Alfons Paquet

Alfons Hermann Paquet (26 January 1881 – 8 February 1944) was a German writer and political journalist.

Biography

Early life and education

Alfons Paquet was born in Wiesbaden, the son of a strict Baptist glove maker, who did not grant him his wish to finish school with the Abitur. He had to complete an apprenticeship as a glove maker, after which he did a commercial apprenticeship in Mainz.

In 1900, he won a prize for a story and decided to move to Berlin and become a journalist. As early as 1901, he published a first volume of stories and the following year a book of poems and songs. Soon after, he became editor of the cultural magazine Die Rheinlande, published in Düsseldorf, and was able to finance his studies with various jobs from 1902 on, which he completed in 1907 at the University of Jena with a dissertation on economic history. During his studies, he became a member of the Ghibellinia gymnastics club in Heidelberg.

Travel writer

As early as 1903, Paquet began a travel activity that would determine his entire later life. He traveled through Siberia on the newly opened Trans-Siberian Railway. The very next year he made a trip to the United States to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 1904 also marked the beginning of his work for the Frankfurter Zeitung.

In the years leading up to World War I, Paquet made several trips to Mongolia and China, a trip on the Baghdad Railway to Syria, and to various other destinations. He also witnessed the Ferrer riots in Paris. They formed the background for his first novel Comrade Fleming.

In 1906 another volume of poetry was published, and in 1909 a volume of travelogues containing his correspondent reports for the Frankfurter Zeitung.

On October 18, 1910, he married the Frankfurt painter Marie Henriette Steinhausen and moved with her to Dresden-Hellerau, where Paquet now worked for the Deutscher Werkbund. The couple had six children by 1919. In Hellerau, Paquet published a volume of poetry and a book of short stories.

But even this period of starting a family and intensive writing activity did not keep him from traveling. Thus, in the spring of 1913, he undertook a trip to Jerusalem, which he interrupted due to the death of his father and continued in the fall of 1913. From 1914, he lived with his family in Oberursel until moving to the banks of the Main in Frankfurt[ river. In 1915, he published In Palestine. Paquet thus became a committed Christian supporter of Zionism.

War correspondent and playwright

In 1915, Paquet became a correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung in neutral Stockholm. From there, he observed events in Russia and in 1918 undertook reconnaissance in the civil war zone of Finland. In the summer of the same year, he went to Moscow to become an eyewitness and reporter of the Bolshevik Revolution. He made many contacts with leading communists before returning in November to Germany, which was in the midst of upheaval. He subsequently published widely, informing the German readership about the events in Russia.

After having longed for a pact between Germany and Russia during the war to prevent American supremacy, Paquet nevertheless became a supporter of the Weimar Republic and was intensely concerned with the idea of a "Rhenish" renewal of Europe with Germany as a mediator between East and West. He envisioned a pacifist Germany in a European union.

In the twenties, Paquet increasingly wrote for the theater. His plays were performed by Erwin Piscator at the Berlin Volksbühne. In 1925, he founded the "Bund Rheinischer Dichter" with Jakob Kneip and remained its chairman until 1933. In 1929. Paquet drafted the concept for Walter Ruttmann's film Melody of the World, which strings together a multitude of impressions of a trip around the world. The film is one of the first German sound films.

Pacifism in the National Socialist period

In 1932, Alfons Paquet was admitted to the Prussian Academy of Arts. In Frankfurt, he presented the Goethe Prize for several years as a representative of the city; he was secretary of the foundation's board of trustees. After the transfer of power to the National Socialists, he resigned from the Academy for political reasons; his Frankfurt position on the board of trustees was terminated. In 1934, he made extensive air journeys through Europe, about which he published a travel book. In 1935, he was briefly arrested in Berlin because he was considered a communist.

As a convinced pacifist, he had become a permanent member of the Quakers in 1933. Through this religious community, he maintained intensive contact with England and the USA and received visits from foreign co-religionists who wanted to get a picture of the situation in Germany. In 1938, he took the opportunity to travel to a Quaker congress in America, which he used to explore the country extensively. A book was published that was extremely friendly to the United States, in which he praised America's civil achievements in the highest terms.

Paquet was a member of the Reich's Writers Chamber.

In 1943, his youngest son fell in Russia. Paquet sank into deep dejection. During a bombing raid in February 1944, Alfons Paquet died of a heart attack in the cellar of his apartment building. His grave is located in Frankfurt's main cemetery. Streets were named after him in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main.

Works

• Lieder und Gesänge. Mit einer Vorbemerkung von Carl Busse (1902)
• Das Ausstellungsproblem in der Volkswirtschaft (1908)
• Südsibirien und die Nordwestmongolei. Politisch-geographische Studie und Reisebericht für die Geographische Gesellschaft zu Jena (1909)
• Kamerad Fleming (1911; 2004)
• Li oder im neuen Osten (1912)
• Erzählungen an Bord (1914)
• In Palästina (1915)
• Im kommunistischen Russland. Briefe aus Moskau (1919)
• Der Geist der russischen Revolution (1919; 2009)
• Der Rhein als Schicksal oder Das Problem der Völker (1920)
• Fluggast über Europa. Ein Roman der langen Strecken (1920–1933)
• Der Rhein, eine Reise (1923)
• Amerika. Hymnen/Gedichte (1925)
• Lusikas Stimme (1925)
• Antwort des Rheines. Eine Ideologie (1928)
• Der Neckar. Ein Lebensbild (1928; with drawings by Joachim Lutz)
• "Der Rhein". In: Fritz Taeuber, Grieben Grenzlandführer für die wandernde Jugend: Rheinische Grenzlande (1931)
• Amerika unter dem Regenbogen. Farben – Konturen – Perspektiven (1938)
• Der Rhein. Vision und Wirklichkeit (1940; phtos by Paul Wolff)
• Die Botschaft des Rheins. Erlebnis und Gedicht (1941)
• Die Frankfurterin (1947; 1970)
• Gaswelt und vier andere Essays (1940)
• Gedichte (1956; edited by Alexander von Bernus)

External links

• Official website
• Paquet, Alfons
• Works by Alfons Paquet at Internet Archives
• Works by Alfons Paquet at German National Library