Wolf Justin Hartmann

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Wolf Justin Hartmann (born October 22, 1894 in Marktbreit ; † August 30, 1969 in Munich ) was a German adventurer, writer and officer in both world wars . His nickname for friends and the few relatives with whom he had contact was " Hajji " (as a reference to his military service in the Ottoman army). With this name he signed numerous personal dedications in his books. However, there is no evidence that Hartmann was ever in Mecca .

Life

School days, World War I, studies, seafaring, South America

Hartmann first attended the " Alte Gymnasium " in Würzburg, and later the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich (Abitur 1915), where the family had moved. During the First World War he was a volunteer member of the German Asia Corps and fought as a liaison officer in the Ottoman Army in Palestine against the British Commonwealth troops. This resulted in the story Durst, first published in 1935 . He came in September 1918 in captivity , which he in a camp in Egypt spent. He was released at the end of 1919 and returned to Munich in November. He later processed the experience of imprisonment in his drama Barbed Wire and in stories such as Im Dorn.

After his release he studied among others in Munich and was founded in 1923 in Erlangen with a thesis on the foundations of the League of Nations to Dr. jur. after a short biography of his friend Bernd Poieß from 1949 he wrote the first “feature pages in Munich newspapers”; but he also got by with work on farms. He was very good with horses. He probably served at least part of the time in a volunteer corps. In the mid-1920s he was hired on a ship and ended up living in South America for a few years .

writer

He had already contacted Albert Langen Verlag from the “Primeval Forest of Misiones” according to a publisher's note “on the occasion of a novella” . It was the first first-person version of Das Parrotiennest , the manuscript of which has been preserved in the Munich Monacensia Literature Archive because Hartmann had given it to the Munich city archivist Hans Ludwig Held . However, Langen's first work was Fäuste! Brains! Hearts! , then in 1935 a small collection of his war stories, finally in 1938, after the Langen-Müller Verlag was taken over by the Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg in that one, his first big book success, Durst. It was a considerably expanded version of a novella of the same name published in May 1935. It had taken up the majority of a special edition "Young German Poets" of the Süddeutsche Monatshefte (Issue 8, 32nd year). For more details see under "Hauptwerk".

Hartmann, who was a precise, detail-obsessed observer and prepared his works with meticulous notes, processed his experiences at sea to his greatest literary success before 1945, Man in Mars . It was used in teaching in nautical schools long after the war. In 1964 Georg Schneider described it as a "intoxicating song about wind and sea". In 2009 Wolfram Klövekorn, a graduate of the Hamburg Steuermannsschule, remembered Hartmann's work in his autobiography Who Never Eat His Bread As Moses " as a book that tells" extremely realistically about life and work on a sailing ship ". For him, Hartmann is "one of the very few who wrote about seafaring without romanticizing it, but also describing its hardships, difficulties and privations". In 1942 Mann im Mars was one of the two most successful books published by the Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, together with the On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Jünger (both authors reached the proofs to correct their books in uniform in the field) .

Second World War

During the Second World War, at the age of 45, he volunteered for the teaching regiment Brandenburg, e.g. V. 800, and was part of the circle of his friend, his commander Major Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz (later one of the few survivors from among the conservative opponents of Hitler around Admiral Wilhelm Canaris ). The forged ID with which Heinz went into hiding after his temporary arrest after July 20, 1944 and survived until the end of the war in garden houses and cellars with the help of the Berlin resistance group Uncle Emil , was in the name of "Major Hartmann". Hartmann was wounded several times in both world wars and, among other things, wore a Turkish medal from the First World War.

Writer, radio and non-fiction author after 1945

After 1945 he was able to build on his pre-war successes with a much expanded version of his "primeval forest story" The Parrot's Nest. The abridged youth edition, published in 1952, was one of the most widely read boys' books of the 1950s. Hartmann wrote numerous other South American stories (e.g. The mass murderer of Mato Grosso (excerpt from the parrot's nest ), The Christmas Ride , The Bayo ). His possibly first, the cheerful story of lies The Enigmatic Furche , was published in abridged version in the satirical magazine Simplicissimus on July 2, 1933 (vol. 38, No. 14, pages 5 f.)

Hartmann almost always wrote from his own experience. His last novel, Das Spiel an der Sulva, in which he was unfaithful to this principle, failed in 1956, while his authentic portrayals of the mountains in the novel succeeded (Hartmann loved to be with his friends, for example from the Horváth- Brothers roaming the mountains, e.g. the Wetterstein Mountains). A Spanish translation of this book appeared in 1958, but literarily it became quiet around him.

Even the penultimate novel, A shine lay over the city , a mature homage to the lost Würzburg and Hartmann's youth in Marktbreit am Main and Würzburg, was able to do so despite the remarkably impressive and much-praised scenes - an excerpt, Catiline, for example , appeared as an independent story in the Until the 1990s there was an anthology in almost every public library We chat from the school (1954; Ed .: Wilhelm Kayser) - no longer tie in with the previously accustomed number of copies.

Hartmann then stopped writing fiction, became a radio author and wrote more than 200 radio manuscripts, primarily for school radio programs for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk and Bavarian Radio , as well as contributions to non-fiction books such as Jugend der Welt. Biographical stories from the youth of famous men and women (1961; Ed .: Hermann Gerstner ). He also addressed two ship trips to West Africa in 1962 and 1964 for radio broadcasts. In addition, some things from the 1930s were republished, for example his South America story Die Jararaca and As God laid his hand on him , the latter under the title The Old Jew , appeared in continuations in the Oberösterreichische Zeitung . In 1967, already ill, he was able to finish one more work, the elaborate, color-illustrated non-fiction book in rotogravure : Copper. The adventure of a revolution. In 1969 he died of cancer after several serious operations.

Friends and companions

Hartmann's grave in Marktbreit

These included Heinz Held, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz (there is an archive picture of Hartmann as a soldier on Heinz's website), Hermann Sendelbach , Bernd Poieß , Ödön von Horváth , his brother, the Simplicissimus draftsman Lajos von Horváth, Korfiz Holm , Georg Schneider , Klaus Mehnert , Hermann Gerstner and Eugen Ott (correspondence partly preserved in their estates).

Wolf Justin Hartmann had no offspring; Only a year before his death did he marry his long-time girlfriend Franziska Weigel, who fell ill shortly after Hartmann's death and went to a nursing home. She had given a small part of his literary estate (almost exclusively manuscripts and a few photos, no letters) to his closest living friend, the writer and photographer Heinz Held in Cologne. Today this part of his estate is in the possession of the town of Marktbreit. An artistically gifted sister, Anastasia Hartmann (she designed the distinctive barbed wire binding ), like Franziska Weigel, worked in the diplomatic service of the German Reich (including with Franziska Weigel in Tokyo, hence Hartmann's acquaintance and friendship with Klaus Mehnert and the diplomat Eugen Ott ). She also died with no offspring.

Wolf Justin Hartmann's main work

... is the tetralogy Die Schicksalsgeige , the concept of which he discussed in detail with friends such as Klaus Mehnert . This title is said to have been influenced by Arnold Böcklin , who thematized death in all of his oeuvre, with a view to Hartmann's title particularly aptly in the self-portrait with fiddling death from Munich around 1870 . In each of these four works, death is a major actor:

  • 1. (Death by accident or coincidence, "E-string sounds").
Thirst. First as a novella in the special edition "Young German Poets" of the Süddeutsche Monatshefte in May 1935 alongside contributions by Ludwig Friedrich Barthel , Josef Martin Bauer and others (Hartmann's contribution alone took up more than three quarters of the volume), then significantly expanded as a book in 1938 Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, four editions until the end of the war; Total circulation at least 25,000 copies.
  • 2. (suicide, "D-string was played").
Man in mars. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg 1940. Five editions, translation into Danish 1942 by Verlag Gyldendal ( Manden i Mærset, Übers: Gustav Hermansen ). Total circulation 101,000 copies, including 50,000 in a paperback war edition and 4,000 in the Danish translation.
  • 3. (Death by arrogance, "A-string gave the wise").
The parrot nest. A jungle story. Written as a novella in first-person form before or around 1930. Hartmann gave the manuscript to the Munich City Archives Director Hans Ludwig Held in 1932 (it is in the Monacensia Library together with the correspondence ). From November 23, 1947, Das Parageiennest was published in a substantially expanded version , but no longer written in first-person form, as the first serial novel in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , which was a great success for the newspaper, and in 1948 again expanded to include interim episodes Stromfeld Verlag Bergedorf near Hamburg. Several book club editions followed until 1956. From 1953, Das Parageiennest was published by Deutscher Volksbücher, and in 1952 a shortened edition was published by Europäische Jugendbuch Verlag. In 1956 the book was published in Belgium and the Netherlands ( Het Papegaaiennest, translator: Jan Willem Hofstra ) by NV Standaard Boekhandel, Antwerp and Amsterdam. In total there were at least 9 editions of this book in 6 publishers; Total circulation unknown, probably over 100,000 copies.
  • 4. (Murder, "Darkest note, G-string sounds").
The game on the Sulva. Munich: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh 1956, from 1958 also in the Bertelsmann readers' ring, translation into Spanish 1958 ( La partida del Sulva, Ediciones Destino, Barcelona, transl .: Emilio Donato Prunera ); German-language edition unknown, but at least 5000 copies, commercial failure, according to the license agreement in the Bertelsmann archive 3000 copies in Spain.

more publishments

  • Fists! Brains! Hearts! Novel. Albert Langen Verlag, Munich 1931, one edition (5000).
  • Barbed wire , drama. Written in 1932, published by Kurt Scholtze Nachf. Leipzig 1934, 1937. First performed in 1937 in Cologne, 1938 in Weimar (director: Sigfrid Sioli), another planned performance in Munich was prohibited by the NSdAP leadership there.
  • The snake ring. Teeth. At Goumiécourt in the church. Three stories. Verlag Albert Langen, Georg Müller, Munich 1935. These three stories, written before 1933, had already appeared in numerous magazines and as a radio broadcast, at least three editions.
  • They all fell ... poems by European soldiers. [Ed. and preface] R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1939. Two editions.
  • Gringo in the jungle. South American sketches. Hessen Verlag Hermann Essel, Gauting 1949. One edition (5000 copies).
  • A shine lay over the city. Novel. Verlag Deutsche Volksbücher 1952, an edition, unchanged reprint of the same as well as a half-leather book club edition in the German book club CA Kochs Nachf.
  • "The magic of a beloved city. For the 800th anniversary of Munich." - The reading lesson. Journal of the German Book Association. Volume 34, No. 7 (July 1958). Darmstadt 1958, 2 ff.
  • Copper the adventure of a revolution. Darmstadt: Wort und Bild Verlagsgesellschaft 1967.
  • By year and day. With a foreword by Wolfgang Hartmann. Afterword by Karl Hotz. Bamberg: Kleebaum Verlag 2009.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annual report of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Munich. ZDB ID 12448436 , 1914/15
  2. ↑ Wolf Hartmann: The foundations of the League of Nations. Erlangen 1923. - The only known copy (machine script) is in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, call number U 23 1568. (This and the following information from Hensel: Wolf Justin Hartmann , see web links.)
  3. ^ Karl Baldamus (pseudonym of Bernd Poieß): "Afterword" - Gringo in the jungle. South American sketches. Gauting 1949, 39 f.
  4. ↑ "A wonderful, a unique, a unique book!" ( Leipziger latest news ) cheered the feature section
  5. ↑ Wolfram Klövekorn
  6. ↑ Knud von Harbou : When Germany wanted to save its soul. The Süddeutsche Zeitung in the founding years after 1945. Munich 2015, 175 f.
personal data
SURNAME Hartmann, Wolf Justin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and officer
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Market wide
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1969
Place of death Munich