Willi Finger-Hain

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Willi Finger-Hain , originally Willi Finger (born March 9, 1895 in Bromberg ; † November 10, 1970 in Hanstedt (Nordheide) ), was a high school teacher, writer and researcher on the life and work of Fritz Reuter .

Act

Finger left his West Prussian homeland after the First World War and moved from Thorn to Demmin in Western Pomerania. Here he worked as a secondary school teacher, after 1945 as a German teacher at the extended Immanuel Kant secondary school in Berlin-Lichtenberg . In the 1950s, Finger left the GDR and settled in Hamburg.

During his time in Demmin, Finger published numerous articles in newspapers and magazines (including Demminer Tageblatt, Unser Pommerland) and gained the reputation of a chronicler of the district of Demmin and Western Pomerania through research on local history. From early on, Finger's main interest was in Reuter research. Before and after 1945 Finger published Reuter literature in the Hinstorff Verlag in Rostock (letters from Fritz Reuter to Fritz Peters , "Herr von Hakensterz and his serfs", "Fritz Reuter: Ein Anekdotenbuch"). After Finger's flight to the West, his books were published by Christian Wolff in Flensburg (Fritz Reuter as a draftsman and painter, Fritz Reuter in world literature). Throughout his life, Finger knew how to adapt his publications to the political zeitgeist. In 1942, Finger published an article in the Stavenhagener Tageblatt on "Fritz Reuter's Rejection of Judaism" and referred in the foreword to his previous publication on the same subject - "To save Fritz Reuters!" - in the Black Corps , the Reichszeitung of the SS. After the war, Finger described Reuter as a pioneer and pioneer of German democracy, initially in the sense of the state and party of the GDR, after the escape in terms of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Finger introduced his two-part essay on Fritz Reuter's rejection of Judaism with this text: The Low German folk poet Fritz Reuter was often portrayed as friendly to Jews because of his "Moses" alone. I was able to refute this view thoroughly by finding the handwritten original of a letter written by Fritz Reuter, which is addressed to a Stavenhagen school friend and which, in the essential passages about the Jews, reads quite differently from the previously known version which Karl Theodor Gaedertz sent us is. The fate of the letter that was written about 80 years ago is not only interesting, but also contributes to the Jewish question in the Second Reich. That's why I couldn't do anything better than publishing it after finding the letter mentioned - if only to save Fritz Reuter's honor! - to be announced to the world as urgent in the Black Corps, the Reichszeitung of the SS. I am doing it here with a detailed commentary so that the homeland acquits its older son from suspicion of friendliness towards Jews.

After the end of National Socialism in the Soviet zone of occupation, Finger spoke again about Reuter in the Landes-Zeitung, the organ of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany for Mecklenburg: Little has been known about Reuter's political contribution to the March Revolution and the year 1848 . The monarchist and Nazi regimes, along with the democratic idea of ​​the state, kept silent even to the poet and democrat Reuter. With a few distracting sentences, his political life in the "great year" (junky word coined!) Was deliberately ignored, even in broad special treatises about the "politician and patriot" . And not only the democrat, much more the friend with socialist and communist ideas, who revolted with his first novel "Hakensterz und seine Serfeigen" from 1847-1850, made the question of Reuter's political position hardly debatable - or him with the political terminus technicus "radical" and "fairly radical" (Reuter Memorial Book 1910) continue.

Finger wrote about Adolf Glaßbrenner in a monograph published in 1952 in the GDR : "Glaßbrenner was hushed up in the monarchist state as in the Weimar Republic and later by the fascist censorship and dictatorship. Capitalist society had no place for him, the revolutionary and true democrat. .. Glaßbrenner's and his fellow campaigners' ideas have triumphed. "

With an introduction by Willi Finger, Fritz Reuter's early work Herr von Hakensterz and his serfs was published by Hinstorff Verlag in Rostock in 1954 . In it, Finger comments: "Reuter wrote precisely the chapters of the description of day laborers and their counterpart, the Junker clique, with fiery sharpness and thereby made himself a pioneer of long-awaited and hoped-for land reform."

In 1924, Finger was awarded the Federal Literary Prize for Ethnicity and Art. During his time in Hamburg he was a member of the Quickborn Association (since early 1961) and the Fehrs Guild .

Finger-Hain was buried on November 13, 1970 in Goslar .

Works (selection)

  • Fritz Reuter and Fritz Peters , First complete edition of Reuter's letters to Peters, With life stories, Wismar: Hinstorff 1935.
  • Adolf Glaßbrenner, A pioneer of democracy , Berlin: Kongress-Verlag 1952.
  • The eternal is silent. Graves of our greats in Berlin , Flensburg: Wolff around 1965.
  • Fritz Reuter as a draftsman and painter , Flensburg: Wolff 1968.
  • Fritz Reuter in Weltliteratur , Volume 1 [no more published], Flensburg: Wolff 1970.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stavenhagener Tageblatt, Stavenhagen, from February 14th and 16th, 1942.
  2. ↑ Fritz Reuter in the revolutionary year 1848. The people's poet and freedom fighter affirmed the March Revolution , Landes-Zeitung, Rostock, from February 1, 1948, page 2.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Finger-Hain, Willi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Finger, Willi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and researcher
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Bromberg
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1970
Place of death Hanstedt (North Heath)