Like Kolbenheyer, Hans Grimm commented on the events in the Academy in his post-war account of the Third Reich, Warum – Woher – Aber Wohin?38 Reflecting on the re-constitution of the Literature Section, he pointed to the peer selection process to distance those involved in the Academy from the Nazi government and to emphasise its credentials as an independent representative body for ‘German’ literature. This strategy to claim the legacy of the Academy’s historic prestige was adopted by several völkisch-nationalists after 1945. It was important for their efforts to re-establish their credibility as serious writers in post-war Germany and strongly influenced their accounts of the organisation in the Third Reich.
In 1933, however, it could not be taken for granted that the newly elected writers would accept the invitation to join the Academy. Kolbenheyer was not alone in hesitating. Even writers who were ideologically acceptable to the Nazis were determined to retain the position and autonomy of the Academy, and with it their own influence over the literary sphere. On 10th May Münchhausen wrote to Grimm, emphasising his willingness to co-operate, but also expressing concerns regarding Rust and the Nazi government. His comment that ‘they hold attitude to be more important than artistic accomplishment’ highlighted his elitist, even aristocratic vision for the Academy. Echoing völkisch-nationalist objections to the inclu-sion of Schriftsteller during the Weimar Republic, he was concerned to ensure that membership should not be devalued through the inclusion of
37 Brenner (ed.), Ende einer bürgerlichen Kunst-Institution, p. 21.
38 Grimm, Warum – Woher – Aber Wohin?.
‘dilettante’ writers.39 In contrast to the Nazi authorities, Münchhausen was not politically dogmatic. He described an academy of thirty members of the German Volk that would work together even if they represented different Weltansschauungen. This was reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s original con-viction that the Academy should represent the entire spectrum of German literature. Münchhausen’s definition of German literature was, however, narrower than Mann’s; for Münchhausen race was decisive.40
Münchhausen made it clear in his response to Rust’s invitation to join the Academy that his main concern was to ensure that the writers therein were worthy of membership, and he believed two of the new mem-bers, in particular, to be unworthy: Johst and Beumelburg. Grimm, for one, agreed. Münchhausen also found common ground with his völkisch- nationalist colleagues over his concern about the space for independent action that would be conferred on the reconstituted Academy. In a letter to the Prussian Minister for Culture in May 1933, he noted that the news-papers had reported that Rust had ‘appointed’ the new members as the Curator of the Academy. Münchhausen therefore demanded to know whether and to what extent Rust’s opinion would count on Academy matters in the future.41
During preliminary discussions with Kolbenheyer and other völkisch-nationalists in the weeks leading up to the constitutional meeting on 7th June, Rust sought to ensure that he presented the writers with an appealing vision of the Academy’s future, and one that appeared to cor-respond with their ambitions. Following their meeting in Halle in May 1933,42 Kolbenheyer started work on a plan for the future Academy, as the
39 Münchhausen to Grimm, 10.5.1933 DLA – A: Grimm, Münchhausen to Grimm, 1927–1945. See also Stephan Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer: Zum Verhältnis von Adel und Nationalsozialismus. Dokumentation einer Veranstaltung am 9. Juli 2004 im Studienzentrum Karl-Marx-Haus in Trier (Trier: Akademie Verlag, 2003).
40 Münchhausen to Grimm, 10.5.1933, DLA – A: Grimm, Münchhausen to Grimm, 1927–1945.
41 Münchhausen to Rust, 10.5.1933, DLA – A: Grimm, Münchhausen to Grimm, 1927–1945.
42 See p. 162.
Minister had requested. In his autobiography he wrote that he carried his draft programme with him around the cities in which he was lecturing during the week that followed – Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Lübeck, Kiel, Bremen and Bremerhaven – before arriving in Berlin the next week-end for a second meeting with Rust.
This second meeting did not go as Kolbenheyer had hoped; from the moment of his arrival it was clear that things had not developed positively in the week since their initial conversation. Also present this time were Stapel, Schäfer, Stehr, Strauß, Münchhausen, Blunck and Vesper, and Kolbenheyer learned that Hanns Johst and Walter von Molo had both had conversations with Rust during the previous week. Rust delivered an hour-long speech, after which he was visibly pleased with the impression he had apparently made on the assembled writers. According to Kolbenheyer’s post-war account, he had, however, only succeeded in dampening their enthusiasm.
There was a significant pause before Stehr, the oldest, mumbled that Rust’s plans were acceptable. Kolbenheyer nodded his assent. Stapel then summed up the results of Rust’s lengthy presentation: the writers would be provided with complete freedom to establish the Academy. Rust confirmed that this was his intention. All that was left, Kolbenheyer concluded, was to decide the date of the constitutional assembly for the new Academy. He did not present his draft programme for the Academy on this occasion.
The business was followed by a cold buffet. In spite of the critical tone of his account, written in the 1950s when Kolbenheyer was seeking to distance his name from association with the Nazis, he was unable to resist noting that the invitation to lunch was a particular honour, being the first reception hosted by the Prussian Ministry of Culture under Rust.
Overall, Kolbenheyer nonetheless suggested, this first encounter with the Nazi government was discouraging. He described Rust as a man who had been elevated to a difficult position from his previous occupation as a middle school teacher. He had not been given time to come to terms with the responsibilities of his office. During the meal, Kolbenheyer and Stapel talked to Rust’s wife. Kolbenheyer described her as bürgerlich, like her husband, and reluctant to talk about cultural topics. Nonetheless, she was clearly trying to assess the two writers’ political views. Rust’s adju-tant, Zierold, was apparently engaged in similar observation of the other
guests. Writing after 1945, Kolbenheyer suggests that Frau Rust’s verdict was unlikely to have been complimentary.43
Predictably perhaps, Kolbenheyer’s account of the meeting and subsequent events in the Academy presents its author as a reluctant actor in the organisation, and a consistent critic of the Nazis. At the same time it seeks to suggest that the political scenery was not solely negative; involve-ment in the Nazi regime, it is implied, did not mean acceptance of or cul-pability for the negative aspects of the twelve years of National Socialist rule. While claiming to have had a premonition of what was to come, Kolbenheyer concluded that he had been drawn in and now had to see the journey to the end.44
Addressing twenty-two of the section’s now twenty-eight members at the start of the constitutional meeting held on 7th and 8th June 1933 in Berlin, Rust, as Prussian Minister of Culture, responded to the newly constituted section positively and sought to allay concerns like those pre-viously expressed by Münchhausen and Kolbenheyer. He stated that the encroachment into the autonomy of the Academy had been necessary in order to bring about something new, but it would not be repeated.
He therefore formally returned the Academy’s autonomy to its members.
Pre-empting the expected transformation of the Prussian Ministry of Culture into a German Ministry of Culture, which never came to fruition, Rust went on to declare that the Prussian Academy of Arts would become a German Academy, responsible as the representative of German literature to the German Volk. In recognition of this, he renamed the ‘Sektion für Dichtkunst’ the ‘Deutsche Akademie der Dichtung’. He thus appeared to fulfil the hopes of its völkisch-nationalist members, who had campaigned for this vision since its foundation in 1926.45
While Rust formally returned the Academy’s autonomy, he did not provide either a legal basis or the institutional space that would have allowed
43 Kolbenheyer, Sebastian Karst, vol. III, pp. 167–169.
44 Ibid. p. 169.
45 Minutes of the Constitutional Meeting of the Literature Section in the Prussian Academy of Arts held in Berlin on 7th June 1933 in Brenner (ed.), Ende einer bürger-lichen Kunst-Institution, pp. 75–76.
the Academy to exercise its independence. He ensured that the Academy remained subordinate to him as Prussian Minister of Culture by asserting the need for co-operation with his Ministry and by claiming a continued role for the Nazi state. Sticking to familiar völkisch rhetoric, which empha-sised the geistig over more practical legal questions, he avoided addressing questions of the Academy’s legal basis and formal competencies.46
The Academy’s weakness was also apparent in Blunck’s suggestion that the members assembled on 7th June issue a declaration that ‘The actions of the Minister regarding the appointment of new members to the Prussian Academy of Arts are retroactively approved.’47 In accepting this, the members attempted to assert their autonomy, but they were not in a position to reject these changes, to which many of them owed their membership of the Academy in the first place.
A second declaration, also proposed by Blunck and accepted by the members present, made the creation of a German Literature Academy one of the foundations for the Section’s future work. This, Blunck suggested, should accord with the model suggested by Kolbenheyer, who proposed a German Academy that would include the ministers of culture of all the Länder as a curatorial body with the Prussian Minister as its chair.48 Thus Kolbenheyer hoped to solve the problem of the Literature Academy’s dual allegiance to Prussia and to Germany as a whole. Will Vesper pointed out that the question of the Academy was linked to the bigger question of a Reich Ministry of Culture. It was desirable, he argued, that the Prussian Ministry of Culture should be allowed to develop into such an institution.
It was, therefore, not the intention of the Literature Section to distance itself from the Prussian Ministry. The assembled members agreed to both proposals. There was also apparent agreement that the new work of the Academy should not be based on the existing constitution. While the Literature Section would remain part of the Prussian Academy of Arts as it had been before – Benn pointed out that a formal dissolution of the
46 Ibid., p. 77.
47 Ibid., p. 79.
48 Ibid., p. 79.
old section had purposely not been declared – it would develop a new constitution on which its future would be built.49
The legal status of the new Literature Academy continued to cause considerable confusion and much debate in the days, months and years that followed. As President of the Prussian Academy of Arts, Schillings consistently sought to maintain the cohesion of its three sections. On 10th June 1933 he wrote to Ministerialrat Dr. von Staa, the legal and administra-tive advisor to the Prussian Academy, asking what the legal consequences of the decision to declare the Literature Section of the Prussian Academy of Arts a German Academy of Literature were likely to be. He enquired about the significance of the term reichszuständig (responsible to the Reich), which had been adopted by the Section.50 Von Staa’s response of 15th June declared unequivocally that the decision to change the Section’s name to the German Academy of Literature had no immediate legal implications.
Likewise the term reichszuständig had little practical meaning as long as the Academy was dependent financially on the Prussian Academy of Arts and therefore the Prussian budget. That being the case, the term could only be interpreted as a statement that all the Volksstämme were repre-sented through their writers in the Literature Section. The decision of the Academy to become a German Academy of Literature could therefore be viewed only as a programmatic declaration.51
The meeting of 7th and 8th June also highlighted the significant legacy of the Academy’s history in the Weimar Republic. In particular, the return of Kolbenheyer, Schäfer and Strauß to the Academy appeared, at least to themselves, to provide an opportunity to reassert their position under more favourable political and cultural circumstances and they brought with them earlier ambitions. These were centred around their desire to make the German Academy of Literature a reality. They found support and sympa-thy for their position from both the surviving members and those elected to
49 Ibid., pp. 78–79.
50 Max von Schillings to Ministerialrat Dr. von Staa, 10th June 1933, in Brenner (ed.), Ende einer bürgerlichen Kunst-Institution, p. 89.
51 Dr. von Staa to von Schillings, 15th June 1933, in Brenner (ed.), Ende einer bürgerlichen Kunst-Institution, pp. 89–90.
the Academy for the first time. Remembering Paul Ernst, who had died on 13th May 1933, shortly after being called to join the Section, Schillings read from a letter from Ernst’s widow: ‘In the days of his last illness, the deceased spoke of the difficult task facing the Academy. He was convinced that it had to be a spiritual conscience for the entire German Volk.’52 The impact of this idea was underlined by Grimm in his reflection on the Academy after 1945, when he repeated this assertion as the guiding principle for the actions of the völkisch-nationalist bloc.53 Hermann Stehr also spoke positively, assert-ing that the intention to become a German Academy was unreserved and uncontested. For him, the members of the Section now already represented the German Academy; the problem facing them was to make this official.
On 7th June, Kolbenheyer also finally presented his proposal for a new constitution for a German Academy of Literature. His reminiscences emphasised the continuity with his work in the Academy during the Weimar Republic.54 Both the contents of Kolbenheyer’s programme and his tenacity in presenting it to the assembled members displayed his deep-seated con-cern that the new Academy should not suffer from the impotence he felt had plagued the old one, but instead should be effective in representing the pinnacle of German literature, at home and abroad.55 Like Münchhausen, he was critical of the mixture of artistic abilities represented among its new members in 1933.56 At the centre of his plan was the confirmation of the position and responsibilities of the Senate and the idea of the Academy as the mediator between German literature and the nation.57 He also expressed
52 Minutes of the Constitutional Meeting of the Literature Section in the Prussian Academy of Arts, 7th June 1933 in Brenner (ed.), Ende einer bürgerlichen Kunst-Institution, p. 75.
53 Grimm, Warum – Woher – Aber Wohin?, p. 162.
54 Kolbenheyer, Sebastian Karst, vol. III, p. 174.
55 Minutes of the Constitutional Meeting of the Literature Section in the Prussian Academy of Arts, 7th June 1933 in Brenner (ed.), Ende einer bürgerlichen Kunst-Institution, pp. 80–83.
56 Kolbenheyer, Sebastian Karst, vol. III, p. 174.
57 Minutes of the Constitutional Meeting of the Literature Section in the Prussian Academy of Arts, 7th June 1933 in Brenner (ed.), Ende einer bürgerlichen Kunst-Institution, pp. 80–83.
concern at the unclear legal basis of the Academy, pointing out that its authority was limited not only by Rust, but by its legal and institutional associations. While it defined itself as a German institution, it retained its previous legal status as part of the Prussian Academy of Arts. As a result, it faced the problem of finding a place within the institutional apparatus of the Third Reich and at the same time its position within the Prussian Academy was undermined. While it remained financially dependent on its parent institution, its remit stretched beyond the Prussian Academy’s bounds.58
Kolbenheyer’s vision for the Academy was, as he observed him-self, actually realised more effectively six months later in the form of the Reichsschrifttumskammer under Goebbels. Kolbenheyer criticised the party political nature of that organisation and suggests that Hanns Johst was aware from the start of the direction things were taking behind the scenes in the government ministries. It was quickly clear to Kolbenheyer, according to his post-war account, ‘that I […] was not actually faced by an assembly that had any inclination to engage with the idea of an independent acad-emy of writers. Fundamentally, all that was desired was an institution that would satisfy the vanities [of its members].’59
The election of Johst as President of the Literature Academy was evi-dence of the government’s determination to keep that body under its con-trol. Nonetheless, Kolbenheyer and his secessionist colleagues from the old Academy still hoped to rescue the situation. The organisation had no statute once it was accepted that that of the old Prussian Academy of Arts was not valid for a German Academy of Literature. Moreover, Rust had promised the writers that they would have the power to shape the new institution themselves. Thus Kolbenheyer invited Schäfer and Strauß to join him to form a statute commission, along with Johst and Beumelburg, who were included in order to avoid contrivances against the commission’s work.60
58 Press release of the Amtlicher Preußischer Pressedienst, 9th June 1933: ‘Tagung der Deutschen Akademie der Dichtung’ in Brenner (ed.), Ende einer bürgerlichen Kunst-Institution, pp. 86–87.
59 Kolbenheyer, Sebastian Karst, vol. III, p. 174.
60 Ibid., pp. 174–175.
After the Second World War, Kolbenheyer described the times in which the new Academy was created as a period of change in which German life was to be transformed into a new reality. The revolution was to touch every corner of German existence. He suggested that he was aware that the uniformity these changes demanded would naturally act against the establishment of an autonomous Literature Academy. It was only possible to understand Rust’s promise of freedom, therefore, under the precondition that the institution would ‘naturally’ conform to the general basis of the new Germany. Nonetheless, defending himself and his colleagues, he stated that unquestioning conformity was likely to contradict the fundamental position of several important members. In taking on the work of providing the Academy with a new constitution, Kolbenheyer therefore wanted to present his colleagues with a statute they could accept, placing the decision-making powers of the Academy in the hands of the Senate. Thus, Johst as President, his deputy and the secretary would be contained as the executive organs of the Senate. Such a plan meant breaking with the Führerprinzip that was increasingly becoming the guiding principle of political organisation in Germany. The discus-sions over the new statute lasted three months, after which it was unani-mously accepted by the members of the Academy. Officially, therefore, by the end of 1933 it provided the legitimate regulatory framework for the Academy.61
Disillusionment
There are a number of similarities between the post-war accounts of the German Literature Academy written by Kolbenheyer and Grimm: both begin the relevant section with a description of the lecture tours they undertook in the first half of 1933; both emphasise the non-Nazi nature
61 Ibid., pp. 175–176.
of their vision for the Academy; both present themselves as motivated by
of their vision for the Academy; both present themselves as motivated by