Willy pastor

Willy (Emil) Pastor (born September 22, 1867 in Burtscheid , † April 18, 1933 in Berlin ) was a German art historian , art and culture critic and folk writer.

Live and act

The son of the cloth manufacturer Eduard Friedrich Pastor (* 1829) and Emilie Kortum studied philosophy , art and cultural history as well as music after leaving school , and in the meantime even studied medicine for a few semesters in Leipzig . Eventually he settled in Berlin and professed a bohemian life reformist . There he joined several late naturalistic mostly literature and discussion circles and developed a great interest in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche . Thanks to his excellent piano playing, Pastor was one of the regular visitors and committed members of the Friedrichshagener poet circle around Richard Dehmel and Stanisław Przybyszewski , in the so-called "order" around Christian Morgenstern , in the new community of the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart . He was also a member of the circle of friends around August Strindberg with their central meeting point in their local pub Zum schwarzen Ferkel and around Paul Scheerbart and Franz Servaes . In his essay Lumpenproletariat , published in 1897, he described his experiences from these rounds and the importance for the free-spirited development of culture .

Inspired by the natural philosophy of Gustav Theodor Fechner and Wilhelm Bölsche , from then on he increasingly leaned towards monism and expressed this in his popular-scientific cultural histories with a strongly popular educational character. In addition, he worked as an editor for the Daily Rundschau and as a theater critic , where he mainly dealt with the works of Strindberg and Ibsen . He was also involved in the Neue Freie Volksbühne Berlin after it had split off from the Volksbühne Berlin on the initiative of his friend Bruno Wille . During this time Pastor was considered a supporter of an anarchist movement, whose direction he publicly represented in his reviews of the works of John Henry Mackay .

His acquaintance with Fidus , a mystic and theosophist , had a decisive influence on his further work . From then on, Pastor developed an aggressive Germanic cultic way of thinking, as he vehemently advocated as the editor of the eight yearbooks of fine arts and in his other art-historical works. In 1907 he joined the Werdandi-Bund , which wanted to implement a new “national idealism” with reformist intentions and, through its preference for “ Germanness ”, prepared the völkisch philosophy of National Socialism .

Willy Pastor was married to Emma Normann , daughter of the Norwegian landscape painter Adelsteen Normann , who illustrated numerous books by her husband. Together they had a son and a daughter.

Works (selection)

• From capitalism to individual work , Berlin, Puttkamer & Mühlbrecht, 1892
• Wandering years. Social essays , Berlin, Schuster & Löffler, 1897
• Berlin as it was and became - On the history of the city of Berlin; On the history of human labor, Berlin, Georg Heinrich Meyer, 1900
• Gustav Theodor Fechner and the worldview he developed , Leipzig, Berlin, Georg Heinrich Meyer, 1901
• Study heads. Twenty essayistic portraits , Leipzig, Berlin, Georg Heinrich Meyer, 1902, online  - Internet Archive
• Life history of the earth - An overview of the metamorphoses of the earth star, Leipzig, E. Diederichs, 1903, online  - Internet Archive
• The earth in human times - attempt at a natural scientific cultural history , Jena, Leipzig, E. Diederichs, 1904, online  - Internet Archive
• Year books of the visual arts , eight volumes, Berlin, w. Fischer & Franke, 1906 to 1910
• The Train from the North: Suggestions for the Study of Nordic Antiquity , Jena, Leipzig, E. Diederichs, 1906
• Old Germanic monumental art , with 26 panels by Emma Pastor . Leipzig, Fritz Eckardt Verlag, 1910, online  - Internet Archive
• From Germanic prehistoric times - cultural-historical images, considerations, etc. Research , Wittenberg, Ziemsen, 1913
• Wartime, considerations of a German , Leipzig, Haase, 1916, online  - Internet Archive
• Max Klinger , Berlin, Amsler & Ruthardt, 1918
• The life of Albrecht Dürer , Berlin, Amsler & Ruthardt, 1918, online
• Theodoric the Great , in life, in art, in fame , Berlin, publishing house for patriotic history and art, 1920
• Forces of Nature - Göttergestalten , Leipzig, Th. Weicher, 1921
• Matthias Grünewald , Berlin, Amsler & Ruthardt, 1921
• German primeval times, foundations of Germanic history , Leipzig, Hermann Haessel- Verlag, 1922
• Rembrandt der Geuse , Leipzig, H. Haessel-Verlag, 1923
• The universe in us and we in the universe - On the change in shape of life , Berlin, Leipzig, German publishing house Bong, 1931
• The old Germanic settlement area as the area of ​​origin of occidental high culture , Hückeswagen, Society for Early and Prehistory, posthumously 1981

literature

• Richard Wrede , Hans von Reinfels (ed.): The spiritual Berlin: An encyclopedia of the spiritual life of Berlin. Storm, Berlin 1897, p. 387 f.
• Uwe Puschner , Walter Schmitz , Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Saur, Munich 1996.
• Wulf Wülfing, Karin Bruns and Rolf Parr (eds.): Handbook of literary-cultural associations, groups and associations 1825–1933. Metzler, Stuttgart 1998.
• Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann :  Pastor, Willy Emil. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 96 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Ingo Wiwjorra: Willy Pastor (1867–1933). A national prehistory journalist. in: Michael Meyer (Ed.): "... trans Albim fluvium". Research on pre-Roman, imperial and medieval archeology. Festschrift for Achim Leube on his 65th birthday. Leidorf, Rahden 2001, pp. 11–24.

Web links

• Literature by and about Willy Pastor in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Willy Pastor in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Willy Pastor in the Internet Archive