Walter from Molo

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter von Molo, 1923

Walter Reichsritter von Molo (born June 14, 1880 in Sternberg , Moravia, † October 27, 1958 in Hechendorf near Murnau am Staffelsee ) was a German writer .

Life

Molo, who came from a noble Lombard family, grew up in Vienna. He was the great-grandson of Emil von Hessen-Darmstadt . His older brother was the writer Hans von Molo, who published under the pseudonym Hans Hart (1878-1941). After finishing school at the Schottenbastei secondary school , he studied mechanical engineering and electrical engineering at the Vienna University of Technology. During his studies he became a member of the Eisen / Vandalia Vienna fraternity , from which he later left. In 1906 he married Rosa Richter (1882–1970); the marriage was divorced in 1925. He worked as an engineer in the Vienna Patent Office until 1913. Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Walter moved from Molo to Berlin, as he felt more like a German, influenced by his Bavarian parents. In Berlin he worked exclusively as a writer and became known throughout the country during the First World War, in which he did not take part as unfit for military service. With the support of his friend Gustav Stresemann , Molo received Prussian and thus German citizenship in 1920. In the 1920s, Walter von Molo converted to the Protestant faith. From 1930 he was married to Anneliese geb. Mummenhoff (1903–83) married.

The actor Gedeon Burkhard is his great-grandson.

Work and employment

Walter von Molo, 1930

Works published by Walter von Molos during and shortly after the First World War achieved record editions and made him one of the most popular German-speaking authors of the first half of the 20th century, including his biographies on Friedrich Schiller (1912–1916), Friedrich II of Prussia ( Fridericus ) and Prinz Eugen contributed. In addition, Molo also wrote pure novels, such as: A people wakes up (1918–1921). All of his works showed a German national attitude, which can also be explained by the defeat of Germany and the collapse of the Danube monarchy . In economic and social terms, Walter von Molo emphasized individual rights and spoke out against state restrictions on freedom of expression ( Friedrich Staps 1918, Ein Deutscher ohne Deutschland 1931). As resolutely as he was against the occupation of the Rhineland by French troops, von Molo advocated the writers Remarque and Heinrich Mann. Contrary to anti-Semitic statements, von Molo had no Jewish ancestors; as an avowed opponent of the war, defender of the Jews and their equal rights in German society, he was repeatedly the target of hatred by organized anti-Semites.

Molo was a co-founder of the German PEN Club and from the founding year 1926 a member of the Prussian Academy of the Arts . From 1928 he was chairman of the poetry section within the Prussian Academy of the Arts, to which Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann also belonged; He saw the unpaid honorary post as a social, cultural and social task. Von Molo did not take a political position in the narrower sense, but was on friendly terms with the leading politicians of his time such as Gustav Stresemann , Paul Löbe , Friedrich Ebert and Otto Braun .

Relationship to National Socialism

After the seizure of power of the Nazis Walter threatened Molo despite willingly sign a declaration of loyalty on 15 March 1933, the exclusion from the Section sealing of the Prussian Academy of Arts. This exclusion was only prevented by personal intervention via the Prussian Ministry of Culture. Molo refused to emigrate - even after his two children Trude and Conrad had left the country - and retired with his wife to Murnau am Staffelsee on a homestead they had acquired a few years earlier. Molo resigned all honorary posts and only remained on the board of the Weimar Goethe Society, which was neglected by party politics, together with Max Planck , Eduard Spranger and Carl Jacob Burckhardt, among others .

Although Walter von Molo did not speak out publicly against the National Socialist government and in October 1933 signed a pledge of loyal allegiance for Adolf Hitler to prove his loyalty to the state , attacks by the cultural politician and writer Arnolt Bronnen and various Nazi propaganda organs against him did not abate, von Molo's plays were no longer played, his books hardly discussed, his Luther novel and some writings about Frederick the Great were considered undesirable. He found publishers difficult and had to cut back economically. Politically, he only expressed himself in 1938 when he cheered the " Anschluss of Austria " and the Bohemian homeland. In the same year, the first of the Weimar poets' meetings, conceived by Joseph Goebbels as a show for the national socialist literary figures, took place, to which Molo was invited. Sometimes Goebbels also invited writers to the meetings who were far removed from the regime.

In the following years, especially during the war, Walter von Molo felt himself to be ostracized and observed. Since his works were not considered significant, they were no longer printed, allegedly due to a lack of paper, and Molo's work was limited to newspaper articles on cultural history. For fear of house searches, he sank a large part of the works of his colleagues who had meanwhile emigrated or imprisoned and his correspondence with Stefan Zweig in the garden pond.

post war period

Walter von Molo and other writers who stayed in Germany during the Nazi era coined the term “ inner emigration ” in the post-war period . After the end of the war, von Molo called on all German writers in exile to return to Germany and face the prevailing misery; it triggered a heated public debate about the evaluation of emigration literature and emigrated writers.

On August 4, 1945, Molo wrote an open letter to Thomas Mann in the Hessian Post : “Your people, who have been starving and suffering for a third of a century, have nothing in common with misdeeds and crimes at their core.” Thomas Mann replied that Books "that could be printed in Germany from 1933 to 1945 are less than worthless".

Molo sparked a violent controversy among the "inner emigrants" and the "exiled writers". Molo claimed that writers who had not lived in Germany for years had forfeited the right to comment on Germany's fate.

On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Walter von Molo was honored again in public, among others by the returning emigrants Alfred Döblin and Alfred Kantorowicz . However, von Molo was unable to build on his earlier literary successes. As honorary chairman of the German writers' associations, he worked to improve the social situation of freelance artists. Molo died on October 27, 1958, his urn was buried on his property, today's Molo-Park in Murnau, where a tombstone commemorates him.

Works (in selection)

Stories and novels

  • How they forced life , Roman, Vita Berlin 1906, new edition 1926
  • Klaus Tiedemann, der Kaufmann , 1908. Revised edition under the title Lebenswende , 1918
  • In the titan fight. A Schiller novel , 1913
  • The wedding squire. A racing novel , 1913
  • The freedom. A Schiller novel , 1914
  • Great Fritz in the war , 1917
  • Schiller in Leipzig , 1917
  • The eternal tragic comedy. Novellistic studies 1906-1912 , 1917
  • Fridericus , first novel in the trilogy A People Wakes Up , 1918
  • Luise , second novel in the trilogy A People Wakes Up , 1919
  • The people wake up , third novel in the trilogy A people wake up , 1921
  • On the Rolling Earth , novel, 1923
  • From old Fritz. 4 stories from the life of the great king , 1924
  • Bodenmatz , novel, 1925
  • In the Eternal Light , novel, 1926
  • The Legend of the Lord , 1927
  • Hans Amrung and his wife and other short stories , 1927
  • Mensch Luther , Roman, 1928
  • The divorce. A novel of our time , 1929
  • A German without Germany. A Friedrich List novel , 1931
  • Elderberry in Poland , novel, 1933
  • The little hero , novel, 1934
  • Eugenio of Savoy. Secret Emperor of the Reich , Roman, 1936
  • Story of a Soul , 1938
  • The clever girl , novel, 1940
  • The Field Marshal , 1940
  • You're Just To Mock The Law , Tales, 1943
  • In summer. A life sonata, 2 stories , 1943
  • The Philanthropist , novel, 1948
  • The monkeys of God. Novel of the Time , 1950
  • A star fell in the dust - Heinrich von Kleist , 1958

Stage plays

  • The lived life , drama in four acts, 1911
  • The Mother , drama in four acts, 1914
  • The Infant of Mankind , drama in 3 acts, 1916
  • The Redemption of Ethel , Tragedy in 4 Acts, 1917
  • Friedrich Staps. A German folk piece in 4 acts , 1918
  • The Breath in Space , Tragedy in 3 Acts, 1918
  • The bright night , play in three acts, 1920
  • Till Lausebums , Romantic comedy in 3 acts, 1921
  • Life ballad , a play in 12 scenes, 1924
  • Order in chaos , drama in 8 pictures, 1928
  • Friedrich List. A German Prophet's Life in 3 Acts , 1934

Scripts and templates

Radio plays

  • 1926: Till Lausebums. A romantic comedy in three acts - Production: Nordische Rundfunk AG ; Director: Hans Hansen ; First broadcast: December 18, 1926; Live broadcast without recording.
Speaker among others

Other fonts

  • with Gottfried Dimmer: How do I file an Austrian patent application ?, Instructions for the preparation of patent documents . Publisher von Manzsche, Vienna. 1905
  • Speedometers on automobiles , 1907
  • German people. A leaflet in every house , 1914
  • When I wore the colorful hat. German-Austrian student memories , 1914
  • To our souls. Three leaflets on the war year 1914-1915 , 1915
  • Germany and Austria. War essays , 1915
  • To be German means to be human! A cry of distress from the German soul , 1915
  • To Frederik van Eeden and Romain Rolland. Open letter , 1915
  • Proverbs of the soul , 1916
  • In the step of the centuries. Historical pictures , 1917
  • Italy. Experiences of Germans in Italy , 1921
  • In the twilight of time. Pictures from our days , 1922
  • The German youth said 1929
  • Between day and dream. Collected speeches and essays , 1930
  • German national community. Address on March 22, 1932 in Weimar , 1932
  • How I want Germany. A speech about Friedrich List , 1932
  • In Praise of Sorrow , 1947
  • To the new day. A life report , 1950
  • Life is so wonderful. Memories and Encounters , 1957
  • Where I found peace. Experiences and memories , 1959

literature

  • Werner von Bergen: The long way out of exile. The discussion about returning home from exile using the example of Thomas Mann and the dispute between “inner” and “outer” emigration. 1945-1949. Mag.-Arb., University of Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • Babette Dietrich: "A commission from a higher power ...". Walter von Molo and the Mainz literature class 1949–1956. (= Edition Wissenschaft; Series Germanistik; 7). Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 1995. ISBN 3-89608-877-7 .
  • Hanns Martin Elster : Walter von Molo and his work. Langen, Munich 1920.
  • Rudolf Gnauk:  Molo, Walter Ritter v .. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 7-9 ( digitized version ).
  • Franz Camillo Munck: Walter von Molo. The poet and life. (= From the heartbeat of my people; 2). Koch, Leipzig 1924.
  • Gustav Christian Rassy : Walter von Molo. A poet of the German man. Bohn, Leipzig 1936.
  • Karl Otto Vitense : Walter von Molo. The essence of the writer. Diss., University of Leipzig 1936.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Rudolf Gnauk:  Molo, Walter Ritter v. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 7 ( digitized version ).
  2. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 493-496.
  3. ↑ When I was wearing the colorful hat, from Walter von . Review in: Acta Studentica . Austrian magazine for student history. 36th year, June 2005, volume 152, p. 17 (as pdf; 701 kB) .
  4. ↑ a b c Rudolf Gnauk:  Molo, Walter Ritter v. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 8 f. ( Digitized version ).
  5. ↑ a b c d e Carsten Wurm: On the biography of a representative of the "inner emigration". Walter von Molos autobiographical texts. In: Hania Siebenpfeiffer, Ute Wölfel (ed.): War and post-war. Configurations of the German-language literature. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-503-07901-8 , pp. 81-89.
  6. ^ Arndt Kremer: German Jews - German language: Jewish and anti-Jewish language concepts and conflicts 1893–1933. de Gruvter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019603-0 , p. 105.
  7. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The culture 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. 415.
  8. ^ State and art. A conversation between Hermann Kasack and Walter von Molo on the Berliner Rundfunk (1928). In: Herbert Heckmann, Bernhard Zeller (eds.): Hermann Kasack in honor: A presidency in difficult times. Wallstein, Göttingen, 1996, ISBN 978-3-89244-217-2 , pp. 73-84.
  9. ↑ Joachim Dyck: The contemporary witness: Gottfried Benn 1929-1949. Wallstein, Göttingen, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0024-8 , pp. 115f.
  10. ↑ An example of the author's propaganda presentation: National Socialist Monthly Issues , Vol. 7 No. 77 (1936) pp. 52–54.
  11. ↑ Hans Sarkowicz , Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. A biographical lexicon. Extended new edition. Europa-Verlag, Hamburg / Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-203-82030-7 , p. 21 f.
  12. ↑ Stephen Brockmann: Inner Emigration. The term and its Origins in Postwar Debates. In: Neil H. Donahue, Doris Kirchner (ed.): Flight of Fantasy: new perspectives on Inner Emigration in German literature, 1933–1945. Berghahn Books, New York, 2003, ISBN 978-1-57181-001-4 , pp. 11-26.
  13. ↑ a b Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 415.
personal data
SURNAME Molo, Walter von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Imperial Knight of Molo, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Sternberg
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1958
Place of death near Murnau am Staffelsee