thumb|Hanns Heinz Ewers

thumb|upright|Hanns Heinz Ewers at the age of 4

Hanns Heinz Ewers (3 November 1871 – 12 June 1943) was a German actor, poet, philosopher, and writer of short stories and novels. While he wrote on a wide range of subjects, he is now known mainly for his works of horror, particularly his trilogy of novels about the adventures of Frank Braun, a character modeled on himself. The best known of these is Alraune (1911).

Career

Early works

Born in Düsseldorf, Ewers started to write poetry when he was 17 years old. His first noticed poem was an obituary tribute to the German Emperor Frederick III.

Ewers earned his Abitur in March 1891. He then volunteered for the military and joined the Kaiser-Alexander-Gardegrenadier-Regiment Nr. 1, but was dismissed 44 days later because of myopia.

Ewers' literary career began with a volume of satiric verse, entitled A Book of Fables, published in 1901. That same year, he collaborated with Ernst von Wolzogen in forming a literary vaudeville theatre before forming his own such company, which toured Central and Eastern Europe before the operating expenses and constant interference from censors caused him to abandon the enterprise. A world traveler, Ewers was in South America at the beginning of World War I, and relocated to New York City, where he continued to write and publish.

Ewers' reputation as a successful German author and performer made him a natural speaker for the Imperial German cause to keep the United States from joining the war as an ally of Britain. Ewers toured cities with large ethnic German communities and raised funds for the German Red Cross.

During this period, he was involved with the "Stegler Affair". American shipping companies sympathetic to the fight against Imperial Germany reportedly aided the British in identifying German-descended passengers traveling to Germany to volunteer for the Kaiser's army. Many were arrested and interned in prison camps by the British Navy; eventually, German volunteers often required false passports to reach Europe unmolested. Ewers was implicated as a German agent by one of these ethnic Germans, Richard Stegler.

After the United States joined the war, he was arrested in 1918 as an "active propagandist," as the US government, as well as British and French intelligence agencies, asserted that Ewers was a German agent. They evidenced his travels to Spain during 1915 and 1916, both with an alias using a falsified Swiss passport. Later, a travel report in the archives of the German Foreign Office was discovered indicating that he may have been traveling to Mexico, perhaps to encourage Pancho Villa to hamper the U.S. military by an attack on the United States.

Ewers is associated with the pro-German George Sylvester Viereck, son of the German immigrant and reported illegitimate Hohenzollern offspring Louis Sylvester Viereck (a Social Democrat famous for sharing a prison cell with August Bebel), who was a member of the same Berlin student corps (fraternity) as Ewers.

Ewers' activities as an "Enemy Alien" in New York were documented by J. Christoph Amberger in the German historical journal Einst & Jetzt (1991). Amberger indicates arrival records which demonstrate that Ewers entered the United States in the company of a "Grethe Ewers," who is identified as his wife. Enemy Alien Office records refer to a recent divorce. The identity of this otherwise undocumented wife has never been established, with reference to her missing from most biographies.

As a German national he was sent to the internment camp at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Ewers was never tried as a German agent in the United States. In 1921, he was released from the internment camp and returned to his native Germany.

Frank Braun trilogy

Ewers's first novel, Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice), was published in 1910, with an English translation published in America in 1927. It introduces the character of Frank Braun, who, like Ewers, is a writer, historian, philosopher, and world traveler with a decidedly Nietzschean morality. The story concerns Braun's attempts to influence a small cult of Evangelical Christians in a small Italian mountain village for his own financial gain, and the horrific results which ensue.

During the time Ewers was writing his major horror stories, he was also giving lectures (between 1910 and 1925) on the topic Die Religion des Satan (The Religion of Satan), inspired by Stanisław Przybyszewski's 1897 German book Die Synagoge des Satan (The Synagogue of Satan).

He died on June 12, 1943, in his Berlin apartment. His ashes were buried on October 15 of the same year in the Düsseldorf North Cemetery (Nordfriedhof, Field Nr. 78, 55235-WE). In 1938, Ewers compiled his estate, which is now kept at the Heinrich Heine Institute in Düsseldorf.

Movie work

Ewers was one of the first critics to recognize cinema as a legitimate art form, and wrote the scripts for numerous early examples of the medium, most notably The Student of Prague (1913), a reworking of the Faust legend which also included the first portrayal of a double role by an actor on the screen.

Nazi martyr Horst Wessel, then a member of the same corps (student fraternity) of which Ewers had been a member, acts as an extra in a 1926 version of the movie, also written by Ewers. Ewers was later commissioned by Adolf Hitler to write a biography of Wessel ("Horst Wessel- ein deutsches Schicksal"), which also was made into a movie.

Nazi involvement

During the last years of the Weimar Republic, Ewers became involved with the burgeoning Nazi Party, attracted by its nationalism, its Nietzschean moral philosophy, and its cult of Teutonic culture, and joined the NSDAP in 1931. He did not agree with the party's anti-Semitism (his character Frank Braun has a Jewish mistress, Lotte Levi, who is also a patriotic German) and this and his homosexual tendencies soon ended his welcome with party leaders. In 1934 most of his works were banned in Germany, and his assets and property seized.

Despite his great influence on 20th century fantasy and horror literature, Ewers remains out of favor in bourgeois literary circles (especially in the English-speaking world and Germany)

Ewers appears in Kim Newman's novel The Bloody Red Baron, as a predatory vampire who travels briefly with Edgar Allan Poe.

Filmography

  • 1913: :de:Der Student von Prag (1913)
  • 1913: :de:Der Verführte
  • 1913: :de:Die Augen des Ole Brandis
  • 1913: :de:Die Eisbraut
  • 1913: Die ideale Gattin
  • 1913: :de:Ein Sommernachtstraum in unserer Zeit
  • 1914: Evinrude
  • 1914: :de:Die Launen einer Weltdame
  • 1918: Alraune by :de:Mihály Kertész und Ödön Fritz
  • 1918: :de:Alraune, die Henkerstochter, genannt die rote Hanne by :de:Eugen Illés
  • 1919: :de:Alraune und der Golem by :de:Nils Chrisander
  • 1926: :de:Der Student von Prag (1926) (Remake)
  • 1928: Alraune by :de:Henrik Galeen, with :de:Brigitte Helm
  • 1930: :de:Fundvogel
  • 1930: Alraune by :de:Richard Oswald, with Brigitte Helm
  • 1952: Alraune by :de:Arthur Maria Rabenalt, with :de:Hildegard Knef

Notes

  • Hanns Heinz Ewers listing librarything.com
  • Alraune Blog
  • Vampire Blog
  • Hanns Heinz Ewers Blog
  • Hanns Heinz Ewers .com
  • Die toten Augen an opera with:

:music by Eugen d'Albert

:poetry by Ewers

:Vocal Score from Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection

  • "The Spider" Comic
  • "The Spider" Online Text