Walter Flex
Walter Flex (born July 6, 1887 in Eisenach , † October 16, 1917 at Pöide (Peude) on the Estonian island of Saaremaa (Ösel)) was a German writer and poet.
Life
Origin and education
Walter Flex was born as the son of the politically and culturally engaged national liberal grammar school professor Rudolf Flex and his wife Margarete geb. Pollack was born. He attended the Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium (today: Martin-Luther-Gymnasium ) in Eisenach and wrote poetic and dramatic texts as a pupil (e.g. The Peasant Leader ). In 1906 he passed his Abitur.
Studies and literary beginnings
In 1906 Flex began studying German and history at the University of Erlangen and at the same time became a member of the Bubenreuther fraternity . In 1908 he continued his studies in Strasbourg and published short stories, short stories and poems on the side. Flex gave up his original plan of taking the state examination like his father and then working as a high school teacher. A first dissertation project at the University of Strasbourg was not completed. Instead, Flex went back to Erlangen in 1910 and received his doctorate there in 1911 on the subject of the development of the tragic problem in the German Demetrius dramas from Schiller to the present .
The acquaintance with the family of the late founder of the empire Otto von Bismarck , with whom he worked as a private tutor from 1910 to 1913, first in Varzin (Western Pomerania) and then in Friedrichsruh near Hamburg, influenced his literary work. In 1913 there was a break with his employers - carefully disguised from the outside - because the internationally composed von Bismarck family was too “un-German” for Flex. However, Flex kept trying to establish himself in the footsteps of his father Rudolf Flex as a literary representative of the nationalistic Bismarck cult of the imperial era. The Bismarck novellas and the drama Klaus von Bismarck , which premiered in 1913 at the Court Theater in Coburg , were written. The poet was released from military service because of a tendon injury in his right hand. Flex spent the year and a half until the outbreak of war in August 1914 as a tutor for a noble family von Leesen near Rawitsch in the province of Posen.
First World War
Flex volunteered in Poznan in 1914 and served in the 3rd Lower Silesian Infantry Regiment No. 50 . In the same year his youngest brother Otto died in the Battle of the Marne . In October 1914 his regiment moved to Lorraine . At the same time, Flex took part in the glut of nationalist war poetry published in Germany in August and September 1914. His war poems, published in the Tälichen Rundschau (DVP) , then one of the high-circulation German daily newspapers, made him known to a wider audience for the first time. They were subsequently published in anthologies with great success .
In March 1915, Flex was sent to the Warth camp near Posen for officer training. For Lieutenant promoted, he served since May 1915 mostly on the Eastern Front , especially in north-eastern Poland and the Baltic states. In this context he got to know Ernst Wurche (November 24, 1894 to August 23, 1915) who volunteered for the war. Flex soon developed a close relationship with him. Wurche's death while on patrol near Simnen was a decisive experience for Flex. The attempt to come to terms with this trauma found its literary expression in the autobiographically oriented story The Wanderer Between Two Worlds . It appeared in October 1916 and quickly became a sensational success. It became the most successful book by a German writer in World War I and one of the six most successful German books of the 20th century. In it, folk nationalism is combined with the occasional portrayal of intimate homoeroticism , onomatopoeic expressionistic staccato with natural poetry that was moved by youth. For at least two generations of German young people, Der Wanderer between the two worlds became a cult book par excellence and Walter Flex became a modern classic until 1945 - also highly valued in literary studies. In terms of genre history , his work stands at the beginning of a whole series of similarly structured autobiographical war stories, of which Ernst Jüngers In Stahlgewittern , Ludwig Renns Krieg and Erich Maria Remarques In the West were nothing new, only the best known and the most widely circulated.
The poem Wild geese rushing through the night contained in Wanderer ... was soon set to music several times and became one of the most famous German poems of all. The title of the book and some aphorisms from its content also became popular catchphrases.
In 1917, Flex was posted to Berlin because of his literary fame to work on the publication The War in Individual Representations on behalf of the General Staff . Although the publication by Flex was completed according to the contract, the stay remained in the episode stage . Relocated to the Eastern Front at his own request, Flex was entrusted with the command of a company of infantry in the Albion company . He suffered a wound during a militarily insignificant skirmish near the Peudehof , which he died a day later in the hospital in Peudehof.
Graves
Flex was buried in 1917 in the village cemetery of Pöide, where the wooden cross soon fell into disrepair. In its place there was a memorial plaque, which was removed after the end of the war; However, the site was preserved as a nameless grave. The Nazis left the remains of Flex in 1940 in the cemetery of the Königsberg i garrison. Embed pr . East Prussia's capital was easier to reach and was therefore also better suited for propagandistic flex worship. The tombstone there was destroyed in the Second World War.
At the original burial site in Pöide, unknown visitors piled up two small stone mounds during the perestroika period . In 1995 a German youth group installed a simple birch cross .
The Öselsche Society for Monument Preservation , founded in 1987, initiated a memorial stone . The historian Raul Salumäe (now director of the museum in Kuressaare ), a student country team and a subdivision of the Sudeten German country team made the idea possible. Salumäe researched in the German Literature Archive Marbach (DLA) through the mediation of a Stuttgart pastor couple . The result appeared in the DLA yearbook. Designed by Salumäe and executed by local stonemason Markus Vaher, the memorial stone was inaugurated on July 6, 1997, the 110th birthday of Flex, with a small ceremony in front of 60 mostly Estonian guests. It is in the same place as the first tombstone.
There is also a symbolic grave in Flex's hometown of Eisenach. The former Walter Flex Circle of Friends made the donation of the poet's estate to the city of Eisenach dependent on the establishment of this memorial . The holdings are kept in the city archive.
Honors
- In Landsberg an der Warthe the "Walter-Flex-Kaserne" of the Wehrmacht was named after Walter Flex.
- Streets, squares, buildings and schools were named after him in numerous German cities, but some of them were renamed after the end of the Nazi dictatorship . B. Edinger weg in Frankfurt am Main or Ernst-Henning- Strasse in Hamburg . Walter-Flex-Straße in Bonn was renamed Genscher allee in 2017 in honor of the longstanding Federal Foreign Minister .
- In the Soviet occupation zone , all names after Walter Flex disappeared as early as 1945, such as those of a large school in Naumburg (Saale) .
Works
- Demetrius (drama), 1909
- The Schwarmgeist (novella), 1910
- In Change (poems), 1910
- Lothar (drama), 1912
- Twelve Bismarcks (short stories), 1913
- Klaus von Bismarck (drama), 1913
- The people in iron (poems), 1914
- Christmas fairy tale of the 50th regiment (fairy tale), (presumably 1914)
- Sun and Shield (poems), 1915
- From the Great Supper (verses and thoughts), 1915
- In the field between night and day (poems), 1917
- The Wanderer Between Two Worlds (Novella), 1916, reissued with notes, maps, photos in bge-verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-945432-00-6
- Wallenstein's face (novella), 1918
- The Russian Spring Offensive 1916 , 1919
- Wolf Eschenlohr (novella), 1919
- The Protestant women's revolt from Löwenberg
- Novellas (6 pieces), written 1907–1914, Beck, Munich 1926
Comparable authors
From a literary sociological point of view, Walter Flex assumed the social position of the “post-war poet” after 1918, which Theodor Körner held after the wars of freedom against Napoleon and Wolfgang Borchert after the Second World War : fallen young or died, young readers recognizable emotionality and defiance, grief not immune to sentimentality , more lyrical than prosaic style.
literature
- Rudolf Beinert: Walter Flex memorial ceremony in Arensburg on Oesel on October 16, 1918. Berlin 1920.
- Rosa Kaulitz-Niedeck: The poet's grave on Ösel: A book for friends and admirers of Walter Flex. Hapsal / Estonia 1925.
- Bernita-Maria Moebis: Who dared God's ride: Images and fates from Flex. Harvest Publishing House, Hamburg, 1926.
- Johannes Klein: Walter Flex, an interpreter of the world war. A contribution to the literary historical evaluation of German war poetry. Marburg a. L. 1929.
- Erich von Tschischwitz: Blue jackets and field gray against Oesel: Walter Flex 'heroic death . Berlin 1934 (example of flex cult under National Socialism).
- Konrad Flex: Walter Flex: A picture of life. Stuttgart 1937.
- Christoph Petzsch: Flex, Walter. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 243 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Justus H. Ulbricht: The Myth of Hero's Death: Origin and Effect of Walter Flex '"The Wanderer Between Two Worlds". In: Yearbook of the Archives of the German Youth Movement. 16: 111-156 (1986/87).
- Raimund Neuss: Comments on Walter Flex. The “ Ideas of 1914 ” in German Literature: A Case Study. SH-Verlag, Schernfeld 1992.
- The bequests and collections on the poet Walter Flex and his family. Edited by Bernd Jeschonnek. City of Eisenach, Eisenach 1999.
- Bernd Spiekermann: “Obedience to the divine and defenseless against the human”. Religion and Nation in the Work of Walter Flex. Schüling, Münster 2000.
- Markus Henkel: Walter Flex and Erich Maria Remarque - a comparison. War image and processing of war in Walter Flex's “The Wanderer Between Two Worlds” (1916) and Erich Maria Remarque's “Nothing New in the West” (1929). In: Heinrich Mann-Jahrbuch 19 (2001), pp. 177–213.
- Hans-Rudolf Wahl: The Religion of German Nationalism. A study of the history of mentality on the literature of the Empire: Felix Dahn , Ernst von Wildenbruch , Walter Flex. Winter, Heidelberg 2002.
- Hans Wagener: Wandering Bird and Flaming Angel. Walter Flex: The wanderer between the two worlds. A War Experience (1916). In: Thomas F. Schneider (Ed.): From Richthofen to Remarque . Amsterdam u. a. 2003, pp. 17-30. (= Amsterdam contributions to recent German studies; 5).
- Lars Koch: The First World War as a medium of counter-modernism: On the works of Walter Flex and Ernst Jünger. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3168-7 .
- Jürgen Reulecke : A young generation in the trenches, "The Wanderer Between Two Worlds" by Walter Flex. In: Dirk van Laak (ed.): Literature that wrote history . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-30015-2 , pp. 151-164.
Web links
- A digital memory for the First World War - German subtitles . The film tells the story of Walter Flex, a war volunteer from the very beginning and at the same time one of the most famous writers from the time of the First World War. Important documents from his estate, which is kept in the Berlin State Library, are now digitized and freely accessible on the Europeana cultural portal. The film takes a look behind the scenes of the digitization workshop of the State Library and tells how his letters, manuscripts, photos and personal documents, etc. a. a card perforated by a bullet, brought into the network by the State Library. These online sources by and about Walter Flex are part of the world's largest digital source collection on World War I that has just been activated. The “Europeana 1914–1918” themed portal brings together several hundred thousand objects from the important collections of numerous European libraries with digital copies of 90,000 private memorabilia and 660 hours of film material. In the “Europeana Collections 1914–1918” project, ten national libraries from eight European countries and other partners have digitized over 400,000 objects from the years 1914–1918 since 2011 with the support of the European Commission and coordinated by the Berlin State Library. Topic portal: www.europeana1914-1918.eu
- Literature by and about Walter Flex in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Walter Flex in the German Digital Library
- Newspaper article about Walter Flex in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
- Works by Walter Flex at Zeno.org .
- Works by Walter Flex in the Gutenberg-DE project
- Susanne Eckelmann: Walter Flex. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
- Walter Flex: biography, publications, estate
- Film about the digitization of parts of Walter Flex's estate by the Berlin State Library for the cultural portal on the First World War Europeana 1914–1918
Individual evidence
- ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 200–205.
- ↑ Ernst Höhne: The Bubenreuther. History of a German fraternity. II., Erlangen 1936, p. 310.
- ^ German Literature Archive Marbach.
- ↑ a b c R. L .: Walter-Flex-Stein in Estonia . In: Studenten-Kurier , 4/2013, p. 18
- ^ Fritz Gause : Königsberg in Prussia. Gräfe and Unzer , 1968, p. 226 ( GoogleBooks ).
- ↑ Holm Kirsten: The Soviet Special Camp No. 4 Landsberg / Warthe , p. 27.
- ↑ ffmhist.de: The renaming of streets and squares (accessed on December 12, 2014)
- ↑ uni-hamburg.de: Uwe Schmidt: Hamburg Schools in the Third Reich (p. 787) (accessed on December 12, 2014)
- ^ Official Journal of the City of Bonn . No. 16/2017 , April 5, 2017.
- ^ Walter-Flex-Straße in the Bonn street cadastre
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Flex, Walter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 6, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Eisenach |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 16, 1917 |
| Place of death | Ösel island |