Josef Magnus Wehner

Josef Magnus Wehner
Born	(1891-11-14)14 November 1891
Died
Nationality	German
Occupation	writer and playwright

Josef Magnus Wehner (14 November 1891 – 14 December 1973) was a German writer and playwright.

Biography

Josef Magnus Wehner was born in Bermbach, Buttlar, the son of Justus Wehner and his wife Maria Josephine (née Hahn). Wehner studied Germanistics and classical philology in Jena and Munich. He took part in the World War I as a volunteer in a Bavarian infantry regiment. In 1916, he was seriously wounded at Verdun.

After the war, he began writing stories and poems. In 1924, he found employment as an editor at the Münchner Zeitung. From 1934, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten carried his theater reviews.

On the occasion of the dedication of the Langemarck Memorial on July 10, 1932, he, who had himself been wounded on the Western Front, delivered a speech that was later widely disseminated, underpinning the myth of Langemarck. At the same time, commemorative ceremonies were held throughout the German Reich.

His breakthrough as a writer, and at the same time his greatest success, came in 1930 with his novel Seven Before Verdun, which was specifically directed against Erich Maria Remarque's book, All Quiet on the Western Front and presented a side the subject from a non defeatist point of view. The novel is characterized by enthusiasm for war and a glorification of German soldiering.

In May 1933, he was appointed to the poetry section of the Prussian Academy of Arts. He was among the 88 writers who signed the pledge of loyal allegiance to Adolf Hitler in October 1933. After 1933, Wehner joined the NSDAP. He defended himself against press attacks that called him a "cyclical National Socialist," pointing to his positive attitude toward National Socialist ideology and Hitler, which had already existed at the beginning of the 1920s and whom he saw as the bearer of hope for the realization of his idea of the Reich. Moreover, his publications had also helped to give the German soldier the respect he deserved against a wave of defamatory literature.

Wehner received an annual pension from the government. Munich appointed him an "honorary official" after he had already received the Literature Prize of the City of Munich in 1931.

His ideas of a German Reich, which was characterized not only by nationalism but also by Catholicism, met with less and less approval from the government.

During World War II, Wehner was active in patriotic propaganda primarily through speeches. In 1940, the Reichssender Köln broadcast his "Address to the German People," which was intended to increase enthusiasm for the war. As a poetry reading, his "Hymn to Germany" appeared on a record.

After the end of the war, several of Wehner's works were placed on the list of literature to be eliminated in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in the German Democratic Republic.

Works

Novels

• Der blaue Berg (1922)
• Die Hochzeitskuh (1928)
• Sieben vor Verdun (1930)
• Stadt und Festung Belgerad (1936)
• Erste Liebe (1941)
• Der schwarze Kaiser (1950)
• Mohammed (1952)
• Der Kondottiere Gottes (1956)

Short stories, novellas and legends

• Die mächtigste Frau (1922)
• Die Tropfenlegende (1923)
• Das Hasenmaul (1930)
• Die Wallfahrt nach Paris (1933)
• Geschichten aus der Rhön (1935)
• Das große Vaterunser, 1935
• Elisabeth (1939)
• Echnaton und Nofretete (1940)
• Der langsame Hochzeiter (1943)
• Das goldene Jahr (1943)
• Der rote Ball (1944)
• Drei Legenden (1949)
• Der schwarze Räuber von Haiti (1951)
• Die schöne junge Lilofee (1953)

Plays

• Das Gewitter (1926)
• Die Versuchung des Rabanus Maurus (1950)
• Johannes der Täufer (1952)
• Das Rosenwunder (1954)
• Das Fuldaer Bonifaziusspiel (1954)
• Saul und David (1954)
• Die aber ausharren bis zum Ende (1956)
• Das goldene Kalb (1961)
• Abt Sturmius von Fulda (1967)

Poetry

• Der Weiler Gottes (1920)
• Blumengedichte (1950)
• Erde, purpurne Flamme (1962)

Biographies

• Struensee. Die Schicksale des Grafen Struensee und der Königin Karoline Mathilde (1924)
• Albert Leo Schlageter (1934)
• Hindenburg (1936)
• Hebbel (1938)

Autobiographies

• Das land ohne schatten; tagebuch einer griechischen reise (1930)
• Mein Leben (1934)
• Als wir Rekruten waren (1938)

References

• Baird, Jay W. (2009). "Josef Magnus Wehner and the Dream of a New Reich." In: Hitler's War Poets: Literature and Politics in the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hohmann, Joachim S. (1988). "Parteigenosse Wehner hat ein Interesse daran, als Nationalsozialist unbelastet dazustehen..." Leben und Werk des Kriegs- und Heimatdichters Josef Magnus Wehner. Fulda: Zeitdruck.

External links

• Works by Josef Magnus Wehner at German National Library
• Works by Josef Magnus Wehner at Hathi Trust