- or lampion-lit trees, from noon to midnight and beyond. It was an island of the blessed, on which the hay from the meadows of the English Garden smelled over in summer and where in winter the most beautiful women believed to get along with the brightest men. "

From 1909 shadow plays were performed privately at Manheimer , sometimes with Manheimer himself as director . Thomas Mann took part in a performance of Justinus Kerner's tragedy “The Gravedigger from Feldberg” on July 25, 1920 , and for Sinsheimer's irony it was a “raisin”: “Garden party at Dr. Mannheimer, where Kerner's 'Grave Digger' was performed outdoors. Admirable little poem, well presented. ”Guests in the Stubenrauchschlößl were also the writer Max Halbe , who became a friend until the time of emigration, and the sculptor Fritz Behn .

In 1907 Manheimer's passion for collecting became manifest. Since it was founded in 1907, he was a member of the "Society of Munich Bibliophiles", which included the illustrator and writer Rolf von Hoerschelmann , the anti-militarist and writer Erich Mühsam and the writer Karl Wolfskehl . Like Max Halbe, Wolfskehl became a friend until the time of emigration. In the Bibliophile Society, Manheimer was “addressed equally as an intellectual and as a bon vivant, here he also found entertainment and exchange with writers, visual artists, publishers, booksellers and other scholars.” If his own collection in 1907 was still small, it has now grown. For example, Manheimer took as a buyer at the Munich auction from the "Library Prof. Dr. Oscar Piloty ”in May 1918. And so it happened, something that he would not have thought in Göttingen, namely that he would “wake up one morning as the owner of an almost famous collection of German baroque literature. <...> But I had become a collector long before I wanted it to be true. "

From 1910 he was also involved in the Munich “New Association”. This is how he came into contact with Arthur Schnitzler and Frank Wedekind . In 1918 he submitted to Schnitzler - a sign that he continued to try his hand at poeticism - his own piece "Die Ebbe" for evaluation. Schnitzler was devastating. Manheimer was denied his own literary and artistic fame. He acted “as a private scholar and person in (semi) public life, at least in the background of the literary scene between 1907 and 1922” - possibly too self-assured, according to Dessoir, “a beautiful spirit who handled his money carelessly and clumsily. <...> Since his relationships extended to other countries and his self-confidence grew steadily, he believed himself to be the center of spiritual Europe. "

In 1917 Manheimer married Hedwig Salomon, who was a good 18 years his junior. In 1919 their daughter Ruth was born to them. The marriage ended in divorce after 1922. In the 1920s, Manheimer resigned from the Jewish community.

Choppy and emigration

On October 10, 1922, Manheimer signed off in Munich and moved with his family to Berlin, but kept the apartment on Munich's Werneckstrasse. Perhaps commuting between the two cities, and increasingly abroad, especially Italy, he led an erratic wandering life. Political repression is out of the question for the twenties - the motives remain unclear. He closed his library between 1924 and 1931. In 1924 he auctioned his collection of newer authors in Berlin under the title "From Gottsched to Hauptmann ". “When a collector sells his collection in whole or in part, unlike in Paris, for example, a cloud of gossip rises up about his pecuniary motives.” It is different with him. “Il ya une chose, que j'aime plus que la beauté, c'est le changement.” In 1927, his collection of German baroque literature was auctioned in Munich. In October 1931 Manheimer finally sold the rest of the German literature to the University of Cologne . Kötz sees this as the beginning of emigration. With the sale of the last part of his library, Manheimer had obtained additional funds for living in emigration. The order of the sales also suggests his self-image. Sticking to his work library shows that he still saw himself as a Germanist and philologist.

From 1932 to 1936 Manheimer stayed in Rome, where he met the writer and later ambassador to France Wilhelm Hausenstein and the sculptor Arno Breker . Breker "modeled his expressive, massive head, a mixture of grand seigneur, Mephisto and ingenious connoisseur". The sculpture is lost. In 1938 and 1939 he was in Merano , where he met the architect and fashion designer Else Oppler-Legband . He received "occasional visitors and developed far-reaching, unrealizable plans." In March 1939 he converted to the Catholic faith. On April 12, 1939, he followed Else Oppler-Legband's urgent advice to the University of Amsterdam and traveled to Holland. He lived in Amsterdam at various addresses, most recently at Prins Hendriklaan 36. Apparently he worked for a really short time at the university. He was still financially adequate, because he had to prove assets of 10,000 guilders upon entry . He also had an account in Switzerland. His letters to Max Halbe, Karl Wolfkehl, the writer Margarete Susman and the philosopher Helmuth Plessner often speak of naivety with regard to political developments, not wanting to believe, dissimulation and repressing threats. In April 1940, a month before the Netherlands surrendered, he missed it in a letter to Margarete Susman

“In the most painful light and sun and south, landscape as I understand it, and the peripathetic , and so I live in exile , if only because it is north here. It is certainly up to me that there have not been any fruitful human encounters since I crossed the Dutch border, that is, for over a year now. "

But a year later he is

“Excellent, I can't complain, the period from June 19th to February 4th was the best half year of my life (or actually almost 8 months). <...> I have seldom been able to concentrate as I am now, which may be related to the fact that I hardly read any newspapers at all. <...> Everything is important, except the new as such, not the current. I'm only interested in what's none of my business. For about a year now I have completely lost myself in the cosmos that Goethe means. "

In October 1942 he urged Susmann to get him a copy of his Catholic baptismal certificate . Perhaps he wanted to try to hide his Jewish ancestry. But his whereabouts were known to the German authorities. He was summoned to the Hollandsche Schouwburg , the former theater, which served as a collection and deportation point for the Amsterdam Jews . There he committed suicide on December 10th by jumping out of a window.

Fonts

Four prints of poems between 1897 and 1900 are not listed.

"The Lyric of Andreas Gryphius"

Towards the end of the 19th century, the edition of the works of Andreas Gryphius organized by Hermann Palm (1816–1885) for the Literary Association in Stuttgart between 1878 and 1884 was the most important. With his dissertation, Manheimer put research into Gryphius' poetry on a new basis. In a first part he presents the metrics and the textual history of the poems. In the second part he provides material on Gryphius' life and a reprint of his first volume of poetry, the Lissa sonnets, with details of all the variants in later prints of the sonnets. In the third part he corrects and supplements Palm's edition of the poems.

If you follow Roethe's assessment of the dissertation, then the Lissa sonnets were a real discovery; the only surviving original print from 1637 in the Wroclaw City Library , today in the Wroclaw University Library , had remained unknown to the academic public until then. Manheimer himself writes: "The book is reprinted below for the first time (= N), obtained in a single copy, which has the Wroclaw city library for several years (E 1710 n .)" The three Palm's spending states in Manheimer's case they are “to be briefly stated, scientifically useless, and indeed the second volume is a little worse than the first, but the third that we have before us is much worse than the second. The bit of meticulousness that this kind of editing technique requires has often been overestimated, but you don't seem to have it until you've learned it. "

Manheimer's work has always been recognized. In 1946 Dessoir called it "a much-praised book". Marian Szyrocki , later editor of a Gryphius edition himself, wrote in 1959 in his book about the young Gryphius: "Viktor <sic> Manheimer subjected the poetry of Andreas Gryphius to a detailed analysis in his material-rich book." In 1962 Karl Otto Conrady took over literally Manheimer's criticism of Palm's edition and adds that “the most precise and illuminating considerations” of Gryphius' poetry are “still Victor Manheimer”. In 1962, Hans Magnus Enzensberger printed the version of Palms in his selection of some Gryphius poems with the "numerous corrections and additions that Victor Manheimer taught". In 1986 Eberhard Mannack spoke of the first significant book on Gryphius' poetry. “The careful inventory of the formal and linguistic means of expression, the tracking down of the manifold suggestions from contemporary poets and the precise analysis of the creative process emerging in the numerous transformations provide an insight into the inner development of the poet and also prove to be due to the abundance of comparative material provided significant contribution to a style of the 17th century. "

The German scholars at the University at Buffalo Erika Alma Metzger and Michael M. Metzger dedicate a separate section (from English) to Manheimer in their book on ways of receiving Gryphius in 1993: “Manheimer was a pioneer and master of research on Gryphius - on Gryphius as one of the foremost playwrights and poets of the German baroque. Manheimer noticed the weaknesses of Palm's edition and decided to eliminate its errors and gaps. <...> With a rare combination of philological accuracy and artistic flair, he has expanded our understanding of the poetic styles of the seventeenth century. ”Most importantly, Manheimer approached Gryphius like a contemporary poet - Manheimer, for example, had timbre Gryphius compared with Goethe, Clemens von Brentano , Heinrich Heine , Joseph von Eichendorff , Stefan George , Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Arthur Rimbaud . "Manheimer's book speaks of an extraordinary, astonishing congeniality between researcher and research subject."

The library

Auctioned in 1924.
Auctioned 1927.

According to Dessoir, Mannheimer “wrote a much-praised book about Gryphius, but then only managed to produce smaller essays and reviews; His life's work was to build a library that was unrivaled and whose catalog, saturated with valuable evidence, had the meaning of a second big book. ”As its gradual sale makes it clear, the library is divided into three complexes.

The 1924 auction included works “from Gottsched to Hauptmann”. “From the starting point, the German Baroque, I finally came, as I moved towards the present, quite organically to my collection of first editions of German poetry from Gottsched, for example, to our days, the part of my library that I found myself in the wind again today from which they fluttered to me. "974 pieces were auctioned, from Thomas Abbts " Vom Verdienste "1804 to Johann Georg Zimmermann's " Ueber die Einsamkeit "1784/1785.

In the catalog of the auction of the baroque collection in 1927 Wolfskehl wrote: “Scholar, connoisseur and lover all in one, its owner evidently always carried the image of what he wanted to create and, with each new acquisition, he finally carried this wonderfully well-built structure brought to completion. <...> I don't think a collection has ever come onto the market in which the important poets are represented so completely with their works and with such rarities. "The real book collectors" become when they buy the Grimmelshausen series ( No. 116–127), the Gryphius series (No. 132–146a), the Harsdörffer series (No. 170–180), the Moscherosch series (No. 261–267) <...> and so many others Others browse through when they are holding the crown jewel of the collection, the 'Armored Venus' (No. 401) - at least in their hand, enjoying the beautiful meeting of knowledge and the good fortune of collecting that this 'scene', this 'treasure chamber', in the Words of the time to speak, brought together and inwardly connected. ”707 pieces were auctioned, from Caspar Abel's “ The famous poet Nicolai d'Espreaux Boileau's satyrical poems ”1729 to Heinrich Anselm von Ziegler and Kliphausen's “ Asian Banise ”without a year. Part of the baroque collection is now in Yale University .

The University of Cologne paid 12,389.11 Reichsmarks for the purchase and transport of Manheimer's “work library” in 1931 , of which Manheimer received 9,964.90 Reichsmarks in several installments. The extent was given in the 1930s with 5,000 to 10,000 volumes. The volumes are now part of the library of the Institute for German Language and Literature at the University of Cologne. Kötz's reconstruction has assigned 2761 titles with almost 4000 volumes existing in Cologne today to Manheimer's work library. The most recent were published in 1931 - Manheimer acquired new books in the year they were sold.

literature

References and comments.

  1. ^ Hans Jaeger: Manheimer, Valentin. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie Volume 16, pp. 34–35.
  2. ↑ Dessoir 1946, p. 144.
  3. ↑ The picture is now in the German Historical Museum in Berlin.
  4. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 75.
  5. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 282.
  6. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 42.
  7. ↑ Manheimer 1904.
  8. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 40.
  9. ↑ Brecht, Walther . In: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 Volume 1, 1954, pp. 109–110.
  10. ↑ Manheimer 1924, pp. III – IV.
  11. ↑ Nickname of the poet Heinrich von Meißen.
  12. ↑ Dessoir 1946, p. 144.
  13. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 72.
  14. ↑ Heisserer 1993, p. 168.
  15. ↑ Sinsheimer 1953, p. 168. Quoted from the 1953 edition by Pflaum-Verlag. The name there is consistently 'Mannheimer'. The new edition from 2013 by Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg has the correct orthography.
  16. ↑ The gravedigger from Feldberg; Tragedy by Justinus Kerner. In: German Digital Library .
  17. ↑ Thomas Mann: Diaries 1918–1921, pp. 454–455.
  18. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 82.
  19. ^ Antiquariat Emil Hirsch: Library Prof. Dr. Oscar Piloty . Auctioned on May 28 and 29, 1918.
  20. ↑ Manheimer 1924, p. IV.
  21. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 90.
  22. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 93.
  23. ↑ Dessoir 1946, p. 145.
  24. ↑ Kötz 2013, pp. 80–81.
  25. ↑ Kötz 2013, pp. 102-103.
  26. ↑ Kötz 2013, pp. 137-138.
  27. ^ Paul Graupe and Emil Hirsch (eds.): From the Victor Manheimer library. From Gottsched to Hauptmann. Auction XXXVII. Auctioned on November 10th and 11th, 1924.
  28. ↑ Manheimer 1924, p. XI.
  29. ^ Victor Manheimer Collection. German baroque literature from Opitz to Brockes. Auctioned on May 12, 1927.
  30. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 109.
  31. ↑ Dessoir 1946, p. 145.
  32. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 141.
  33. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 128.
  34. ↑ Kötz 2013, pp. 157–158.
  35. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 141.
  36. ↑ Kötz 2013, pp. 282–283.
  37. ↑ Manheimer 1904, p. 253.
  38. ↑ The third volume is the poetry volume, the first two volumes Palms contain the pleasure and tragedy.
  39. ↑ Manheimer 1904, p. 307.
  40. ↑ Dessoir 1946, p. 145.
  41. ↑ Marian Szyrocki: The young Gryphius. Rütten & Loening , Berlin 1959, p. 6.
  42. ^ Karl Otto Conrady: Latin tradition of poetry and German poetry of the 17th century . Bouvier Verlag , Bonn 1962, p. 224.
  43. ^ Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Andreas Gryphius / Poems. Insel-Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1962, p. 67.
  44. ↑ Mannack 1986, p. 123.
  45. ↑ Metzger and Metzger 1993, pp. 93-101.
  46. ↑ Manheimer 1904, pp. 27 and 32.
  47. ↑ Dessoir 1946, p. 145.
  48. ↑ Manheimer 1924, p. V.
  49. ↑ Wolfskehl 1927.
  50. ↑ Kaspar Stieler : Sealed The Geharnischte Venus or Love Songs in the war ... . 1660
  51. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 265.
  52. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 181.
  53. ↑ Kötz 2013, p. 190.
  54. ^ The Cologne dissertation by Kötz (* 1981; Sebastian Kötz . In: Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek ) with Erich Kleinschmidt and Manheimer's only biography.
personal data
SURNAME Manheimer, Victor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Jewish Germanist and bibliophile
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1942
Place of death Amsterdam