Manfred Hausmann

Manfred Hausmann

Stamp from Deutsche Post AG commemorating the 100th birthday of Manfred Hausmann (1998)

Manfred Georg Andreas Hausmann (10 September 1898 – 6 August 1986) was a German writer, journalist and lay preacher. After neo-Romantic beginnings, he turned to Christianity in the early 1930s. In the 1920s he had many followers due to his "Vagabond Novels"; after World War II thanks to his numerous essays, poems, the widely read "Martin Stories" and last but not least his sermons.

Biography

Manfred Hausmann was born in Kassel, the son of a Göttingen factory owner. He attended grammar school and joined the Wandervogel movement at an early age. In 1916 he passed the emergency school-leaving examination and became a soldier in the World War I. After the war he studied German, philosophy and art history in Göttingen and Munich. In 1922 he received his doctorate in Munich. In the spring of 1923 he worked for a time with Friedrich Gundolf in Heidelberg as a post-doctoral fellow and at the same time as dramaturg of the Hohentwiel Folk Festival.

In 1923/24 — by then married to the mathematics student Irmgard Schmidt — Hausmann completed a merchant apprenticeship in Bremen. In 1924 the twins Wolf and Tjark were born. In 1924 and 1925 Hausmann was the feature editor of the Weser-Zeitung, and his first novellas were also published. He dedicated the book edition with the first two novellas Die Frühlingsfeier and Holder to "Mascha" — that was the nickname of Martha Vogeler (1905–1993), the third daughter of the Worpswede artist Heinrich Vogeler.

In 1924, together with Wilhelm Scharrelmann, Hans Friedrich Blunck, Hans Franck, Alma Rogge, and others, Hausmann founded The Cog in Bremen, an authors' association of primarily anti-modern, conservative, and in part völkisch-national authors of the Low German movement.

At the end of 1925, he quit his job at the Weser-Zeitung and spent a year wandering around Germany as a tramp, which resulted in his first major fictional work, the picaresque novel Lampioon Kisses Girls and Little Birch Trees (1928).

The great success of this novel enabled Hausmann to live as a freelance writer. He settled in the artists' colony of Worpswede near Bremen. In 1929 he undertook a trip to America. In 1930 his daughter Bettina was born. As a result of intensive study of the Bible and of writings by Karl Barth, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky, Hausmann turned to Christianity around 1933. When the publisher Samuel von Fischer died in 1934, Hausmann delivered the eulogy. In 1936 his son Martin was born. In 1938, his first volume of poetry, The Years of Our Life, was published.

Hausmann is said to have signed up for military service in 1939, but was soon forced to resign due to an old injury. He lived in seclusion during the war.

From 1945 to 1950, Hausmann sat on the Worpswede municipal council for the SPD — as he had done previously from 1929 to 1933. In 1950, he moved from Worpswede to Bremen-Rönnebeck to a new house he had built on the steep bank of the Weser, designed by the architect Rolf Störmer. He worked in Bremen from 1945 to 1952 as head of the feature section of the Weser-Kurier.

Alongside Gertrud von Le Fort and Albrecht Goes, Hausmann signed a manifesto protesting against plans to equip the Bundeswehr with atomic weapons in 1958.

Hausmann was a member of the jury for the award of the City of Bremen Literature Prize. When, at a meeting in 1959 that Hausmann did not attend, the jury proposed Günter Grass for the 1960 literature prize, Hausmann publicly opposed the decision and resigned his membership on the jury. In fact, the Bremen Senate decided against Grass, and the prize was not awarded in 1960.

In addition to stories, novels, songs and poems, Hausmann's wide-ranging oeuvre includes essays, dramas, theological writings and a literary reworking of the Song of Solomon. He also translated early Greek, Chinese and Japanese poems into German. However, preaching increasingly moved into the foreground of his work. In 1968 he was ordained as an elder preacher of the Evangelical Church of Bremen. Hausmann took on many preaching and lecturing duties and spoke at radio events and church conventions. In addition, he "supplied the literary market with edifying prose miniatures" that secured him a loyal readership, according to a recent radio portrait. He published these "meditations on 'time and eternity'" in anthologies with programmatic titles: One must watch, The decision, Comforting signs, Behind the things.

Abel with the Harmonica, bronze statue by Marie-Luise Lentz (1955)

From 1950 to 1955, Manfred Hausmann was a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry and from 1956 to 1986 of the Academy of Arts, Berlin (Literature Section).

In Schwaigern, Manfred-Hausmann street was named after him. In 1955, the bronze sculpture Abel with the harmonica by Marie-Luise Lentz (1912–2003) was erected in front of the former Bremen-Blumenthal municipal library building.

Hausmann died in Bremen. His grave is located in the Lutheran cemetery of the Rönnebeck-Farge Church, where he served as a lay preacher.

Writings

Numerous books by Hausmann are still being published; in some cases they reach print runs of well over a hundred thousand. Particularly successful was Martin. Stories from a Happy World.

A 1986 obituary stated, "With novels that became favorites of a generation in the late twenties and early thirties — Lampioon Kisses Girls and Little Birch Trees, Salute to Heaven, Abel with the Harmonica — Manfred Hausmann presented himself as a descendant of the young Hamsun, the young Hesse, a romantic with fresh sentimentality and good-for-nothing charm."

Arn Strohmeyer attributes to Hausmann a "great affection for all things military" which, despite his severe wounds in the war, did not subside throughout his life. In contrast, Hausmann's largely unpublished early works, especially poems and stories, are a clear sign of his traumatization by his experiences in the First World War, which led to a rejection of all violence.

Strohmeyer interprets Hausmann's positive comment in a 1978 newsletter of the Walter Flex Circle of Friends on the war poet Walter Flex, who died in 1917, and his poetry as a sign of fundamental agreement with his nationalism. He also interprets Hausmann's 1922 dissertation topic Art Poetry and Folk Poetry in the German Soldier's Song of 1914/18 as stemming from an alleged preference on Hausmann's part for the warlike — caused by the lasting impression that the experiences in World War I had left on Hausmann. According to Strohmeyer, Hausmann himself had already written poems at this time, such as Das Schwert (The Sword), in which he "virtually glorifies killing". This and other poems by Hausmann can, however, also be interpreted without further ado as a kind of "cry of woe" about the fatal fascination that power exerts on people and the fright about one's own abysses.

In his autobiographical curriculum vitae of 1931, Hausmann confessed that as a young soldier he had initially understood "virtually nothing of the nature and meaning of war. It was not until the summer of 1918, in a military hospital, that his "eyes opened a little."

Works

• Kunstdichtung und Volksdichtung im deutschen Soldatenlied 1914–18 (1922; dissertation)
• Die Frühlingsfeier (1924; novellas)
• Orgelkaporgel (1925; stories)
• Alt-Hollands Bürgerbauten (1926; introduction)
• Die Verirrten (1927; novellas)
• Marienkind (1927)
• Lampioon küßt Mädchen und kleine Birken. Abenteuer eines Wanderers (1928; novel)
• Gärten von Fr. Gildemeister (1928)
• Lilofee (1929; 1936; a dramatic ballad)
• Salut gen Himmel (1929; novel)
• Kleine Liebe zu Amerika. Ein junger Mann schlendert durch die Staaten (1930)
• Abel mit der Mundharmonika (1932; 1934; 1941; 1953)
• Die Föhre (1933)
• Ontje Arps (1934)
• Die Begegnung (1936; with an afterword by Wilhelm Scharrelmann)
• Abschied von der Jugend (1937; reprinted as Abschied vom Traum der Jugend)
• Demeter (1937; stories)
• Jahre des Lebens (1938; 1974; poetry)
• Mond hinter Wolken (1938; stories; with an afterword by Franz Hammer)
• Einer muß wachen (1939; art criticism)
• Geliebtes Bremen (1939)
• Geheimnis einer Landschaft – Worpswede (1940)
• Quartier bei Magelone: Aus den Papieren des Oberleutnants Skram (1941)
• Alte Musik (1942; poetry)
• Das Worpsweder Hirtenspiel (1946)
• Füreinander (1946; poetry)
• Vorspiel (1947)
• Von der dreifachen Natur des Buches (1948)
• Die Gedichte (1949)
• Das Erwachen (1949)
• Martin (1949; reprinted as Martin. Geschichten aus einer glücklichen Welt, with drawings by Eva Kausche-Kongsbak, 1953)
• Einer muß wachen. Betrachtungen. Briefe. Gedanken. Reden (1950)
• Der dunkle Reigen (1951; a mystery play)
• Liebe, Tod und Vollmondnächte (1951; Japanese poetry translation)
• Der Überfall (1952; collected stories)
• Isabel (1953)
• Liebende leben von der Vergebung (1953; novel)
• Die Begegnung (1953; two stories, with an autobiographical afterword)
• Hafenbar (1954; play)
• Hinter dem Perlenvorhang. Gedichte nach dem Chinesischen (1954; 2nd revised edition, 1956)
• Der Fischbecker Wandteppich (1955)
• Walt Disney: Die Wüste lebt (1955)
• Bremen. Gesicht einer Hansestadt (1955; with pictures by Hans Saebens)
• Die Entscheidung (1955)
• Was dir nicht angehört (1956)
• Trost im Trostlosen (1956; memorial speech at a ceremony of the German War Graves Commission on Remembrance Day 1956 in Bonn's Plenary Hall)
• Andreas. Geschichten um Martins Vater (1957; with drawings by Eva Kausche-Kongsbak)
• Aufruhr in der Marktkirche (1957; play)
• Der beste Fahrer von Edinburgh (1958; story)
• Das Lied der Lieder, das man dem König Salomo zuschreibt (1958; broadcast)
• Die Zauberin von Buxtehude (1959; play)
• Tröstliche Zeichen (1959)
• Propheten, Apostel, Evangelisten (1959)
• Irrsal der Liebe (1960; poetry)
• Spiegel des Lebens (1960; ceremonial speech on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the German Football Association)
• Ruf der Regenpfeifer (1961; with Kuniyo Takayasu)
• Heute noch (1962)
• Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten (1962)
• Kleiner Stern im dunklen Strom (1963; novel)
• Stadt am Strom (1963)
• Gelöstes Haar (1964; Japanese poems under the pseudonym of Toyotama Tsuno)
• Zwei unter Millionen (1964)
• Kassel (1964)
• Und wie Musik in der Nacht (1965)
• Brüderliche Welt (1965)
• Und es geschah (1965; thoughts on the Bible)
• Sternsagen (1965)
• Eine Regennacht (1965)
• Widerschein der Ewigkeit (1966)
• Spiegel des Lebens. Gedanken über das Fußballspiel (1966)
• Heiliger Abend (1967)
• Hinter den Dingen (1967)
• An die Eltern eines Konfirmanden (1968)
• Kreise um eine Mitte (1968; essays)
• Wort vom Wort (1968)
• Gottes Ja (1969; nine sermons)
• Der golddurchwirkte Schleier (1969; poetry)
• Keiner weiß die Stunde (1970; tories from five decades)
• Das abgründige Geheimnis (1972; fifteen sermons)
• Vergebung (1972)
• Wenn dieses alles Faulheit ist (1972; with pictures by Horst Lemke)
• Kleine Begegnungen mit großen Leuten (1973)
• Der Mensch in der Begegnung mit der Bibel (1973)
• Die Nacht der Nächte (1973)
• Zwei mal zwei im Warenhaus (1973)
• Im Spiegel der Erinnerung (1974)
• Die Nienburger Revolution (1975; play)
• Nüchternheit (1975)
• Der Mensch vor Gottes Angesicht (1976)
• Bis nördlich von Jan Mayen (1978)
• Andreas, Viola und der neue Stern (1975; novel)
• Unvernunft zu dritt (1977)
• Welt aus Licht und Eis (1979)
• Vom Reichtum des Lebens (1979)
• Gottes Nähe (1981)
• Der Hüttenfuchs (1983)
• Das Unerwartete (1988)
• Worpsweder Kalenderblätter (1990)

References

• Fröhling, Carl Peter (1964). Sprache und Stil in den Romanen Manfred Hausmanns. Bonn.
• Hajek, Siegfried (1953). Manfred Hausmann. Wuppertal: E. Müller Verlag.
• Kriehn, Ulrich (2008). Zwischen Kunst und Verkündigung. Manfred Hausmanns Werk zwischen Literatur und Theologie. Marburg.
• Schauder, Karlheinz (1963). Manfred Hausmann. Wuppertal.
• Schauder, Karlheinz (1979). Manfred Hausmann. Weg und Werk. Neukirchen-Vluyn.

Externnal links

• Manfred Hausmann at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by Manfred Hausmann at German National Library
• Works by Manfred Hausmann at German Digital Library