Horst Lange
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Horst Lange (6 October 1904 – 6 July 1971) was a German poet who published during the Third Reich and is regarded as an example of Inner emigration. His writings have been categorised as Naturmagie and his novel Schwarze Weide is regarded as an important example of magical realism, a modernist fusion literary style.
Horst Lange was born on 6 October 1904 in Liegnitz, then a Prussian province. His father was chief clerk in the Prussian army, but suffered a nervous breakdown while serving during World War I. His mother came from a Roman Catholic family and instilled in Lange a love for poetry. In 1921 Lange ran away from home to join the Bauhaus school in Weimar. He dreamt of becoming a painter and was given an office job in the school by his uncle who taught architecture. At the school he met Paul Klee and Walter Gropius, Gropius advised him to focus on developing his literary talent. Lange returned to Liegnitz, finished school and in 1925 began studying art history, literature and theatre at the University of Berlin.[1]
Writings during the Weimar Republic
While studying and living in Berlin Lange published poems and short stories. His literary friends were Günter Eich and Martin Raschke, both published in the magazine Die Kolonne and would continue to publish non-conformist literature after the Nazis seized power. Lange briefly joined the Communist Party, and left Berlin to study art history in Breslau. In Breslau he met the poet Oda Schaefer with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. They had an open relationship and both pursued other affairs, which inspired their writings. In 1931 the couple moved to Berlin, openly opposed the NSDAP and distributed anti-Nazi stickers. When the Nazis seized power in March 1933 they were denounced by their neighbour and their apartment was searched.[2]
Lange's published writings were regarded as Naturmagie (nature magic), where a magic sense unfolded within the realm of an ambivalent nature. This movement was connected with writers who published in the journal Die Kolonne between 1929 and 1932. Other members of the Naturmagie literary movement were Eich, Peter Huchel, Elisabeth Langgässer, Wilhelm Lehmann and Oskar Loerke.[3]
Writings during the Third Reich
The couple married in 1933 and Lange began work on his first novel. During the Third Reich Lange and Schaefer engaged in what has later been termed Inner Emigration. As intellectuals they remained in Germany and opposed the Nazi regime in varying degrees of openness. In 1935 the historian Sebastian Haffner tried to persuade the couple to follow him into exile, but Lange "felt tied to the German language".[4]
Dark visions of the present were reinforced by Lang's fatalism. His most important work and his first novel was published in the autumn of 1937 under the title Schwarze Weide (Black Willow). In line with Schopenhauer's philosophy on fate, and in the absence of the invisible net (harmonia praestabilitata) with which all men are bound, Lange expressed the deep conviction "that all their hands and feet are tied".[5] In this poetic work the story begins with the adolescent first-person narrator, plagued by his awakening sexuality. A sect dominates the local population of the area the protagonist left in his youth. While on a holiday on a country estate the narrator predicts but cannot prevent a murder he has seen in a vision. An innocent man is sentenced, while the murderer whips the local population into a hysterical frenzy. Omens, such as red snow, are interpreted as pointing to the end of time. Personal relationships are also infected with morbidity. All the while the origin of the protagonist's guilt is often his perceived sexual deformity. In the novel Lange confronts the reader with adultery, incest, faithlessness, lust, rape, and the feelings of guilt and self-incrimination. All these feelings reach far back into the past. The protagonist returns to the estate many years later, tortured by his conscience and the desire to atone his guilt in some way.[6]
Schwarze Weide was enthusiastically received by authors such as Ernst Jünger, Hermann Hesse and Gotfried Benn. Schaefer later wrote that Lange gave the main protagonist key features of Adolf Hitler. Until then a level of cultural and journalistic pluralism prevailed in Germany. During the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin the Nazi regime concealed its radical tendencies and aesthetic modernism was tolerated so long as it was not political. But in the summer of 1937 the Nazis' exhibition on Degenerate Art caused a shift in cultural policy. Lange wrote to a friend "I remain what I am: a degenerate artist".[7] Schwarze Weide has been named as an important magic realism novel. This literary movement comprised young authors who had stayed in Nazi Germany, were bitterly disappointed with the Weimar Republic and explored in their works the modernist fusion of rationality and irrationality, with a tendency to the hermetic and magic. Magic realism remained important in post-war Germany and was developed further by authors such as Wolfdietrich Schnurre and Günter Grass.[8]
