Johannes Schlaf
Johannes Schlaf was a German playwright and writer born on June 21, 1862, in Querfurt, Germany. He emerged as a significant figure in the German naturalist movement, alongside contemporaries Arno Holz and Gerhardt Hauptmann. Schlaf's early works, including collaborations with Holz under the pseudonym Bjarne Peter Holmsen, featured socially charged themes reflecting the struggles of the working class, notable in works like "Papa Hamlet" and "Die Familie Selicke." However, after a personal crisis that led to a nervous breakdown in 1892, Schlaf's artistic direction shifted toward lyric impressionism and he began exploring themes of cosmology, spirituality, and nature in his later writings.
His contributions to literature included mystical poetry, philosophical essays, and translations that introduced German readers to significant authors such as Honoré de Balzac and Walt Whitman. In his later years, Schlaf's ideologies took a troubling turn as he became associated with National Socialism, believing it was part of a divine plan. His last works reflected these beliefs, culminating in memoirs completed shortly before his death on February 2, 1941. Schlaf's life and writings present a complex portrait of an artist whose journey intertwined with personal turmoil and the tumultuous sociopolitical landscape of his time.
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Johannes Schlaf
Writer
- Born: June 21, 1862
- Birthplace: Querfurt, Germany
- Died: February 2, 1941
- Place of death: Querfurt, Germany
Biography
Johannes Schlaf was born on June 21, 1862, in Querfurt, Germany, the son of a commercial clerk and his wife. At the age of twelve, Schlaf moved with his family to Magdeburg, where he attended the local high school, the Domgymnasium. Schlaf studied theology, philosophy, and philology at the University of Halle, and later at the University of Berlin. At the latter institution, he joined the Bund der Lebendigen (German Youth Land Federation), a student association led by naturalist poet Hermann Conradi. He also met, and shared an apartment with, Arno Holz, a poet, playwright, and critic. Schlaf and Holz, along with playwright and 1912 Nobel literature laureate Gerhardt Hauptmann, became leaders of the German naturalist movement that, inspired by the works of Emile Zola, Henrik Ibsen, and others, produced works of social protest dealing realistically with the appalling conditions of the working class.
Under the joint pseudonym Bjarne Peter Holmsen, Schlaf and Holz collaborated on Papa Hamlet (1889), a series of original and, for the times, shockingly realistic sketches, purportedly translated from Norwegian, a ruse that successfully avoided charges of offending public morality. The two men repeated their subterfuge in the cowritten realistic drama, Die Familie Selicke (pr., pb. 1890). Schlaf alone wrote the playMeister Oelze (pb. 1892), in which he moved away from naturalism towards lyric impressionism. This change in philosophical outlook led to a fallout with Holz and arguments about who had written what in their previous collaborations.
Schlaf in 1892 suffered a nervous breakdown and for the next six years was in and out of mental institutions. When he was finally released, he was a changed man. Working out of Berlin and later out of Weimar, he occasionally composed plays, such as Gertrud, (pr., pb.1898), while becoming caught up with the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, a phenomenologist of spirit and sense perception. Schlaf’s writings reflected his growing interest in cosmology, astronomy, and religion. He wrote mystical nature poetry (often published in the journal Charon between 1904 and 1914), philosophical essays (Religion und Kosmos, 1911), spiritual novels (Die Wandlung, 1922), and geocentric tracts (Die Erde, nicht die Sonne: Das geozentrischen Feststellung, 1919). His major accomplishment between 1912 and 1925 was in the field of translation, as he helped introduce a new generation of Germans to the work of Honoré de Balzac, Paul Verlaine, Voltaire, and Walt Whitman.
Late in life, completely taken with mysticism and troubled by the chaos of the Weimar Republic, Schlaf developed theories about racial biology and German intellectual superiority that made him not only receptive to but an ardent proponent of the rise of National Socialism. Along with Hauptmann and others, Schlaf publicly praised Germany’s 1933 withdrawal from the League of Nations and was afterward an enthusiastic supporter of Germany’s aggressive foreign policy. Schlaf became convinced the Nazis were part of a divine plan in the process of human evolution, a plan he had previously outlined in his own religious writings; he argued that Adolf Hitler would complete the German people’s rightful ascent to power and that World War II was a necessary step in the fulfillment of his increasingly rabid worldview of the proper order of things.
Schlaf finished his memoirs, Aus meinem Leben: Erinnerungen (1941), shortly before dying of a stroke in his hometown of Querfurt on February 2, 1941. Unaware that the dream of German world conquest would end in utter destruction just four years later, his last work closed with the words then ringing throughout the land: “Heil dem Fuhrer!” (“Hail to the Leader!”).