Wilhelm Michels (pedagogue)

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Wilhelm Michels (born February 28, 1904 in Lehe ; † 1988 ) was a German pedagogue and philologist, and also a friend, travel companion and patron of the German writer Arno Schmidt .

Life

Michels was born in 1904 in Wesermünde -Lehe as the son of the businessman Willm and his wife Eddine Michels (née Gerdes) . From 1910 to 1918 he attended elementary school in Lehe, then initially for a year at a private school and from 1919 to 1923 at the Reform Realgymnasium in Geestemünde . After graduating from high school in Easter 1923, he worked for a few months in various professions (dock worker, clerk at the tax office, construction assistant) until he began studying philosophy, German, English, French and Spanish in the winter semester of 1923/24. He studied in Marburg (three semesters), Munich (one semester) and Frankfurt am Main (five semesters). On July 30, 1928 he received his doctorate in Frankfurt with a dissertation on the Baroque style in Shakespeare and Calderón . He then worked - including in London, where he worked at the British Museum - on a habilitation thesis on the development of style in English drama, which he broke off. Instead, he took the state examination in English, French and Spanish in November 1930 . Then he was a trainee lawyer and assessor at high schools in Hoechst and Frankfurt am Main.

On April 1, 1933 Michels founded a private school (forest school) with boarding school in Schönberg im Taunus with his wife Erika, whom he married in 1931 . According to their own statement, Jewish students also sought refuge in the forest school. In 1937 he was a teacher at a state school in Usingen for a few months , during which time his wife continued to run the forest school in Schönberg. After an appraisal had been obtained about Michels and his private school, he was dismissed by the National Socialists; the forest school was gradually dismantled and finally closed at Easter 1940. Erika and Wilhelm Michels became teachers at the Altkönigschule in Kronberg im Taunus , where Michels was appointed a teacher in 1944. The forest school was connected to the Altkönig school as a student home. Film evenings and, from 1946, regular reading evenings with schoolchildren could take place there.

Since around 1948 he and his friend Helmut Bode (translator, author and co-editor of the magazine Das Bücherschiff ) organized readings by contemporary writers in the forest school. Werner Bergengruen , Stefan Andres , Heinrich Böll and Heimito von Doderer read there . In 1953 Michels read Arno Schmidt's first books , Leviathan (1949) and Brand's Haide (1951), and invited the author, who was living in Kastel an der Saar at the time, to a reading. This resulted in an exchange of letters, which also led to a personal acquaintance in 1955 when Michels visited the poet in Kastel. In the years that followed, the teacher, who was appointed senior student councilor in 1955, supported Schmidt with food packages, books and also with information on some problems during his translations from English. The Michels couple visited Arno and Alice Schmidt in Darmstadt (1955–1958) and Bargfeld (since 1958).

Former house of Wilhelm Michels outside Bargfeld .

The friendship, which lasted into the 1960s / 1970s, is documented in the correspondence published in 1987. Schmidt dedicated his book Das steinerne Herz (1956) to the teacher in a poem : "(Grumbling / a soon-to-be corpse in the rain. For Wilhelm Michels)." He had censored the novel himself on the advice of his publisher's lawyer and gave Wilhelm Michels the complete one Manuscript in safekeeping. This was then used in 1987 as the template for the uncensored version. Finally, on February 18, 1956, Schmidt's first and only public reading took place in the Waldschülerheim. When Arno Schmidt moved to Bargfeld near Celle in 1958 through the mediation of the family of his friend Eberhard Schlotter , Michels lent him most of the purchase price, which Schmidt repaid early. Michels, who retired in 1966, also moved to Bargfeld in mid-1967, where he lived in a house just outside the town in Beckfeld. In the story Windmühlen , Arno Schmidt processed frequent visits with Michels and Alice Schmidt in the swimming pools in the area ; He used extended trips in Michels' car for his research on literary history.

Fonts

  • Baroque style in Shakespeare and Calderón . In: Revue Hispanique 75, 1929, pp. 370-458.

swell

  • Arno Schmidt: The correspondence with Wilhelm Michels. With a few letters from and to Elfriede Bokelmann, Erika Michels and Alice Schmidt . Edited by Bernd Rauschenbach . An edition of the Arno Schmidt Foundation published by Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-251-00090-X (= Arno Schmidt, Briefe, Volume 2).
  • Jörg Drews : Conversation with Wilhelm Michels . In: Bargfelder Bote , Liefer 83-84, October 1984, pp. 5-18.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ See Bernd Rauschenbach , Biogram Dr. Michels , in: Arno Schmidt, The exchange of letters with Wilhelm Michels , Zurich 1987, p. 338 with quotations from Michels' curriculum vitae for the school authorities. There you will also find all further detailed information about Michels' life up to 1967.
  2. ↑ See Michels' presentation in conversations with Jörg Drews ( conversation with Wilhelm Michels , in: Bargfelder Bote , Liefer 83–84, October 1984, pp. 5–18, here p. 5) and Bernd Rauschenbach ( conversation with Wilhelm Michels , in: Arno Schmidt, Der Briefwechsel mit Wilhelm Michels , Zurich 1987, pp. 328–337, here p. 328).
  3. ↑ See Wilhelm Michels to Arno Schmidt, August 25, 1955, in: Arno Schmidt, Der Briefwechsel mit Wilhelm Michels , Zurich 1987, pp. 30f., Here p. 30.
  4. ^ Arno Schmidt, Not only [1956], in: Arno Schmidt, Kleinere Erzählungen. Poems. Juvenilia , edited by Jan Philipp Reemtsma , Bernd Rauschenbach and Wolfgang Schlüter , an edition of the Arno Schmidt Foundation published by Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1988 (= Bargfelder Edition, Volume I / 4), p. 179f., Here p. 180.
  5. ↑ See the tape recordings by Wilhelm Michels, in: Arno Schmidt, readings, interviews, surveys , edited by Susanne Fischer , an edition of the Arno Schmidt Foundation published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006 (= Bargfeld edition, supplements, volume 2), CD 8 and CD 9. For the reading cf. Alice Schmidt's report in a diary entry of February 18, 1956, in: Arno Schmidt, Der Briefwechsel mit Wilhelm Michels , Zurich 1987, p. 317f.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Martynkewicz , Arno Schmidt , Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1992, p. 111.
personal data
SURNAME Michels, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator and headmaster, friend of Arno Schmidt
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Lehe
DATE OF DEATH 1988