You are bidding on one typed, signed letter of the writer Wilhelm von Scholz (1874-1969).

DatedKonstanz / Seeheim, 8. October 1941.

Addressed to the military writer Gerhard Scholtz (* May 23, 1899 Karlsruhe, † May 22, 1958 Wiesbaden), in the 1st World War II volunteer and reserve officer, after the war with the Silesian border guard, from 1919 studied theology, philosophy and history, from 1923 officer in the Baden police, 1933 doctorate, lectureship for modern military police at the University of Heidelberg; Author of historical short stories and novels as well as military works (including "Diary of a Battery", Potsdam 1939). -- The letter comes from a partial estate of G. Scholtz.

Thanks for a letter and a sent book. Wilhelm von Scholz sends a book by his father in return; what is meant is the work "Experiences and Conversations with Bismarck" (Stuttgart and Berlin 1922) by Finance Minister Adolf von Scholz (1833-1924).

Then he goes into a work by Gerhard Scholtz (Friethrice Carl. The Legacy of the Field Marshal, Nuremberg, Fanfaren Verlag 1941), a biographical novel about Friedrich Karl Nikolaus Prince of Prussia (1828-1885).

Original typescript (one A4 page), signed by hand.

Condition: sheet folded and perforated on the side; Paper slightly browned and somewhat stained. please bealso pay attention to the pictures!

Internal note: EVS 2108-11

About Wilhelm von Scholz (source: wikipedia):

William of Scholz (* 15. July 1874 in Berlin; † 29 May 1969 in Konstanz) was a German writer.

Life: Wilhelm von Scholz was born as the son of the later Prussian Minister of Finance Adolf von Scholz, grew up initially in Berlin and in 1890 moved into the family estate "Schloss Seeheim" (also known as "Villa Scholz") in Constance with his father. After graduating from high school in Konstanz in 1892, Scholz studied literary history and philosophy in Berlin, Lausanne and Kiel. In 1897 he received his doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich with a dissertation on the poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. In the same year he married Irmgard Wallmüller, daughter of the Prussian Generalleutnant Oskar Wallmüller. The couple had two children, Irmgard and Wilhelm von Scholz, junior, who in 1910 were among the first 15 children to be taught at the newly founded Odenwald School. Separated from Wilhelm von Scholz, his wife and children lived in their own house on the school grounds until 1914/15, later known as the "Cassirerhaus" or "Cassirerhaus". "Bach House". Irmgard von Scholz had bought the property from Max Cassirer.

In 1916, while the First World War was still going on, Wilhelm von Scholz became the first dramaturge and director at the court and theater. State Theater in Stuttgart. In 1922 he settled permanently with his second wife at the family home Villa Seeheim in Konstanz. For his 50th birthday, the city of Konstanz 1924 birthday and named a street after him the following year.[3] In November 1926, Scholz became president of the poetry section of the Prussian Academy of Arts. However, he resigned from this post in 1928.

Era of National Socialism: Scholz came to terms with the Nazi regime immediately, although he had viewed National Socialism with some distance before the "seizure of power".[3] At 16. On March 1, 1933, he signed the declaration of loyalty to the Nazi government of the German Academy of Poetry, the renamed Poetry Section of the Prussian Academy of Arts, which Gottfried Benn had requested.[4] Scholz, together with other writers, replied to the French Nobel Prize winner Romain Rolland, who had refused to accept the Goethe Medal with reference to the book burnings in May 1933, in the propaganda publication Six Confessions to the New Germany: "The justification of what the year 1933 in Germany visibly ushers in will be given by history alone.”[5] In October 1933 he was one of the 88 writers who signed the oath of loyal allegiance to Adolf Hitler.[4] In 1934 he won the competition for a hymn for the Olympic Games in Berlin and drafted a commemorative poem "for the Baden National Socialists who fell in the struggle for the national uprising of the German people", which was to be placed on a memorial in the inner courtyard of Constance Town Hall. Between 1935 and 1937 he was co-editor of the anthology The Great Germans. In 1935 and 1936 his essays appeared in the Weißen Blatter newspaper. In 1939 he wrote a poem for Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday. Birthday ("Bronze Tablet"). In the same year he expressly retracted earlier philo-Semitic statements. In 1941 he joined the NSDAP.

After the outbreak of the Second World War and the occupation of Poland, he published in the National Socialist Krakauer Zeitung and wrote the perseverance war poem "The Hard Will" in 1943: "It doesn't matter which future brings victory - war is our life. We want war!” and wrote a perseverance article in the Bodensee-Rundschau in October 1944: “The order of the day: persevere!” In 1944 he wrote glorifying verses about Hitler in the anthology Poetry of the Living.[7] In June 1944 he received an honorary doctorate from the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg and, at Goebbels' suggestion, an endowment from Hitler of over 30,000 marks.[7] Also in 1944, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Birthday in the German weekly newsreel number 723 dedicated.[8] In August 1944, in the final phase of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler included him in the God-gifted list of the most important writers.

Scholz' works were welcomed by the National Socialists as exemplary. Scholz thanked the regime with texts that corresponded to the official ideology. For example, in the afterword to the anthology The German Poem, which he published in 1941, he wrote: "The book should be the property of the entire German people, who in the Third Reich more than ever before, like access to music and the fine arts, also the promisingly developed for poetry. It should awaken the joy of the poem in the youth, awaken the pride of belonging to a people that has produced such eternal human values ​​as this poetry. It is intended to call out the true talents in Allen strata of the German offspring, who, when they read these poems, must feel in their breasts that they are not ugly gray ducklings, but young swans.” (Wilhelm von Scholz)

However, he had to distance himself from his play Der Jew von Konstanz, which premiered in 1905 and which he wrote in 1904 and about which it was said that since Lessing's Nathan the Wise, no such exemplary, humane Jew had stood on a German stage. Scholz described the young author, who he was then, as "not yet mature historically". After the war, he justified his distancing as mere "self-defense." During the National Socialist era, however, his political views coincided with the ideology of the regime, which is also reflected in the anti-Semitic statements that have been handed down.

Post-war period and reappraisal: In the Soviet occupation zone, his works The Companions, Renovation (both 1937) and The Eternal Building (1941) were put on the list of literature to be discarded in 1946.

In West Germany, Scholz was quickly exonerated as a “follower” after the war. However, his plays were hardly played anymore because they had fallen out of fashion.[3] In 1949 he became President of the Association of German Playwrights and Composers, serving as Honorary President from 1951. In 1952, Scholz left the PEN center to demonstrate against its division. In Constance he remained recognized as a local great mind and local poet. A gift from the city of Constance in 1959 for his 85th birthday. The Wilhelm von Scholz Prize for the best Abitur theses in German was only abolished in 1989 at the instigation of Klaus Oettinger, a German specialist from Constance. On the award of honorary citizenship on his 90th birthday. Scholz renounced his birthday by the city of Constance in 1964 because there had been dissenting votes in the city council due to his position in the Third Reich.[3] He considered himself to have been attacked through no fault of his own: “He did not see his behavior between 1933 and 1945 as behavior for which he had to justify and apologize. He remained unrepentant, felt he was being treated unfairly by the public."

Discussions about his memory came up again in 1986 when, after the death of his widow Gertrud von Scholz, the future of the castle-like villa on the banks of the lake in Constance was discussed. The first detailed analysis of his life and work was published in the Constance city magazine Nebelhorn. In 2007 the discussion started again on the occasion of the abandonment of the family grave. In 2013, one of 16 Konstanz authors, including employees of the city archive, published a critical examination of the author's work and his relationship to Konstanz.

Von Scholz' final resting place is in the Allmannsdorf Cemetery in Constance. The tomb was supposed to be leveled in 2008, but was then placed under monument protection.

Poetic work: Scholz first became known as a poet and playwright, then also as a narrator and novelist. His plays have been performed on many German stages. He was therefore an early renowned author, whom the city of Konstanz honored on his 50th birthday. birthday 1924 organized a festival week; a year later she named a street after him. A year later, the Poetry Section of the Prussian Academy elected him President.

Scholz' poetry is characterized by the mystical and occult. After studying the works of Paul Ernst and Christian Friedrich Hebbel, he turned to neoclassicism in his stage works. The German Middle Ages shortly before the Reformation and pre-revolutionary France formed the historical background for many works.

Scholz' best-known works include the dramas Der Jew von Konstanz. Tragedy in Five Acts” (Munich, 1905), which premiered in Dresden in 1905 and was performed again in 2013 at the Stadttheater Konstanz,[10] “The Race with the Shadow” (1921), his inclination towards occult themes culminates in the book “Der Coincidence and Destiny" (1935), "Claudia Colonna" (1941), adaptations of dramas by Pedro Calderón de la Barcas (The German Great World Theater, Love Above Allen Magic, Life is a Dream, The Judge of Zalamea) and "Das Säckinger Trumpeter Play” (1955), “Perpetua. The novel by the Breitenschnitt sisters (Berlin and Leipzig, 1926), the biography Friedrich Schiller (1956) and the novel Theodor Dorn (1967).

Today, however, von Scholz' artistic work is considered to be largely insignificant; as a poet he is now almost forgotten.

work selection

Double Head (1918)

The vanquished. 1899

Swapped Souls, 1910

New Poems. 1913

Lake Constance. 1913

Dangerous Love, 1913

The Jew of Constance, 1913

Summer Days, 1914

The German narrator, ed. Wilhelm von Scholz, 1915

Ensign of Braunau, 1915

The lake: a millennium of German poetry from Lake Constance. selection W. v. Scholz, 1915

The Unreal, 1916

German mystics, 1916

The Poet, 1917

Coincidence, a precursor of fate. The attraction of the relevant. Stuttgart 1924

Hikes. Paul List Verlag, Leipzig 1924 (later partial prints: hikes on Lake Constance)

Perpetua, The novel by the Breitenschnitt sisters, Berlin-Grunewald 1926

The rumour, epilogue: Hanns Martin Elster, German Poet Memorial Foundation in Hamburg, Hädecke Verlag, Stuttgart 1924

The colorful band, stories, Berlin 1931

The Duty, 1932

The way to Ilok. Novel. Berlin 1930

Chance and Destiny, 1935 (3rd, rev. edition of the title from 1924)

Charlotte Donc's love, with an autobiographical afterword by the author, 1941

The German great world theater: love above Allen magic, life is a dream, the judge of Zalamea. List, Leipzig 1942

The poems. Complete edition, Leipzig 1944

Awards and Honors

A Wilhelm-von-Scholz-Weg has existed in Konstanz since 1925, but it has since been renamed Zur Therme.

1932 Goethe Medal for Art and Science

1944 dr phil. hc (honorary doctorate) from the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg

1955 Humanitas-Ring of the cultural work of expelled Germans (later West-East cultural work)

1959 Eichendorff plaque of the cultural work of expelled Germans

1959 namesake for the Wilhelm von Scholz Prize for high school graduates from the city of Constance (abolished in 1989)

1964 First recipient of the Hebbel Medal

1964 Dauthendey Plaque

1968 Humboldt plaque as a gift of honor