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Hermann Löns (29 August 1866 – 26 September 1914) was a German journalist and writer. He is most famous as "The Poet of the Heath" for his novels and poems celebrating the people and landscape of the North German moors, particularly theLüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. Löns is well known in Germany for his famous folksongs. He was also ahunter,naturalist andconservationist. Despite being well over the normal recruitment age, Löns enlisted and was killed inWorld War I and his purported remains were later used by the German government for celebratory purposes.
Hermann Löns was born on 29 August 1866 in Kulm (nowChełmno,Poland) in theProvince of Prussia. He was one of twelve siblings, of whom five died early. His parents were Friedrich Wilhelm Löns (1832–1908) fromBochum, a teacher, and Klara (née Cramer; 1844–96) fromPaderborn. Hermann Löns grew up inDeutsch-Krone (West Prussia). In 1884, the family relocated back toWestfalen as his father found a position inMünster.[1] A sickly child who survivedtyphus, Löns graduated from school on his second try with theAbitur in 1886. Urged by his father, he began to attend courses at Münster university in preparation for studying medicine.[2] In 1887, he started his studies at the University ofGreifswald. There he joined adueling fraternity (Turnerschaft Cimbria), but was dismissedcum infamia (with infamy).[2] In November 1888, Löns relocated to the university ofGöttingen, but returned to Münster without having attained a degree.[1] In fact, he never even enrolled at Göttingen but joined a drinking society called theClub der Bewusstlosen.[2] At Münster he studied natural sciences emphasizingzoology at theTheologische und Philosophische Akademie from the spring of 1889 to autumn 1890. While there, he developed interests in environmental issues – protecting nature from damage by industrial activity – and in literature.[1] However, he was also arrested in 1889 for disorderly conduct and sentenced to five days in jail for extinguishing gas lights and resisting arrest while drunk.[2]
In the autumn of 1891, Löns decided to quit university without graduating and to become a journalist. He went first toKaiserslautern, where he worked for the newspaperPfälzische Presse. He was dismissed after five months for being late and for being drunk. Löns then went toGera where he again became an assistant editor, this time for theReußische Volkszeitung. He also lost that job after three weeks, again for being drunk.[2] Löns then started work as a freelance reporter for theHannoveraner Anzeiger. From 1892, Löns lived in Hanover and as a regional news editor wrote about a wide variety of subjects. Some of his writings with thepseudonym "Fritz von der Leine" were collected as a bookAusgewählte Werke von Fritz von der Leine, published in 1902. The year before, Löns had published a collection of poetry and a book of short stories on hunting. In 1902, Löns quit the newspaper and co-founded the rival newspaperHannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. In April 1903, he became its editor-in-chief, but by February 1904 the newspaper folded due to a lack of funds. Löns then joined theHannoversches Tagblatt, writing as "Ulenspeigel". It was at this time that Löns began to make a name for himself as a writer on nature, in particular on the heaths of Lower Saxony (Heidedichter). In 1906, he published these writings inMein braunes Buch which became his first literary success. Löns became editor-in-chief of the newspaperSchaumburg-Lippische Landeszeitung ofBückeburg in 1907, and remained in this position through April 1909.[1] Once again, alcohol consumption was the cause of his dismissal.[2]
Freed from the need to do regular work as a newspaper man, Löns wrote and published several more of his works in 1909, emphasizing animal studies and characterization, including the popularMümmelmann. That same year, he wrote three more novels, two of which were published in 1910, includingThe Warwolf (German:Der Wehrwolf), his most successful book, depicting the bloody revenge of Lower Saxony peasants against marauding soldiers of theThirty Years War. The poems contained in the collectionDer kleine Rosengarten (1911) were referred to by Löns as "folk songs" (Volkslieder). They included theMatrosenlied ("Sailors' Song") with the chorusDenn wir fahren gegen Engelland ("For we are sailing against England"), which was put to music byHerms Niel and became one of the most-sung German military songs ofWorld War II.[1] A number of his poems fromDer kleine Rosengarten were set to music by Franz Gabriel [1883-1929] in 1927-8 and published in an album with a dedication to the tenor,Richard Tauber, who recorded 13 of them for Odeon in August 1928. Another of his poems,Das Geheimnis [The Secret], beginning 'Ja, grün ist die Heide', was set to music by Karl Blume and recorded by Tauber in 1932.
Löns had married Elisabet Erbeck (1864–1922), a divorced sales assistant,[2] atHanover in 1893 (engagement 1890, divorced 1901). She had five miscarriages and was committed to a sanatorium. Soon after the divorce, Löns had changed his confession from Catholic to Protestant and married Lisa Hausmann (an editorial assistant, born 1871), also at Hanover. He had a child with his second wife, but their son was mentally and physically handicapped. In 1911, his family left him, after he fired a shotgun inside their home. In the divorce proceedings he had a nervous breakdown. Löns refused to pay alimony and then left without leaving an address, travelling in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. In November 1911, Löns considered suicide.[2] In November 1912, he returned to Hanover and subsequently published two more collections of hunting and nature storiesAuf der Wildbahn (1912) andMein buntes Buch (1913), followed by his final novel,Die Häuser von Ohlendorf (1913).[1] Suffering frombipolar disorder, Löns veered between depression and making fantastic plans for the future.[2]
At the age of 48, he volunteered for service with the German Army for theFirst World War. Due to his ill health and weak constitution, he was rejected initially by the military. It took the intervention of an officer friend of his for Löns to be accepted as a commonfusilier by theErsatzbatallion of theRegiment Generalfeldmarschall Prinz Albrecht von Preußen,[2] also known as73rd Fusilier Regiment.[3] On 26 September 1914, just three weeks after enlisting on 3 September, Löns was killed in action during an assault on a French position atLoivre nearReims in France. Of the 120 men in his unit, only two dozen survived.[2]
Löns' books continued to sell well after his death. By 1934, they had reached an overall circulation of 2.5 million books. By 1938, theThe Warwolf had sold more than 500,000 copies (reaching 865,000 copies by 1945). This made him one of the most successful authors in Germany at the time.[1]
Löns had considered himself as a poet of nature and he had argued eloquently forconservationism. He was co-initiator of theHeideschutzpark atWilseder Berg which later grew into theNaturpark Lüneburger Heide (Lüneburg Heath Nature Park), the first nature reserve in Germany. Löns combined these sentiments, based not least on theHeimatbewegung [de] of the turn of the century (as represented byAdolf Bartels) with an increasingly radical nationalism, the racial concept of an "aristocratic peasantry" (Blood and soil), enmity towards the metropolis (Berlin) andxenophobia.[1] His literary work has been categorised as part of thefolkish philosophy, although his character was also one of intenseindividualism.[4]
As some of his writings had included nationalistic ideas, he was considered by theNational Socialists as one of their writers. Some parts of his works conformed well with the "Blood and soil" ethos endorsed by National Socialist ideologues such asWalther Darre andAlfred Rosenberg, which lauded the peasantry and small rural communities as the true character of the German nation.
On 5 January 1933, a French farmer found the boots of a German soldier in one of his fields. With the help of the local sexton, he uncovered a skeleton and identification tag. The sexton buried the body in an individual grave in a German graveyard near Loivre. It took almost 18 months for the tag to reach Berlin via the German embassy in France. This tag was subsequently lost during an Allied bombing raid on Berlin; an extant photograph of it does not allow a definite conclusion on whether the tag said "F.R." (Füselier-Regiment) or "I.R." (Infanterie-Regiment). However, on 8 May 1934, the newspaperVölkische Beobachter announced that the grave of Löns had been discovered. In October 1934, at the behest ofAdolf Hitler, Löns' purported body was exhumed and brought to Germany.[5] There was not any medical examination to try to verify that these were indeed the remains of the writer.
In 1919, several bodies had been exhumed in the vicinity of the area where Löns was killed and transferred to the war cemetery at Luxembourg. From there they were moved to a mass grave near Loivre, where they remain to this day, according to theVolksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, a charity. It is quite possible that Löns' remains were among them.[2]
The exhumed body of Löns was supposed to be buried in the Lüneburg Heath, given his association with the area. However, the exact location of his new grave posed problems. The initial plan to bury him at theSieben Steinhäuser, amegalithic site, was abandoned since the military at the time had (still secret) plans to establish themilitary training facility Bergen in the area.[2] An alternative site near Wilseder Berg was rejected due to concerns about the environmental effect of large numbers of visitors to the grave. Finding a suitable burial place became an issue for the top echelons of the regime, includingHermann Göring,Rudolf Heß,Joseph Goebbels,Werner von Blomberg and even Adolf Hitler.
On 30 November 1934, members of theSturmabteilung (SA), apparently on orders from Goebbels, removed the remains from the graveyard chapel in Fallingbostel where they were awaiting reburial. They buried them near the roadside of what was thenReichsstrasse 3 (nowBundesstrasse 3 or B3) south of Barrl, near the area known presently asReinsehlen Camp.[2][6] However, on 2 August 1935, the anniversary of the start of World War I, on the initiative of von Blomberg, Minister of War, theReichswehr exhumed the remains and transferred them to theTietlinger Wacholderhain near Walsrode, where an earlier (1929) memorial had been erected, for a ceremonial reburial.[5][6]
After 1945, Löns remained a bestselling author. The company that published most of his works estimated that by 1966 they had sold 7.5 million books written by him.[1]
ComposerPauline Volkstein (1849-1925) set Löns’ text to music in her lieder.[7]
The 1932 movieGrün ist die Heide (Green Is The Heath) was based on Löns' writings.[2] It wasremade with great commercial success in 1951, featuringSonja Ziemann andRudolf Prack, and again in1972.
In 1956,Dieter Borsche featured as Löns inRot ist die Liebe [de], a German movie based on Löns' autobiographyDas zweite Gesicht.
There are 113 memorials total to Löns in Germany plus eight in Austria and 19 in other countries. Additionally, 247 streets and roads in Germany have been named for him. Twelve schools have his name.[6] Finally, there isHermann Löns Stadium at Paderborn.
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