Perhobstler

Perhobstler , actually Wilhelm Michael Schneider , (born December 4, 1891 in Altrip , † April 7, 1975 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a local poet from the Palatinate .

He wrote under the pseudonyms Wilhelm Michael and Wilhelm Michael Perhobstler and after the Second World War under his real name Wilhelm Michael Schneider.

Life

Schneider was in Altrip in time to Bayern belonging Palatinate born. His father was a vinegar maker and owned a small factory in Altrip. Schneider had seven siblings and spent his childhood in Altrip, where he went to the village school and then to the secondary school in Mannheim, Baden . He began his professional life at Hugo Stinnes GmbH in Mannheim with a commercial apprenticeship. After completing his apprenticeship and the first few years of his career, he moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1923, where he began his professional career at IG Farben , where he became an authorized signatory.

As a young man, like many of his contemporaries, he enthusiastically went to the First World War . After a short training period, he joined the 23rd Bavarian Infantry Regiment on the Western Front in Flanders. He fought in the west until the spring of 1917 and was wounded several times. After his promotion to lieutenant in the reserve, he was transferred to the 27th Bavarian Infantry Regiment on the Romanian front . In 1918 the unit came to the west, where Schneider was wounded one last time in June. During one of his hospital stays in Blankenburg (Harz), he met his future wife Antonie Jahn, who belonged to the other descendants of the gymnastics father Jahn . The intense war experiences have become the reason for his poetic work.

He was a founding member of the gymnastics club in Altrip and a member of the Palatinate Literary Society . He lived in Frankfurt am Main until his death in 1975.

Literary work

His first work "Infantrist Perhobstler" appeared in 1929 and was a great success. It depicts the war from the perspective of a common soldier. In a personal letter to Schneider in 1929, Thomas Mann described this book as one of the strongest and most truthful. Among other things, he writes in his letter: “I cannot say what human helplessness your stories have stirred up in me.” This book, published by Rembrandt-Verlag in Berlin, was published in 1936 by the National Socialists because of its realistic depiction of the war forbidden. In 1953 the GDR censors put it on the list of literature to be sorted out.

In addition to books and a stage play, he published a number of stories and short stories in anthologies and books, as well as newspapers and magazines in the years from 1937 to 1972. A close friendship connected him with the poets Rudolf Binding and Paul Alverdes as well as August Friedrich Velmede . The quality of Schneider's book “Infantrist Perhobstler, mit Bavarian Divisions in World War I” was the reason for one of the great military history museums in Europe, the Bavarian Army Museum in Ingolstadt, to reissue it in commented form for the commemorative year 2014.

Awards

• 1965 First Prize of the Rheinpfalz for the novel "Anna"
• 1966 Prize for Literature from Rhineland-Palatinate
• 1966 Honorary gift from the Palatinate District Association
• 1971 honorary citizen of the municipality of Altrip

Works (selection)

• Infantist Perhobstler, with Bavarian divisions in the World War; Berlin 1929
• French on the Rhine (also French in the country); 1930
• Telegraph poles; 1934
• The Hohenzollernschanze; 1932 (published as a play in 1939)
• English face; 1940
• Flood around Hohenufen (trilogy); 1943
• Schlingstrom, novel one day; 1960
• Unvarnished stories; 1966
• Infantist Perhobstler, with Bavarian divisions in World War I; 2014 (reprinted with comment)

literature

• Dieter Storz: "Infantrist Perhobstler". A forgotten front novel of the Weimar Republic. In: Josef Johannes Schmid (Ed.): Arte & Marte. In Memoriam Hans Schmidt. A memorial from his group of students. Herzberg 2000, pp. 469-533.
• Dieter Storz: "The Great War", 100 objects from the Bavarian Army Museum. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8375-1174-1 .
• Dieter Storz: Infantist Perhobstler, with Bavarian divisions in the World War. Commented reprint, Verlag Militaria, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-902526-67-0 .
• Wolfgang Diehl: "Infantrist Perhobstler", a Palatine war novel. In: Chaussee, magazine for literature and culture in the Palatinate. Issue 35 + 36/2015, District Association of the Palatinate, Kaiserslautern 2015, ISSN 1436-1442, pp. 59–64.
• Dieter Storz: "That is how dangerous war is" , on the new edition by Wilhelm Michael Schneider's infantist Perhobstler. In: Poetry and Truth, literary warfare from the 17th to the 20th century, published by the Osnabrück University Press at V&R unipress. Vol. XXI (2015), ISBN 978-3-8471-0487-2 , pp. 91-116

Web links

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