Wilhelm Meyer-Förster

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wilhelm Meyer-Förster
Elsbeth Meyer-Förster, the writer's wife, who died young. Photo from 1898.

Wilhelm Meyer-Förster , also: Samar Gregorow , (born June 12, 1862 in Hanover , † March 17, 1934 in Heringsdorf ) was a German writer .

Life

Wilhelm Meyer-Förster was born as the son of the publisher Carl Meyer in Hanover. Shortly after the Franco-Prussian War, he first attended a cadet institute . For health reasons he switched to the Ratsgymnasium in Osnabrück , later to the grammar school in Bückeburg , where he graduated from high school in 1883. He then studied law , then art history in Leipzig , Berlin , Munich and Vienna, but then decided on a literary career. During his semester in Leipzig he was a member of the Corps Saxonia . He left because of the change of study location, but remained connected to individual members. His parodic novel Die Saxo-Saxonen was written a little later against his corps student background .

Meyer-Förster lived in Paris from 1890 to 1898 , then in Berlin. His most famous work is Alt-Heidelberg , which the template for the musical The Student Prince ( The Student Prince ) by Sigmund Romberg formed. He was married to Elsbeth Meyer-Förster, who worked as a writer herself, but died suddenly of an illness at a young age (after 1901).

On the death of Elsbeth Meyer-Förster, the writer Erich Mühsam wrote in his Apolitical Memoirs in a report about the artists' regulars table in the Café des Westens :

“Meyer-Förster usually came with his young, amiable, very clever and graceful wife, and when the news came unexpectedly that Elsbeth Meyer-Förster had died after a short illness, the husband stayed away too, and the painful one lay there for a long time Pressure of orphanage over the coffee shop regulars table; the impoverishment that our society suffered through the loss of Elsbeth Meyer-Förster has never been made good again. "

Works (selection)

  • Die Saxo-Saxonen (novel), 1885 (under the pseudonym Samar Gregorow . Parody of "Die Saxoborussen" by Gregor Samarow ).
  • (as Wilhelm Meyer :) Kriemhilde (play), 1892
  • The journey around the earth (novel), 1897
  • Derby (sports novel), 1898
  • Everyday People (novel), 1898
  • The Much Examined , Comedy, 1898
  • Elschen at the university , initially anonymous in 1899
  • Eldena , 1899
  • Heidenstamm (novel), 1901
  • Alt-Heidelberg (drama), 1903
  • Your Highness v. Gleichenberg (novel), 1923

literature

  • R [aimund] Lang: Wilhelm Meyer-Förster . In: Friedhelm Golücke , Peter Krause , Wolfgang Gottwald, Klaus Gerstein, Harald Lönnecker (eds.): GDS Archive for University and Student History, Vol. 6, Cologne 2002, pp. 237–238.
  • Oliver Fink: Heidelberg . In: Etienne François, Hagen Schulze (ed.): German places of memory, vol. 3, Munich 2001, pp. 473–487.
  • Oliver Fink: "Memories of happiness". How the memory of old Heidelberg was invented, maintained and fought , Heidelberg, Ubstadt / Weiher, Basel 2002 (= book series of the city of Heidelberg, vol. 9).
  • Michael H. Kater: The Myth of Myths: Scholarship and Teaching in Heidelberg , In: Central European History 36/4 (2003), pp. 570-577.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Erich Mühsam: Nonpolitical Memories. Chapter 8 ("The Tenth Muse"), where Mühsam reports on the influence of the writer couple Meyer-Förster on the artist scene in what was then Berlin (text online in the Gutenberg project ); see. also: magazine Berliner Leben , issue 03 (1898), where Elsbeth Meyer-Förster is portrayed as a Berlin writer.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Meyer-Förster, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gregorov, Samar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1934
Place of death Berlin