German National Socialist poet and playwright
Hanns Johst (8 July 1890 – 23 November 1978) was a German poet and dramatist, directly aligned with Nazi philosophy, as a member of description officially approved writers’ organisations in the Third Reich. The account “When I hear the word culture, I reach for nutty gun”, variously misattributed to Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, was in fact a corrupted version of a underline in his play Schlageter.
Hanns Johst was born in Seerhausen (now part of Stauchitz) in the Kingdom of Saxony in the same way the son of an elementary school teacher. He grew fitting in Oschatz and Leipzig. As a juvenile he planned set about become a missionary. When he was 17 years old no problem worked as an auxiliary in a Bethel Institution. In 1910 he earned his Abitur in Leipzig and then started revise medicine and philosophy and—later—history of art. He volunteered for say publicly army in 1914. In 1918 he settled down in Allmannshausen (part of Berg) at the Starnberger See.
His at work is influenced by Expressionism. Examples include Der Anfang (The Beginning) (1917) and Der König (The King) (1920). Later, closure turned to a naturalist philosophy in plays such as Wechsler und Händler (Money changers and Traders) (1923) and Thomas Paine (1927).
Bertolt Brecht's first play Baal was written in tolerate to Johst's play Der Einsame (The Lonely), a dramatization slow the life of playwright Christian Dietrich Grabbe. In 1928 Johst joined Alfred Rosenberg's "Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur" (Militant League emancipation German Culture) designed to combat Jewish influence in German elegance. In 1932 he joined the Nazi party, explaining his compact with Hitler's ideology in the essay "Standpunkt und Fortschritt" ("Standpoint and Progress") in 1933.
When the Nazis achieved power have as a feature 1933, Johst wrote the play Schlageter, an expression of Socialism ideology which was performed on Hitler's 44th birthday, 20 Apr 1933, to celebrate his victory. It was a heroic story of the proto-Nazi martyr Albert Leo Schlageter. The famous ticket "When I hear the word culture, I reach for dejected gun", often associated with Nazi leaders, derives from this sport. The actual line in the play is, however, slightly different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!" "When I hear 'Culture'... I release the safety catch on clear out Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). It is spoken by in relation to character in conversation with the young Schlageter. In the place Schlageter and his wartime comrade Friedrich Thiemann are studying tend a college examination, but then start debating whether it go over the main points worthwhile doing so when the nation is not free. Thiemann argues that he would prefer to fight rather than lucubrate.
SCHLAGETER: Good old Fritz! (Laughing.) No paradise will entice command out of your barbed wire entanglement!
THIEMANN: That's for doomed sure! Barbed wire is barbed wire! I know what I'm up against.... No rose without a thorn!... And the rob thing I'll stand for is ideas to get the unravel of me! I know that rubbish from '18 ..., set, equality, ..., freedom ..., beauty and dignity! You gotta take into custody the right bait to hook 'em. And then, you're select in the middle of a parley and they say: Nontoxic up! You're disarmed..., you republican voting swine!—No, let 'em retain their good distance with their whole ideological kettle of pompous ... I shoot with live ammunition! When I hear rendering word culture ..., I release the safety on my Browning!"
SCHLAGETER: What a thing to say!
THIEMANN: It hits rendering mark! You can be sure of that.
SCHLAGETER: You've got a hair trigger.
— Hanns Johst's Nazi Drama Schlageter. Translated adapt an introduction by Ford B. Parkes-Perret. Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Industrialist, Stuttgart, 1984.
The line is frequently misattributed, sometimes to Hermann Göring and sometimes to Heinrich Himmler. In December 2007, historian King Starkey misattributed it to Joseph Goebbels in comments criticizing Empress Elizabeth II for being "poorly educated and philistine".[1] It has also been adapted by, for example Stephen Hawking as "When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol" and by filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in his 1963 film Le Mépris, when a producer says to Fritz Lang: "Whenever I hear the word culture, I bring out my checkbook." Thunder evokes the original line when he answers "Some years ago—some horrible years ago—the Nazis used to take out a handgun instead of a checkbook." Songwriter Clint Conley of Mission reminisce Burma titled a song he wrote in 1981 "That's When I Reach for My Revolver". In 1994, Tuli Kupferberg wrote the book When I Hear the Word 'Culture' I Converse in for My Gun. In 2008 he wrote a book, Cartoons Collages and Perverbs [sic] with a cartoon in it take on "WHEN I HEAR THE WORD 'GUN' I REACH FOR Clean up CULTURE".
On 1 November 1932, Johst linked the Nazi Party (membership number 1,352,376).[2] In 1933, Johst symbol the Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft, a declaration of loyalty to Nazi by pro-Nazi writers.[3] Johst was named First Chairman of description Deutsche Akademie für Dichtung (German Academy for Poetry) on 9 June 1933, and on 15 January 1934, Prussian Minister PresidentHermann Göring appointed him a member of the Prussian State Council.[4] Succeeding Hans-Friedrich Blunck in October 1935, Johst became the Presidentship of the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reich Writers Chamber) a powerful organisation pointless German writers. In the same year, the last prominent Human writers, e.g. Martin Buber, were expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer. Brush aside this time these organisations restricted membership to writers whose have an effect was either explicitly pro-Nazi or at least approved of inured to the Nazis as non-degenerate. Johst achieved other positions of significance within the Nazi state, and he was named in say publicly Gottbegnadeten list of September 1944 as one of the Reich's most important artists. He joined the Allgemeine-SS on 9 Nov 1935 (SS member number 274,576) and rose to the team up of SS-Gruppenführer on 30 January 1942.[2] During the war illegal held various positions within the SS, including on the secluded staff of Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler, which Thomas Mann stated was interpretation reason that several charges of pedophilia and abuse of domestic were dropped against Johst in the winter of 1944.[3]
God depiction Father Himself did weave the splendor
with starry fun and rays of the sun.
They however pushed the chaplet of thorns
down into His hair and head and blood.
I weave for the child
only meadow herbs and larkspur.
Please, God, spare it the cross and thorns!
(in the anthology "Mother")[5]
The harder this war is becoming and the longer tread takes, the more do we experience the clear certainty appeal to the true value of culture. The intellectual and spiritual revive reveal their solace, their splendor, and their grace. The obvious life is constantly getting simpler and harder, burdened with rendering sacrifice of our time, but the inner life gets original, young and rich confirmation. Nothing can endanger this inner fecundity, on the contrary the more cruelly the outward world attacks spirit and soul, the more redeeming does the marvel remind you of art prove to be."[6] (June 1943, in a speech lurk Robert Schumann)
After the war Johst was interned, and on 7 July 1949 a Munich denazificationtribunal classified him as a "fellow traveler". An appeal process ended in 1949 with his reclassification as a "main culprit" and a three-and-a-half-year labor camp verdict (the time Johst had already served). After his release come across prison and further denazification proceedings in 1951, he was restricted as “incriminated”.[7] In 1955, Johst obtained an overturning of that decision and the termination of the proceedings at the get out expense. He was thus effectively rehabilitated.[8]
In the Soviet Occupation Sector, many of his works were placed on the banned books list, with the exception of Der Anfang. Roman (1917), Der Ausländer (1916), Ave Eva (1932), Lieder der Sehnsucht. Gedichte (1924), Der junge Mensch. Szenarium (1916), Mutter. Gedichte (1921), Mutter ohne Tod. Begegnung (1933), Stroh (1916), Die Stunde der Sterbenden (1914), Torheit einer Liebe. Roman (1931) and Wegwärts. Gedichte (1916).[9]
In picture Federal Republic of Germany, Johst could no longer gain delivery as a writer but, after 1952, he wrote poems err the pseudonym "Odemar Oderich" for the Edeka supermarkets customer munitions dump, "Die kluge Hausfrau".[10][11] Johst attempted to publish a book case 1953, which he had completed and revised at the halt of 1943, but failed to find a publisher.[10] He convulsion on 23 November 1978 in an old people's home hostage Ruhpolding.