Walter Best

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Walter Best , pseudonym Sebastian Waldthausen , (born May 20, 1905 in Liegnitz , † October 3, 1984 in Marburg ) was a German, National Socialist Germanist, dramaturge and writer.

General

Walter Best was born in Liegnitz as the son of postal inspector Georg Konrad Best and his wife Karoline. He was the younger brother of Werner Best (NSDAP) . After the father died as a result of an injury at the beginning of the First World War, the mother moved with her two sons to Gonsenheim near Mainz. After graduating from high school, Best studied German literature in Frankfurt am Main from 1924 to 1927 . After his studies he was dramaturge at the Bamberg City Theater until 1935 , then at the City Theater in Mainz and finally at the Prussian State Theater in Kassel . He was a member of the NSDAP (No. 2.018.596) and the SS (No. 107.423). During the time of National Socialism he was the head of the Reichsschrifttumskammer in the Gau Kurhessen. In 1936 he premiered his play Das Reich and in 1937 the drama Der General .

In 1941 he published the report With the Leibstandarte in the West , as a contribution to the series Soldiers - Comrades! , which appeared in the central publishing house of the NSDAP. In 1944 he became SS-Sturmbannführer.

His 7 books that are still known (including a children's book) glorify war and National Socialism and achieved high editions by 1945.

After the Second World War he worked as a journalist in Marburg and wrote under the pseudonym Sebastian Waldthausen. In the Soviet zone of occupation , several of his writings were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out.

Working under National Socialism

After Best as a dramaturge in Mainz (1931–1933) with his plays Die Endlose Straße and Hoffmann in Bamberg had already staged strongly nationalist dramas, he got a job as a dramaturge at the Prussian State Theater in Kassel in the fall of 1933, in order to fully understand his Nazi ideology standing racial bring belief to the stage. His ideological closeness to the regime was also expressed in the fact that he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933. He was also a member of the Nazi cultural community , the SA (left in 1935), the National Socialist Motor Vehicle Corps (NSKK), since 1934 the NS-Volkswohlfahrt (NSV), the Reichsluftschutzbund (RLB) and the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK), within which he until 1937 held the position of head of state of Kurhessen. Shortly after Best joined the SS in March 1935, he gave up his work at the Prussian State Theater because he had been offered a position as a full-time director in the cultural department of the SD Kassel.

In January 1936, Best's play Das Reich premiered at the Guben City Theater. This, as well as the stage manuscripts published by the NSDAP-Verlag in 1936, The General and Island are prohibited! represent the skills of a dramaturge who, according to the Rosenberg Office's cultural and political archive, was “absolutely reliable both in terms of ideology and cultural policy”.

During his work in the cultural department, Best also wrote for the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps , within which he later also worked as editor. 38 articles between the summer of 1936 and February 1944 can be assigned to him by name.

Around the time of the premiere of Best's play Der General in Guben in January 1937, a newspaper article appeared in which Best explains his dramaturgical self-image and characterizes the “poet of our time” in contrast to the ordinary writer as follows: He must “have everything in terms of ability It alone enables him to become the herald of the greatest moral idea that is rooted in National Socialism. ”Such an orientation, according to Deppe (2015), however,“ means nothing other than the total instrumentalization of art in favor of the regime's ideological postulates other than totalitarianism on the stage. ”Like the historical war piece Der General is also forbidden to enter the comedy Insel! , which was premiered in Schwerin in 1937, is based on the folkish idea: The described situation "of several people meeting on an uninhabited island in the Rhine" is intended to demonstrate "which people prove themselves in this particular case and which do not."

In 1938 Best (along with four other artists) was awarded the Kurhessische Kulturpreis. The following year he premiered his play Die Heilige in the Stuttgart State Theater. In the tragedy, Best reinterprets the life of Elisabeth of Thuringia in the sense of folk ideology.

In addition to his writing, Best has also devoted himself to research since the summer of 1937 - namely, "folk theater studies". In a letter from February 1938 to the Reich dramaturge Dr. Rainer Schlösser introduces the title of his planned habilitation thesis to Best: “Theater on a racial basis”. He also informs him about his research plans:

“I build the working method on the racial studies, racial soul studies and the integration typology of Jaensch . In the end, the practical result of my work includes: artist selection, artist education (answer to the question: How will the future actor academy have to be set up?), Visitor organization and dramaturgy. "

In the 1939 monograph Culture or Education. The value of the creative in the community is presented by Best in his "rationally absurd scientific" studies. He presented his “results” in the book Völkische Dramaturgie published in 1940 . In this work, according to Deppe (2015), Best shows “an almost obsessive, extremely racist way of thinking and pulls out every conceivable register of traditional anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic stereotypes (parasites, world conspirators, poisoners, profiteers, exploiters, blood thugs). "

From June 5, 1940, Best worked as a war reporter for the Waffen SS under company commander Gunter d'Alquen . In the same year his successful book Die Generalin and other stories appeared in the series Soldiers - Comrades! in the central publishing house of the NSDAP. In 1941 he also published the propaganda book Mit der Leibstandarte im Westen in this series . Reports by an SS war correspondent , the content of which relates to the time when Best accompanied the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) on the western front . He was deployed "among others in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary and Denmark" as well as in the Soviet Union. From November 1941 to the end of June 1943, according to Deppe (2015), he was also involved in combat operations by the SS Totenkopf Division and the SS police on the Eastern Front . In the SS to Sturmbannführer and in the Waffen-SS to Obersturmführer ascended Best writes in his autobiography of 1970 on the war years only, "the second world war broke out and I made him as Reported by the press."

denazification

Up until his trial in April 1948, Best was imprisoned first in the Kornwestheim internment camp (November 1945 to May 1946), then in the Darmstadt internment camp (until April 1948). In the course of the law for the liberation from National Socialism and militarism of March 5, 1946, the public plaintiff, with reference to Best's membership in several Nazi organizations, demanded that these be assigned to Group I of the main culprits. Best himself assured that he “knew nothing about the crimes”. On the basis of the submission of 14 Persilscheine and “the recommendation of the plaintiff that the accused, with the exception of his formal membership of the group of the main culprits, should not be accused of misconduct”, Best was finally assigned to group IV of fellow travelers and punished with an atonement of RM 2,000 .

In his autobiography, published in 1970, Best goes "hardly or at best downplaying his Nazi past". One of Best's son sees the reason that Best became increasingly involved with the German Green Cross from the end of the 1940s and was particularly committed to disabled children “that he tried to compensate for his folk theories and writings . "

Works

  • The Cloud (collection of poems), 1927
  • New poems (collection of poems), 1928
  • Nebel über der Meuse (drama), premiered in 1931
  • The endless road (drama)
  • Hoffmann in Bamberg (drama)
  • Das Reich (play), premiered in 1936
  • Der General (drama), 1936, Rather Verlag, premiered in 1937
  • Do not enter the island! (Comedy), 1936, Rather Verlag, premiered in 1937
  • The Holy (Tragedy), premiered in 1939
  • Culture or education. The value of creativity in the community , 1939, Konrad Triltsch Verlag
  • The General and Other Stories , 1940, Rather Verlag
  • Volkish dramaturgy . Collected articles, 1940, Konrad Triltsch Verlag
  • With the Leibstandarte in the west. Reports by an SS war correspondent , 1941, published by Rather
  • Die Brücke von Urff and other stories , 1943, Rather Verlag
  • Walter Best: biography and bibliography. For his 65th birthday on May 20, 1970 , 1970, Das Werk

literature

  • Walter Best: Walter Best: Biography and Bibliography. For his 65th birthday on May 20, 1970 . Marburg: The 1970 Factory.
  • William L. Combs: The Voice of the SS: a History of the SS Journal ??, Das Schwarze Korps' . New York et al. a .: Lang 1986.
  • Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, pp. 19–44.
  • Henning Rischbieter (Ed.): Theater in the "Third Reich": Theater politics, schedule structure, Nazi drama . Seelze-Velber: Kallmeyer 2000.
  • Cornelie Unger-Leistner The dissimilar brothers: Werner and Walter Best - childhood in Gonsenheim between the empire and the swastika Lecture after a radio broadcast. In: Gonsenheimer Jahrbücher, 9th year 2001, pages 42–55
  • Cornelie Unger-Leistner: Child with a drum. On Werner Best's childhood and youth in Mainz. In: Mainz history sheets. Issue 13. National Socialist Rule, Persecution and Resistance. Documentation of the administrative series "Mainz in the time of National Socialism". Edited by the Association for Social History Mainz eV Mainz: Das Werk 2004, pp. 36–50.
  • Poets under arms, A war almanac German poetry NSDAP - Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Ed.): Portrait photographs with short bibliographies, short biographies and samples of the most famous poets of the time: Walter Best u. a., Leipzig: 1941

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to: Wilhelm Korsch, Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon , Vol. 1 (1968), p. 463; Kürschner's German Literature Calendar , Nekrolog 1971–1998, p. 54.
  2. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 48.
  3. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-b.html
  4. ↑ Henning Rischbieter (ed.): Theater in the "Third Reich": theater politics, program structure, Nazi drama . Seelze-Velber: Kallmeyer 2000, pp. 217, 224.
  5. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 25.
  6. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 26.
  7. ↑ Report. BAB, NS 15/256 fol. 110 (The Führer’s representative for the supervision of the entire intellectual and ideological training and education of the NSDAP), quoted from Deppe (2015), p. 28.
  8. ^ William L. Combs: The Voice of the SS: a History of the SS Journal ??, Das Schwarze Korps' . New York et al. a .: Lang 1986, p. 48; Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 28.
  9. ↑ a b Best an Schlösser from January 17, 1937, annex. BAB, R 55/20225, p. 11. RMVP, Reichsdramaturgie, quoted from Deppe (2015), p. 29.
  10. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 29.
  11. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 30.
  12. ↑ Best to Schlösser from January 17, 1937 or Schlösser an Best from January 21, 1937. BAB, R 55/20225, Bl. 11 or 17. RMVP, Reichsdramaturgie, quoted from Deppe (2015), p. 30.
  13. ^ A b Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the folkish theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 31.
  14. ↑ Best to Schlösser dated February 18, 1838. BAB, R 55/20225, p. 13. RMVP, Reichsdramaturgie, quoted from Deppe (2015), p. 32.
  15. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 32.
  16. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 36.
  17. ^ A b Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the folkish theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 37.
  18. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 37f.
  19. ^ A b Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the folkish theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 38.
  20. ^ A b Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the folkish theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 39.
  21. ^ Walter Best: Walter Best: Biography and Bibliography. For his 65th birthday on May 20, 1970 . Marburg: Das Werk 1970, p. 17.
  22. ↑ Minutes of the public meeting on April 29, 1948. HHStA, SpKA, Dept. 520 / Fulda-Z. No. 1690, p. 76, quoted from Deppe (2015), p. 40.
  23. ^ A b Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the folkish theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 40.
  24. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 41.
  25. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Walter Best - the national theater theorist . In: Rolf Düsterberg (ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Volume 3. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2015, p. 41f. (Here Deppe is referring to Cornelie Unger-Leistner: Child with a drum. On Werner Best's childhood and youth in Mainz. In: Mainzer Geschichtsblätter. Issue 13. Nazi rule, persecution and resistance. Documentation of the administrative series "Mainz in der Zeit des National Socialism ". Ed. By the Association for Social History Mainz eV Mainz: Das Werk 2004, p. 47.)
personal data
SURNAME Best, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German, National Socialist Germanist, dramaturge and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Liegnitz
DATE OF DEATH 3rd October 1984
Place of death Marburg