Walter von Molo
Encyclopedia
Walter Ritter
/Reichsritter von Molo (June 14, 1880, Šternberk, Moravia
– October 27, 1958, Hechendorf, now Murnau am Staffelsee
) was a Czech
-born Austrian
writer.
. His youth was spent in Vienna
, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At high school he studied mechanical and electrical engineering
; he married his first wife, Rosa Richter, in 1906, had a son and daughter, and worked until 1913 as an engineer in the Viennese Patent Office. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War he moved to Berlin
to be with his Bavaria
n parents and rediscover his German roots, just as Berlin was transforming itself into a cultural capital. It was there that he embarked upon his career as a writer.
His first works, published during and shortly after the war, were bestsellers, and he quickly became one of the most popular of all German-speaking authors of the first half of the century. The books included biographies of Friedrich Schiller
, Frederick the Great, and Prince Eugen, as well as novels such as Ein Volk wacht auf ("A People Awakes", 1918–21). All were strongly marked by German nationalism
.
In 1925 he divorced Rosa, and five years later married Annemarie Mummenhoff.
Molo was a founding member of the German PEN Club, and also, in 1926, of the Prussian Academy of Arts
. From 1928 to 1930 he was chairman of the poetry section.
Molo remained a member of the academy after its purging of Jewish
members, and on 15 March 1933 he signed a declaration pledging loyalty to the Nazi leaders. In October he was one of the 88 German writers who went so far as to subscribe to the Vow of Most Faithful Allegiance (Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft
) to Adolf Hitler
. This was the same year that his two children left Germany. (Conrad returned in 1940; Trude did not.) In 1936 Molo wrote the screenplay for the film Fridericus, based on his novel of 1918. During the Second World War he wrote articles for the Nazi-controlled newspaper Krakauer Zeitung published in occupied Cracow.
Although Molo's biography of Frederick II of Prussia
was praised by the Nazis, he nevertheless came under attack as unvölkisch, ein Judenfreund and Pazifist (he had, for example, effusively praised the work of E. M. Remarque
), and there were attempts to push him from public life, with the banning of plays, and the suppression of certain books and their removal from libraries. In 1934, to avoid the public spotlight, he resigned from all the learned societies (except the Goethe Society) and moved to Murnau am Staffelsee
, where he had bought property two years before. The idea of exile from Germany itself was unthinkable to him. House searches and defamatory articles continued, and in August 1939 he was denaturalised. As a result of the harassment, he destroyed, with the help of his second wife Anne Marie, a large part of his private library, including correspondence with Stefan Zweig
, books by Thomas
and Heinrich Mann
bearing personal dedications, and many papers of his colleagues. All this potentially incriminating material ended up at the bottom of his garden pond. He was never placed under "protective custody" (Schutzhaft) as others were.
After the war he would become a bitter critic of the authors who had fled Germany. On 4 August 1945 an open letter from Molo to Thomas Mann, begging him to return from the US
, was published in the Hessischen Post and other newspapers both in Germany and abroad: "Your people, hungering and suffering for a third of a century, has in its innermost core nothing in common with all the misdeeds and crimes, the shameful horrors and lies...." His sentiments were echoed by Frank Thiess
, whose own piece would popularise the use of the phrase innere Emigration to describe the choice of some intellectuals to remain in Germany, a phrase Mann himself had used in 1933. Mann responded, on 28 September, in a statement which caused general indignation in Germany, that new books "published in Germany between 1933 and 1945, can be called less than worthless", that exile had been a sacrifice and not an evasion, and that the nation as a whole did bear responsibility for atrocities committed by its leaders.
This unleashed a huge controversy between the exiled authors and the ones who had chosen to remain. Molo claimed that writers who had abandoned Germany forfeited the right to shape its future.
Despite his appointment as honorary chairman of the German Society of Authors, he did not regain his former prominence. He died on 27 October 1958, and his remains were interred in what is now Molo Park in Murnau. Rosa died in 1970, and Annemarie in 1983.
Ritter
Ritter is a designation used as a title of nobility in German-speaking areas. Traditionally it denotes the second lowest rank within the nobility, standing above "Edler" and below "Freiherr"...
/Reichsritter von Molo (June 14, 1880, Šternberk, Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
– October 27, 1958, Hechendorf, now Murnau am Staffelsee
Murnau am Staffelsee
Murnau am Staffelsee is a market town in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Oberbayern region of Bavaria, Germany.Murnau is situated on the edge of the Bavarian alps, approx. 70 km south of Munich. Directly to its west is the Staffelsee lake.-History:Murnau was first documented in...
) was a Czech
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
-born Austrian
Austrians
Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....
writer.
Life
Walter von Molo was born on 14 June 1880 in Šternberk, MoraviaMoravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
. His youth was spent in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At high school he studied mechanical and electrical engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
; he married his first wife, Rosa Richter, in 1906, had a son and daughter, and worked until 1913 as an engineer in the Viennese Patent Office. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War he moved to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
to be with his Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
n parents and rediscover his German roots, just as Berlin was transforming itself into a cultural capital. It was there that he embarked upon his career as a writer.
His first works, published during and shortly after the war, were bestsellers, and he quickly became one of the most popular of all German-speaking authors of the first half of the century. The books included biographies of Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
, Frederick the Great, and Prince Eugen, as well as novels such as Ein Volk wacht auf ("A People Awakes", 1918–21). All were strongly marked by German nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
.
In 1925 he divorced Rosa, and five years later married Annemarie Mummenhoff.
Molo was a founding member of the German PEN Club, and also, in 1926, of the Prussian Academy of Arts
Prussian Academy of Arts
The Prussian Academy of Arts was an art school set up in Berlin, Brandenburg, in 1694/1696 by prince-elector Frederick III, in personal union Duke Frederick I of Prussia, and later king in Prussia. It had a decisive influence on art and its development in the German-speaking world throughout its...
. From 1928 to 1930 he was chairman of the poetry section.
Molo remained a member of the academy after its purging of Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
members, and on 15 March 1933 he signed a declaration pledging loyalty to the Nazi leaders. In October he was one of the 88 German writers who went so far as to subscribe to the Vow of Most Faithful Allegiance (Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft
Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft
The Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft was a declaration by 88 German writers and poets of their loyalty to Adolf Hitler...
) to Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. This was the same year that his two children left Germany. (Conrad returned in 1940; Trude did not.) In 1936 Molo wrote the screenplay for the film Fridericus, based on his novel of 1918. During the Second World War he wrote articles for the Nazi-controlled newspaper Krakauer Zeitung published in occupied Cracow.
Although Molo's biography of Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
was praised by the Nazis, he nevertheless came under attack as unvölkisch, ein Judenfreund and Pazifist (he had, for example, effusively praised the work of E. M. Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque was a German author, best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front.-Life and work:...
), and there were attempts to push him from public life, with the banning of plays, and the suppression of certain books and their removal from libraries. In 1934, to avoid the public spotlight, he resigned from all the learned societies (except the Goethe Society) and moved to Murnau am Staffelsee
Murnau am Staffelsee
Murnau am Staffelsee is a market town in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Oberbayern region of Bavaria, Germany.Murnau is situated on the edge of the Bavarian alps, approx. 70 km south of Munich. Directly to its west is the Staffelsee lake.-History:Murnau was first documented in...
, where he had bought property two years before. The idea of exile from Germany itself was unthinkable to him. House searches and defamatory articles continued, and in August 1939 he was denaturalised. As a result of the harassment, he destroyed, with the help of his second wife Anne Marie, a large part of his private library, including correspondence with Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
, books by Thomas
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
and Heinrich Mann
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
bearing personal dedications, and many papers of his colleagues. All this potentially incriminating material ended up at the bottom of his garden pond. He was never placed under "protective custody" (Schutzhaft) as others were.
After the war he would become a bitter critic of the authors who had fled Germany. On 4 August 1945 an open letter from Molo to Thomas Mann, begging him to return from the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, was published in the Hessischen Post and other newspapers both in Germany and abroad: "Your people, hungering and suffering for a third of a century, has in its innermost core nothing in common with all the misdeeds and crimes, the shameful horrors and lies...." His sentiments were echoed by Frank Thiess
Frank Thiess
Frank Thiess was a German writer.-Biography:Born in Eluisenstein, Russian Livonia , Thiess grew up in Berlin, where his family moved after Russia had annexed Livonia. He worked as a journalist for four years until he was enlisted into the German army in World War I...
, whose own piece would popularise the use of the phrase innere Emigration to describe the choice of some intellectuals to remain in Germany, a phrase Mann himself had used in 1933. Mann responded, on 28 September, in a statement which caused general indignation in Germany, that new books "published in Germany between 1933 and 1945, can be called less than worthless", that exile had been a sacrifice and not an evasion, and that the nation as a whole did bear responsibility for atrocities committed by its leaders.
This unleashed a huge controversy between the exiled authors and the ones who had chosen to remain. Molo claimed that writers who had abandoned Germany forfeited the right to shape its future.
Despite his appointment as honorary chairman of the German Society of Authors, he did not regain his former prominence. He died on 27 October 1958, and his remains were interred in what is now Molo Park in Murnau. Rosa died in 1970, and Annemarie in 1983.
Stories and novels
- Klaus Tiedmann der Kaufmann, 1909
- Ums Menschentum. Ein Schillerroman, 1912
- Im Titanenkampf. Ein Schillerroman, 1913
- Der Hochzeitsjunker. Ein Rennroman, 1913
- Die Freiheit. Ein Schillerroman, 1914
- Den Sternen zu. Ein Schillerroman, 1916
- Der Große Fritz im Krieg, 1917
- Schiller in Leipzig, 1917
- Die ewige Tragikomödie. Novellistische Studien 1906-1912, 1917
- Fridericus, novel, 1918
- Luise, novel, 1919
- Auf der rollenden Erde, novel, 1923
- Vom alten Fritz. 4 Erzählungen aus dem Leben des großen Königs, 1924
- Bodenmatz, novel, 1925
- Im ewigen Licht, novel, 1926
- Die Legende vom Herrn, 1927
- Hans Amrung und seine Frau und andere Novellen, 1927
- Mensch Luther, novel, 1928
- Die Scheidung. Ein Roman unserer Zeit, 1929
- Ein Deutscher ohne Deutschland. Ein Friedrich List-Roman, 1931
- Holunder in Polen, novel, 1933
- Der kleine Held, novel, 1934
- Eugenio von Savoy. Heimlicher Kaiser des Reichs, novel, 1936
- Geschichte einer Seele, 1938
- Das kluge Mädchen, novel, 1940
- Der Feldmarschall, 1940
- Sie sollen nur des Gesetzes spotten, stories, 1943
- Im Sommer. Eine Lebenssonate, 2 Erzählungen, 1943
- Der Menschenfreund, novel, 1948
- Die Affen Gottes. Roman der Zeit, 1950
Plays
- Das gelebte Leben, drama in 4 acts, 1911
- Die Mutter, drama in 4 acts, 1914
- Der Infant der Menschheit, drama in 3 acts, 1916
- Die Erlösung der Ethel, tragedy in 4 acts, 1917
- Friedrich StapsFriedrich StapsFriedrich Staps was an attempted assassin on Napoleon during the negotiations at Schönbrunn.-Biography:He was a son of a pastor and became a merchant, working at Erfurt and Leipzig...
. Ein deutsches Volksstück in 4 Aufzügen, 1918 - Der Hauch im All, tragedy in 3 acts, 1918
- Die helle Nacht, play in 3 acts, 1920
- Till Lausebums, romantic comedy in 3 acts, 1921
- Lebensballade, a play in 12 scenes, 1924
- Ordnung im Chaos, play in 8 tableaux, 1928
- Friedrich List. Ein deutsches Prophetenleben in 3 Aufzügen, 1934
Screenplays
- Fridericus (D, 1936), directed by Johannes MeyerJohannes MeyerJohannes Meyer , was a Danish film actor.He debuted in the theater in 1905.-Filmography:*De blaa drenge - 1933*Så til søs - 1933*Flugten fra millionerne - 1934*Lynet - 1934*Nøddebo Præstegård - 1934...
, with Otto Gebühr, Hilde Körber, Lil Dagover, Agnes Straub, Käthe Haack and others - Der unendliche Weg (D, 1942/43), directed by Hans Schweikart, with Eugen Klöpfer, Eva Immermann, Hedwig Wangel, Alice Treff and others
Other writings
- Deutsches Volk. Ein Flugblatt in jedes Haus, 1914
- Als ich die bunte Mütze trug. Deutsch-österreichische Studenten-Erinnerungen, 1914
- An unsere Seelen. Drei Flugblätter auf das Kriegsjahr 1914-1915, 1915
- Deutschland und Oesterreich. Kriegsaufsätze, 1915
- Deutsch sein heißt Mensch sein! Notschrei aus deutscher Seele, 1915
- An Frederik van Eeden und Romain Rolland. Offener Brief, 1915
- Sprüche der Seele, 1916
- Im Schritt der Jahrhunderte. Geschichtliche Bilder, 1917
- Italien. Erlebnisse Deutscher in Italien, 1921
- Im Zwielicht der Zeit. Bilder aus unseren Tagen, 1922
- Der deutschen Jugend gesagt, 1929
- Zwischen Tag und Traum. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze, 1930
- Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft. Ansprache am 22. März 1932 in Weimar, 1932
- Wie ich Deutschland möchte. Eine Rede über Friedrich List, 1932
- Lob des Leides, 1947
- Zu neuem Tag. Ein Lebensbericht, 1950
- So wunderbar ist das Leben. Erinnerungen und Begegnungen, 1957
- Wo ich Frieden fand. Erlebnisse und Erinnerungen, 1959
External links
- Eintrag zu Walter von Molo im Projekt Historischer Roman (Datenbank der Universität Innsbruck)
- Eintrag zu Walter von Molo bei filmportal.de
- Molo Park