Wilhelm Ehmer

Wilhelm Ehmer (born August 1, 1896 in Hong Kong ; † June 16, 1976 in Lüdenscheid ) was a German writer , journalist and newspaper publisher .

Life

As the son of a merchant family, he spent the first years of his life in Hong Kong before moving to relatives in Bonn and finally to his parents who had returned from China in Hamburg . After the First World War , in which he participated as a volunteer, and after an apprenticeship as a banker , Ehmer studied history , art history , philosophy and geography in Hamburg , Freiburg and Munich . In the summer of 1920, he also completed a traineeship at the Hamburg foreign newspaper .

Because he felt connected to the Wandervogel movement , which he had joined as a high school student, he published a brochure in 1921 in which various authors, such as the philosopher Hermann Graf Keyserling and the educator Harald Schultz-Hencke , held a meeting in Hofgeismar in 1920 for the establishment of a “united front of German youth”. Ehmers own contribution The importance of Hofgeismar was republished in 1963 in Werner Kindt's documentation Grundschrift der Jugendbewegung .

After graduating as Dr. phil. Ehmer began working on the humanists Rudolf Agricola and Konrad Mutian in 1925 as an editor at the Hannoversche Kurier . As early as February 1926 he became editor-in-chief of the Lüdenscheider General-Anzeer , which he also directed as a publisher from 1936 and in which he was a partner.

A boat trip from Hong Kong to Hamburg, which he took as an eight-year-old unaccompanied and which he counted as one of his formative childhood experiences, inspired Ehmer to write his first work, the children's book Peter Travels around the World , published in 1935 .

Ehmer achieved lasting literary success a year later with To the Summit of the World , a novel-like portrayal of the British Himalayan expedition of 1924 , in which mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were killed on Mount Everest . Ehmers presentation is based on extensive research. She follows the facts known at the time (Mallory's corpse was only found in 1999) and portrays Mallory, typical of the time, as a strong-willed hero, whose motivation Ehmer interprets as Faustian striving . An English reviewer, who judged the book generally benevolently and respectfully emphasized the author's political reluctance, merely stated that Ehmer had not quite succeeded in putting himself into the mentality of a British. On the occasion of the literary competition that took place in Berlin as part of the 1936 Summer Olympics , Ehmer's book was awarded a silver medal. The German broadcaster broadcast a radio play version with the actor Mathias Wieman in the role of Mallory in August 1936.

In 1939 Ehmer took part in a commemorative publication, edited by Alfred Rosenberg and provided with an address of allegiance , which 100 German poets (including Georg Britting , Hans Carossa , Josef Weinträger , Karl Heinrich Waggerl and Max Halbe ) wrote on Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday. From 1937 he worked as a censorship officer, initially for Army High Command 18 , with which he also moved to France and Norway , from 1942 at the High Command of the Wehrmacht in Berlin. Here he was responsible for soldiers' newspapers. On March 21, 1943, Ehmer published the article “Pride and Mourning” in the Berlin edition of the Völkischer Beobachter on the occasion of the National Socialist Heroes ' Remembrance Day. In it, he called on the German population to view war death as a necessary step towards a new world. Also in 1943 he published the propaganda pamphlet The British Bombing War , in which he portrayed the British as the “brutal mortal enemy” of the Germans, whom they rightly face with “glowing hatred”. In December of the same year Ehmer lost his right arm in an Allied bombing raid.

Thanks to special editions for the Wehrmacht book trade, Ehmer's novella Der flammende Pfeil (1939), the essay volume Die Kraft der Seele (1940) and the short story Die Nacht vor Paris (1941) achieved high print runs during the First World War, despite the war-related rationing of printing paper.

After a short period as a prisoner of war and building up work in the publishing house, Ehmer resumed his functions in the newspaper, which began to appear in 1949 under the name Lüdenscheider Nachrichten . In 1954 he was one of the founders of the Indivisible Germany Board of Trustees . Ehmer held various offices in press associations; he was temporarily chairman of the supervisory board of Ortepresse GmbH .

With his novel So Will We Lived , published in 1963, Ehmer wanted to give expression to a modern attitude towards life, according to which people are subject to the circumstances of the time that are perceived as fateful (and therefore apparently removed from individual responsibility). The turning point mentioned in the subtitle of the work is the First World War, against the background of which Ehmer developed the colorful and figurative story of the officer and landowner von Barkenau. The stylistically conventional book is closer to works by Max René Hesse ( Partenau ; Dietrich Kattenburg ) and AE Johann ( The Wind of Freedom ) than those of other contemporaries such as Heimito von Doderer ( The Strudlhofstiege ), Alexander Lernet-Holenia ( The Standard ) and René Schickele ( Das Erbe am Rhein ), whose time panoramas have proven to be more durable in literary terms.

Companions and employees of the post-war period describe Ehmer as a straightforward publisher, a fair journalist and a gentleman who was also willing to admit mistakes.

In 1972 Ehmer drew the following balance sheet: I was allowed to lead a full life, with stimulating intellectual work, with professional success, with modest luck as a writer, with many trips abroad. In our family, however, my wife and I suffered two severe blows from the death of our two sons. But we have three daughters, all married and blessed with children. The remembrance of his son Rolf, who died in 1944 and whose poems Wilhelm Ehmer published in 1948 together with a picture of his life, is the recipient of the Rolf Ehmer Memorial Prize awarded by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben in 2005 .

Honors

• 1961: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany (awarded on August 1, 1961).
• 1972: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (awarded on October 23, 1972).

Works (selection)

• (Editor :) Hofgeismar, a political attempt in the youth movement 1920 , Jena 1921
• Rudolf Agricola and Konrad Mutian. Contributions to the history of the development of personality under the influence of humanism in Germany , Munich 1926
• Peter travels the world. Experiences of a little boy from abroad , Stuttgart 1935; Norwegian edition: Peter reiser jorden rundt , Oslo 1941
• To the top of the world. The story of the mountaineer Mallory , Stuttgart 1936; New editions Zutphen 1942, Stuttgart 1949, Stuttgart 1954; Czech edition: O vrcholek světa , Prague 1938
• The Poet and the Olympic Games , in: Literary Leaflets, Issue 25, 1936
• The struggle for the Himalayas. A short history of the struggle for the highest peak on earth , Gütersloh 1937; New editions Oslo 1941, Gütersloh 1943
• The flaming arrow . Novelle, Stuttgart 1939; New edition Berlin 1944
• The power of the soul. Thoughts of a German during the war , Stuttgart 1940, new edition 1943
• The night before Paris . Story, Stuttgart 1942; New edition Stuttgart 1945; French edition: La Nuit devant Paris - 13 June 1940 , Paris 1943; Dutch edition: De nacht voor Parijs , Amsterdam 1943
• (Editor :) In memoriam Rolf Ehmer (1925–1944) , Lüdenscheid approx. 1948
• London travel diary. Impressions from a study trip , Wuppertal / Lüdenscheid 1951
• Indian diary. Impressions from a trip through Ceylon and India , reprint of a series of articles in the Lüdenscheider Nachrichten, Lüdenscheid 1958
• This is how we are lived. Novel of a turning point, Darmstadt 1963
• Journey to the Far East , reprint of a series of articles in the Lüdenscheider Nachrichten, Lüdenscheid 1970

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Ehmer in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ So Franz Lennartz, Die Dichter der Zeit , 1938, p. 66.
2. ↑ Review by cherishes (= Henry Edmund Guise Tyndale) The Alpine Journal, London, vol. XLVIII, no. 253, Nov. 1936, pp. 386-388.
3. ↑ Structure and staffing: Staff of the Army High Command 18 (AOK18). In: gliederungundstellenbesetzung.blogspot.de. Retrieved August 24, 2016 . 
4. ^ Robert Terrell: Reading Death and Sacrifice in the Berlin Völkischer Beobachter, February 1942 - March 1943. In: Concept. An interdisciplinary journal of graduate studies. Falvey Memorial Library, Villanova University, 2011, accessed August 24, 2016 . 
5. ^ The British bombing war: Wilhelm Ehmer In: archive.org , accessed on February 6, 2018.
6. ^ Citizens of Lüdenscheid who were awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
7. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 43, March 9, 1973.