STEHR, Hermann 1864-1940

PERSONAL: Born February 16, 1864, in Habelschwerdt, Poland; died September 14, 1940, in Oberschreiberhau, Silesia; son of Robert (an upholsterer) and Theresa Farber Stehr; married Hedwig Nentwig, 1894.

CAREER: Novelist, writer of narratives, and poet. Schoolteacher in Poland.

AWARDS, HONORS: Bauernfeld prize, 1907; Fastenrath prize, Real Academia Española, 1911; Schiller prize, 1913; Rathenau prize, 1930; Goethe prize, 1933.

WRITINGS:

Auf Leben und Tod: Zwei Erzählungen (title means

"On Lives and Death"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1898.

Der Schindelmacher: Novelle (title means "The Schindelmacher"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1899.

Leonore Griebel: Roman (title means "Leonore Griebel"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1900.

Das lezte Kind (title means "The Last Child"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1903.

Meta Konegen: Drama, Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1904.

Der begrabene Gott: Roman (title means "The Buried God"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1905.

Drei Nächte: Roman (title means, "Three Nights"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1909.

Geschichten aus dem Mandelhause (title means "Stories from the Almond House"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1913, enlarged edition published as Das Mandelhaus: Roman, List (Munich, Germany), 1953.

Das Abendrot: Novellen (title means "Evening Bread"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1916.

Der Heiligenhof: Roman (title means "The Farm of the Saintly"), two volumes, Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1918.

Meicke, der Teufel: Erzählung (title means "Meicke the Devil"), Hillger (Berlin, Germany), 1919.

Das Lebensbuch: Gedichte aus zwei Jahrzehnten, Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1920.

Die Krähen (title means, "The Crows"), Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1921.

Das entlaufene Herz (title means "The Runaway Heart"), Lintz (Trier, Germany), 1923.

Wendelin Heinelt: Ein Marchen, Lintz (Trier, Germany), 1923.

Peter Brineisener: Roman (title means "Peter Breineisner"), Lintz (Trier, Germany), 1924.

Gesammelte Werke (title means "Collected Works"), nine volumes, Lintz (Trier, Germany), 1924.

Der Schatten: Novelle (title means "The Shade"), Gesellschaft der Bücherfreunde (Chemnitz, Germany), 1924.

Wanderer zur Höhe: Erzahung (title means "Wanderer to the Height"), Osterreichischer Bundesverlag (Vienna, Austria), 1925.

Der Geigenmacher: Eine Geschichte, (title means "The Violin Maker"), Horen (Leipzig, Germany), 1926, edited by Walter A. Reichart, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1934.

Das Märchen vom deutschen Herzen: Dret Geschichten (title means "The Fairy Tale of the German Heart"), List (Leipzig, Germany), 1926.

Gesammelte Werke (title means "Collected Works"), twelve volumes, List (Leipzig, Germany), 1927-36.

Mythen und Mären, Horen (Berlin, Germany), 1929.

Nathanael Maechler: Roman, Horen (Berlin, Germany), 1929, republished in Droben Gnade, drunten Recht (title means "Grace on High, On Earth Justice"; volume one of "Das Geschlecht der Maechler: Roman einer deutschen Familie"), List (Leipzig, Germany), 1944.

Uber aussere, unde inneres Leben, Horen (Berlin, Germany), 1931.

Meister Cajetan: Novelle (title means "Master Cajetan"), List (Leipzig, Germany), 1931.

An der Tür des Jenseits: Zwei Novellen (title means "At the Door of the Other Life"), Langen-Müller (Munich, Germany), 1932.

Die Nachkommen: Roman (title means, "The Posterity"; volume two of "Das Geschlecht der Maechler: Roman einer deutschen Familie"), List (Leipzig, Germany), 1933, republished in Droben Gnade drunten Recht, List (Leipzig, Germany), 1944.

Gudnatz: Eine Novelle (title means "Gudnatz"), Insel (Leipzig, Germany), 1934.

Mein Leben (title means "My Life"), Junker und Dünnhaupt (Berlin, Germany), 1934.

Der Mittelgarten: Frühe und neue Gedichte (title means "The Central Garden: Early and New Poems"), List (Leipzig, Germany), 1936.

Das Stundenglas: Reden, Schriften, Tagebücher (title means "The Hourglass: Speeches, Writings, Diaries"), List (Leipzig, Germany), 1936.

Im Zwischenreich (Title means "In the Intermediate Realm"), Oehmigke (Breslau, Germany), 1937.

Der Himmelsschlüssel: Eine Geschichte zwischen Himmel und Erde, List (Leipzig, Germany), 1939.

Von Mensch und Gott: Worte des Dichters (title means "Of Humans and God"), List (Leipzig, Germany), 1939.

Hermann Stehr und das junge Deutschland: Bekenntnis zum fünfundsiebzigster Geburtstag des Dichters (title means "Hermann Stahr and Young Germany"), edited by F. Hammer, Roth (Eisenach, Germany), 1939.

Damian oder Das große Schermesser (volume three of "Das Geschlecht der Maechler: Roman einer deutschen Familie"), edited by Wilhelm Meridies, List (Leipzig, Germany), 1944.

Contributed introduction to Schlesien: Ein Bildband, Velhagen and Klasing (Bielefeld, Germany), 1937.

Stehr's papers are housed at the Hermann Stehr Archive in Wangen, Bavaria.

SIDELIGHTS: Hermann Stehr completed nine novels, thirty-one narratives, and hundreds of poems during his long career. Stehr's writing deals with human complexities, and religious and philosophical questions, and helped provide solace for an author afflicted with serious depression. His work has been translated into French, Czech, Norwegian, Celtic, English, and Japanese.

Erich P. Hofacker, writing in Dictionary of Literary Biography, said Stehr was esteemed in the early twentieth century, although his work has since gone out of print. Hofacker quoted from Hugo von Hofmannsthal's review of Stehr's Der begrabene Gott: "One word I must use in describing it is grandeur. And another is reverence, and awe."

Stehr rebelled against his parents' strict Catholic dogma. He trained to be an elementary school teacher but upset authorities with his dark, seemingly atheistic viewpoint. Between 1885 and 1889 Stehr lived hand to mouth, substitute-teaching in the remote Silesian mountains. Upon accepting his first permanent job, he felt persecuted by authority figures, became lonely and alienated, and battled with persistent insomnia. Hofacker wrote, "He developed a marked persecution complex which is reflected in the literary works of the period." Townspepople considered him a blasphemer.

In 1898 a reader at the S. Fischer publishing house, Moritz Hermann, took an interest in Stehr's work, publishing two of his novellas in a book titled Auf Leben und Tod. Commenting upon one of the novellas, Hofacker wrote, "In 'Der Graveur' (The Engraver) concrete images reflect the spiritual and psychological abuse the author felt at the hands of his fellow men." "Der Graveur" tells of pious Joseph Schramm, a hardworking engraver, who becomes mute and delusional after his drunken brother punches him in the face. Hungry for revenge, Joseph murders an innocent man.

In the second novella published in Auf Leben und Tod, "Meicke der Teufel," the protagonist Marx brings his off-putting devil-dog Meicke wherever he goes. "Though Marx claims to wish to . . . put an end to misery, the bad company, and the liquor, his drunkenness is only replaced by licentiousness," Hofacker noted. In this novella, as well as in "Der Graveur," Stehr's protagonist commits suicide.

In the novel Leonore Griebel the central conflict of marital incompatibility is introduced; this theme would reappear in all Stehr's later fiction. (Hofacker insists this may not reflect Stehr's life, since he claimed to greatly enjoy his long marriage). In the story, Leonore Griebel marries before she is mature enough to understand herself. After giving birth to one child, she feels alienated from the baby and eventually loses interest in caring for it. Later, she has an affair. Hofacker suggested, "After a bitter inner struggle she renounces her extramarital relationship; her spirit slowly ebbs away until she finds release in death. For Stehr, perfect love comes naturally from a heart that is in harmony with itself and with God. It is not a purely spiritual love.... Perfect love combines elements of both, but in Stehr's works such a relationship proves difficult."

According to Hofacker, the novel Der begrabene Gott is so dark that contemporary reviewers claimed they had to take breaks from reading it to collect themselves. The plot involves Marie, a woman who takes the Bible verse, Matthew 16:24, too much to heart—"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me"—but also misunderstands it. She marries an abusive, crippled man who constantly torments her. Her faith in God enables her to stay in the marriage, but when she gives birth to a horribly deformed baby she can stand no more suffering, revolts against God, and murders the child. "It transports us to depths we have never before experienced," Hofmannsthal wrote.

In 1900, thanks to the approval of the regional ministry of culture in Breslau, Stehr earned a transfer to Dittersbach. Dark bitterness no longer dominated his writing, according to Hofacker. For instance, the novel Drei Nächte, which follows young schoolteacher Franz Faber, is written in a confessional style, with Faber describing his life before relocating to a new town. The book is considered lighter than Der begrabene Gott. Hofacker observed, "Confession brings freedom from old psychological and spiritual bonds and permits one to turn inward to seek the dwelling place of the soul and of God.... Der Nächte marked the end of Stehr's years of despair; his next works were stories in a generally lighter vein."

Der Heiligenhof is one of Stehr's top-selling novels, though its readership was less than half a million. "Indeed," Hofacker wrote, "Stehr feared that his works would be misinterpreted if they were read by the masses."

The story, reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, introduces two feuding families on two farms, one silent and forsaken, the other brimming with festivity and life. Eventually, the families put aside their differences, thanks to the love affair between a representative son and daughter. As the story unfolds, young, blind daughter Helene from the more optimistic farming family plays with unruly neighbor boy Peter Brindeisener, from the pessimistic clan. As the two fall in love, Helene's father, Sintlinger, starts to feel alienated and depressed. As if summoned, Franz Faber of Drei Nächte visits the farm with some words of wisdom, his central message conveying the importance of universal laws, which prevent even God from committing arbitrary gesture.

Peter has actually changed little—he is still unruly, undisciplined, and a poor match for Helene."The problem of the balance between spiritual and sensual love so frequently present in Stehr's works remains unresolved," Hofacker remarked. In a characteristic Stehr plot-twist, Helene drowns herself in desperation. "At this point, Franz Faber reappears to aid . . . Sintlinger in reaching his final goal: only when he has learned understanding . . . and love for his fellow man will he be ready for life," Hofacker wrote.

Peter Brindeisener retells the Der Heiligenhof saga from the mind of Brindeisener, now a solitary old man. As his life ends he seems to believe he was predestined to make immoral choices and walk a shady path. Furthermore, he decides that only by confessing his sins and mystically returning to the Seelengrund—"the ground of his soul"—can he redeem himself. After his confessional journey, he also drowns himself.

Stehr published several stories in Die Krähen and Der Geigenmacher, the story in the latter portraying the challenges of artistic creation. The main character is a violin maker working toward perfection in a secluded forest. He falls in love with a young girl, but their passion is not to be. Instead, the violin maker crafts a one-of-a-kind instrument expressing the beauty and mystery of the young woman.

Published in 1934, Mein Leben is an autobiographical work. Hofacker quoted one relevant passage: "The more pitilessly the blows of life beat down upon me, the more fervently did I devote myself to the visions within me. All the world's accusations, all disquietude, all my disappointments I offered for resolution to that other-worldly court presided over by poetry, the goddess whom I served."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Hardin, James, editor, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 66: German Fiction Writers, 1885-1913, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988, pp. 450-458.

OTHER

Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon,http://www.bautz.de/ (February 7, 1999).*