Werner Riegel

Werner Riegel (born January 19, 1925 in Danzig ; † July 11, 1956 in Hamburg ) was a German poet and essayist . He also worked under the pseudonyms Scharbock - as a poet -, Johannes Fontara (together with Peter Rühmkorf ), John Frieder , Conrad Kefer and Lothar Leu .

life and work

After graduating from secondary school in St. Johann in Gdansk, he was drafted immediately in 1943 and wounded in the battle of Anzio in 1944 . He took part in many other missions on the Western Front until he was captured in the Battle of the Bulge .

Afterwards he reached Lübeck, mostly on foot, and worked in many places as an unskilled worker, then as a night watchman in Hamburg, became unemployed after the currency reform and then in 1950 until the end of his life as an office messenger. In 1951 he met Peter Rühmkorf , in 1952 he married Lieselotte Stemmann (1928–2006), with whom he had a son.

Werner Riegel acquired brilliant literary knowledge and judgment as an autodidact under difficult post-war conditions . From December 1952 he published in Hamburg, together with his younger friend Peter Rühmkorf, the initially hardly noticed, top-class and long-term magazine Zwischen den Kriegen (26 issues, 1952–1956; reproduced, circulation ~ max. 200). Riegel's rediscoveries by Ferdinand Hardekopf (1953) and Paul Boldt (1954) are particularly important contributions to this journal .

At the time, Riegel and Rühmkorf represented an attitude that Rühmkorf called “ Finism ”; H. the view that a Third World War is imminent, but that one must act both politically and aesthetically (“schizography”). This position was similar to existentialism that was widespread at the time . With this in mind, Riegel wrote a series of essays for the newly founded student courier .

His sudden death from cancer also marked the end of the magazine Between the Wars .

His grave is in the Ohlsdorf cemetery .

estate

His estate is in Marbach , including diaries and his correspondence with Eugen Brehm, Kurt Hiller , Richard Huelsenbeck , Arno Schmidt , the graphic artist Horst Sikorra and others. During his lifetime (published by Riegel together with Peter Rühmkorf) only the poetry collection Heiße Lyrik was published by Limes in 1956; Most of it - poems, essays, polemics - he published in Between the Wars and the Student Courier .

Works (selection)

• (with Peter Rühmkorf): Hot poetry . Limes, Wiesbaden 1956
• Poems and prose . Limes, Wiesbaden 1961. With an afterword by Peter Rühmkorf.
• Problems of poetry . In: Bettina and Lars Clausen (Eds.): Spectrum of Literature , (1st edition), Bertelsmann Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh 1975, pp. 370–373
  • therein also the poem: The scales in sinking blue […], p. 373

• Selected works in individual editions , 4 volumes, Literarisches Bureau Christ & Fez, Stuttgart 2006 ff.
  • Volume 1: The Admiral , 2006, ISBN 978-3-933591-03-6
  • Volume 2: The vertical fellow human being , 2008, ISBN 978-3-933591-05-0
  • Volume 3: Heisse Lyrik , 2007, ISBN 978-3-933591-04-3
  • Volume 4: Portrait of a poet and other things on the literature of the time , 2010, ISBN 978-3-933591-09-8

• Outsider. Portraits (about Jakob van Hoddis , Paul Boldt and Arno Schmidt ), Revonnah, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-927715-68-9 .

Documents

• Rüdiger Schütt (Ed.): Between the wars. Werner Riegel, Klaus Rainer Röhl and Peter Rühmkorf: Correspondence with Kurt Hiller 1953–1971 . Edition text + kritik , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88377-997-3

literature

• Lars Clausen : The Finists . In: Mittelweg 36 , Vol. 1, H. 5, 1992.
• Peter Rühmkorf (Ed.): Werner Riegel… “loaded with shipment. Poet and poor pig ” . Haffmans, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-251-00119-1 . Foreword as amended in: Peter Rühmkorf: Thirteen German poets. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989, pp. 168-188. Reprinted in: Susanne Fischer , Stephan Opitz (eds.): Many contradictions fit into my head - about colleagues. Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1171-8 , pp. 264-283.
• Michael Braun : The forgotten lyric revolution. Four outsiders . Ulrich Keicher publishing house, Warmbronn 2011.
• Gunnar F. Fritzsche : culture industry. On Werner Riegel's essay art . In: Literature in the Modern Age. Yearbook of the Walter Hasenclever Society. Volume 7 (2010/2011) . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011.

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Riegel in the catalog of the German National Library
• The forgotten lyric revolution On the topicality of Rainer Maria Gerhardt and Werner Riegel

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Werner Riegel, Der perpendicular Mitmensch , 2008, p. 5
2. ↑ Rüdiger Schütt, Between the Wars , Munich 2009, pp. 366–269
3. ↑ See his letters in: Rüdiger Schütt 2009, p. 41 ff.
4. ↑ Lars Clausen , The Finists . In: Mittelweg 36 , 1992