Walter Scheffler

Walter Scheffler (Emil Stumpp)

Walter Scheffler alias Walter von der Laak (born September 16, 1880 in Königsberg i. Pr. , † April 17, 1964 in Hamburg ) was a deaf German bookbinder and poet. His pseudonym referred to the Laak (Königsberg) , the working-class district of his hometown.

Life

Born into poor circumstances as the son of a tailor , Scheffler wanted to become a musician. However, after falling ice skating at the age of 16 and contracting meningitis , he became deaf . He did an apprenticeship as a bookbinder. Ferdinand Avenarius encouraged him to write. During the First World War he found a permanent position at the Königsberg magistrate's office. The "Mein Lied" collection was lithographed by Fritz Brachaus and bound and distributed by Scheffler himself. When Konrad Adenauer came to the Königsberg Kant celebration (1924) , he visited Scheffler in his rear apartment and bought a copy. Hans Lohmeyer , Königsberg's Lord Mayor, stood up for Scheffler.

Scheffler wrote a lot in magazines for the deaf. He cultivated friendships with many East Prussian artists, including Eduard Bischoff , Emil Stumpp and Kurt Bernecker , who illustrated his books. Even Agnes Miegel close to him. They met in his “summer house” - a discarded railroad car in Rantau on the north coast of Samland . When Scheffler was honored and given gifts on his 60th birthday in 1940, he was able to afford an allotment garden in which he produced Kopskiekel wine . The circumstances in the Second World War prevented the garden from being turned into a new pumpkin hut . He countered the National Socialist songs with sarcastic mockery. When the East Prussian Operation (1945) began, he escaped across the Baltic Sea with Agnes Miegel and his girlfriend Erna Klein in the Hannibal company . He spent three years in the Danish refugee camp Oksbøl . There he wrote the "Chants Behind the Barbed Wire". At his wedding, Agnes Miegel was the maid of honor. Erna Scheffler died in the camp.

The Wind (1948)

The wind never knows where to go

Dance now to the east and now to the west -

He resembles us anxious guests wafted here ,

We don't know where we are at home .

And how helpless he errs about the sand spread ,

When examined, he lost 'something ,

And moans and weeps, - he sings for many ears

The woe song of homelessness .

In 1948 he moved in with his niece, now widowed, who had found an emergency apartment in Dithmarschen . After spending some time in a nursing home of the Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel , he moved - for the third time - to his niece, who had now moved to Hamburg . Above all , he was able to get in touch with expelled compatriots through the Ostpreußenblatt . In addition to Agnes Miegel, he was the guest of honor at all major federal meetings of the East Prussian Landsmannschaft , which Erich Grimoni awarded him with its culture prize on his 80th birthday . In 1964 Scheffler came to Bad Nenndorf for Agnes Miegel's 85th birthday .

“The childhood memories are told with such great art. The East Prussian person, the Königsberger, lives in them so truthfully, with so much love, without any glossing over. What particularly moves me is the deep wisdom of life, the serene, no longer quarreling, glorified view of my own hard life and difficult fate, transfigured into quiet humor. "

- Agnes Miegel

Works

• Walter von der Laak, autobiography
• Walter's apprenticeship years, Königsberg 1943 (field post edition)
• My song , poem, 1921
• My Königsberg , poem
• Bright ways , poem, 1925

Honors

• Culture Prize of the East Prussian Landsmannschaft (1960)

See also

• List of East Prussian writers
• List of East Prussian artists
• Deafness

literature

• Landsmannschaft East Prussia: Walter Scheffler - life and work . Hamburg 1976.

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Scheffler in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ M. Kudnig (with many pictures and poems; PDF; 7.3 MB)
2. ^ Message from Lorenz Grimoni
3. ↑ also lithographed