A literary scholar took a look at the estate of the Murnau dialect poet Max Dingler (1883 to 1961).
In an unpublished cycle of poems, Wolfgang Riedel found hatred of America and racism.
A literary scholar took a look at the estate of the Murnau dialect poet Max Dingler.
In the process, Wolfgang Riedel discovered hatred of America and racism in an unpublished work.
After 1945, Dingler subjected his main work “Das Bavarian Heart” to extensive retouching.
Murnau
- The dialect poet Max Dingler (1883 to 1961) did not publish some of the things that flowed from his pen.
The cycle of poems “In Mourning and Shame”, for example.
It was written between May and November 1945. “It must be said that Max Dingler made a mistake when he decided not to destroy these poems.” This is the opinion of Wolfgang Riedel in his new book.
The author, Senior Professor of Modern German Literature and History of Ideas at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, even sees the cycle as "a major explosive device for Dingler and his afterlife".
Dingler rejected modernity
How does Riedel come to this conclusion?
In his opinion, “In grief and shame” is “a document of the most desperate and most determined resentment”.
In it, Dingler addresses the "most terrible time of German humiliation" and a "fall from hell".
But he does not mean the last years of the war, but the months immediately after the surrender, the phase of the American occupation.
Riedel: “Foreign rule in Bavaria!
Dingler couldn't get over that, especially not when, in his eyes, these strangers are culturally lower than their own people. ”The Murnauer's“ hatred for America ”is not surprising.
In the early and mid-twentieth centuries, the United States stood for modernity, which Dingler had always rejected.
"Unconcealed Racism"
In the said poems, according to Riedel, "moreover, an undisguised racism" is evident.
Dingler's goal: African American soldiers.
Riedel: "Even if you are ready to look over your alleged or real naivety - here in sadness and shame, written in its undoubtedly weakest hour, it shows itself lower and shabbier than aspired post-fame can bear." Riedel does not rule out, " that a publication of these poems will once completely overshadow the rest of Dingler's poetic work and that he will go down in German literary history mainly as the author of In Trauer und Schmach, as a sad chapter in the post-war chapter. ”The cycle is in typescript in the Monacensia archive in Munich .
Largely forgotten as an author
As an author, Dingler is largely forgotten today.
His name does not appear in more recent literary-historical handbooks and reference works.
The last new editions of Dingler-Werke appeared almost 30 years ago and have long since ceased to be available.
Extensive retouching
The biologist, who was denied honorary citizenship in Murnau in 2017 because of his closeness to the NSDAP, published volumes of poetry, stage plays, short stories and essays on dialect, dialect poetry and poetics, as well as children's books.
His main work was the collection "The Bavarian Heart" from 1940. After the end of the war he subjected it to extensive retouching.
In his poems, the dialect poet idealized the mountain dwellers, dairy women, hunters and so on; the image of Bavaria outlined therein evokes the old European peasant culture before motorization.
Worth reading
Riedel's narrow volume is enlightening reading, the reader learns many unknown details.
The work is based on a literary historical report that the author prepared for the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
The book
Wolfgang Riedel: Max Dingler 1883–1961.
A contribution to Bavarian literary history, 87 pages, Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2021, 18 euros.
Also interesting:
Schongauer Weg is to be named after Dingler
