Hans Severus Ziegler (13 October 1893 – 1 May 1978) was a German publicist,
theater manager
A theater manager, also called a general manager, managing director, or intendant (UK English and German), is the administrator of a theater. They often also have the responsibilities of an artistic director but in any case oversee all administra ...
, teacher and
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
official. A leading cultural director under the Nazis, he was closely associated with the censorship and cultural co-ordination of the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
.
Early years
Ziegler was born on 13 October 1893 in
Eisenach
Eisenach () is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situat ...
. He was the son of a banker and, through his mother, the grandson of
Gustav Schirmer
Gustav, Gustaf or Gustave may refer to:
* Gustav (name), a male given name of Old Swedish origin
Art, entertainment, and media
* ''Primeval'' (film), a 2007 American horror film
* ''Gustav'' (film series), a Hungarian series of animated short car ...
. His grandmother, the American-born Mary Francis Schirmer, was a close friend of
Cosima Wagner
Francesca Gaetana Cosima Wagner ( née Liszt; 24 December 1837 – 1 April 1930) was the daughter of the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt and Franco-German romantic author Marie d'Agoult. She became the second wife of the German co ...
and from an early age Ziegler was attracted to the militant
nationalism
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...
in which the Wagner family were steeped. Ziegler studied
German literature
German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy a ...
at university, completing his education with a PhD. He became a journalist, writing mostly for
extreme right
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
organs such as the ''Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung''.
In 1924 Ziegler founded and edited a weekly political newspaper called ''Der Völkische''. On 31 March 1925 Ziegler became a member of the Nazi Party, with his membership number being the comparatively low 1317.
That year his newspaper expanded to a daily and changed its name to ''Der Nationalozialist'', becoming the Nazi Party organ of Thuringia. He served as Deputy ''
Gauleiter
A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...
'' in
Thuringia
Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.
Erfurt is the capital and larg ...
under
Artur Dinter
Artur Dinter (27 June 1876 – 21 May 1948) was a German writer and Nazism, Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' of Gau Thuringia.
Biography
Dinter was born in Mulhouse, in Alsace-Lorraine, German Empire (now France) to Josef Dinter, a c ...
from 1925 to 1927 and under
Fritz Sauckel
Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel (27 October 1894 – 16 October 1946) was a German Nazi politician, ''Gauleiter'' of Gau Thuringia from 1927 and the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment (''Arbeitseinsatz'') from March 1942 unti ...
from 1927 to 1931. In 1928 he was appointed head of the
Militant League for German Culture
The English word ''militant'' is both an adjective and a noun, and it is generally used to mean vigorously active, combative and/or aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in "militant reformers". It comes from the 15th century Latin ...
.
It was also Ziegler who in 1926 came up with the name ''
Hitler-Jugend
The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. ...
'' (Hitler Youth) for the Nazi youth movement.
Ziegler was a close friend of the Schirach family and in 1925 he introduced
Baldur von Schirach, who would go on to lead the Hitler Youth, to
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
.
Ziegler was associated with the hard-line
racialist
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies can be more e ...
wing of the Nazi Party, which looked to
Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
as its champion. In keeping with this wing he was particularly staunch in his
anti-Semitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
.
Under the Nazis
![Krenek Jonny-spielt-auf Titel](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Krenek_Jonny-spielt-auf_Titel.jpg)
In 1933 Ziegler was appointed to the Council of State and as a member of the State Government of Thuringia. In addition, he served as President of the and Reich culture Senator.
In 1936, he was appointed the general manager of the and state commissioner for the State Theatre in Thuringia.
In 1935 he was placed on leave whilst he was investigated for alleged breaches of
Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 (known formally a§175 StGB also known as Section 175 in English) was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision ...
, the anti-homosexual legislation, although the case was dropped.
He was long assumed to be homosexual during his lifetime.
Ziegler played a leading role in promoting the Nazi vision of culture, particularly with regards to
"degenerate" music. He was a strong critic of
atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
, dismissing it as decadent "cultural
Bolshevism
Bolshevism (from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, fo ...
". In may 1938 he curated the ''Entartete Musik'' exhibition in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
, with
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
,
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
,
Walter Braunfels
Walter Braunfels (; 19 December 1882 – 19 March 1954) was a German composer, pianist, and music educator.
Life
Walter Braunfels was born in Frankfurt. His first music teacher was his mother, the great-niece of the composer Louis Spohr. He c ...
,
Karol Rathaus
Karol Rathaus (Karl Leonhard Bruno Rathaus; also Leonhard Bruno; 16 September 1895 — 21 November 1954) was a German-Austrian Jewish composer who immigrated to the United States via Berlin, Paris, and London, escaping the rise of Nazism in German ...
and
Wilhelm Grosz
Wilhelm Grosz (11 August 1894 – 10 December 1939) (sometimes credited as Hugh Williams) was an Austrian composer, pianist, and conductor.
Wilhelm Grosz was born in Vienna. He studied music with Richard Robert, Franz Schreker and Guido Adler. I ...
amongst those receiving the strongest condemnation in the pamphlet he wrote to accompany the exhibition. Whilst working under Frick, in Thuringia, Ziegler had also overseen the removal of
modern art
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...
pieces from museums and public buildings, and helped to bring about a crackdown on the "glorification of Negroidism" by restricting the performance of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
music. Promulgated in his 1930 edict ''Against Negro Culture'', the Thuringian foreshadowed the co-ordination of culture that was to happen under the Nazi government. ''Entartete Musik'' would continue Ziegler's crusade against jazz, whilst also condemning
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...
's opera ' as the archetype of
Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
decadence and miscegenation.
After the war
In the
Soviet occupation zone
The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
several of Ziegler's writings, as well as a book about him, were placed on the ' (list of banned literature).
After the war he worked as a representative for ' and subsequently as a private tutor in
Essen
Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and D ...
.
He also directed a private theatre from 1952 to 1954.
Politically, he was active in ', an
extreme right
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
study group established in 1950. In this role, he became a regular guest of
Winifred Wagner
Winifred Marjorie Wagner ( Williams; 23 June 1897 – 5 March 1980) was the English-born wife of Siegfried Wagner, the son of Richard Wagner, and ran the Bayreuth Festival after her husband's death in 1930 until the end of World War II in 1 ...
, who regularly hosted such other far-right luminaries as
Adolf von Thadden
Adolf von Thadden (7 July 1921 – 16 July 1996) was a German far-right politician. Born into a leading Pomeranian landowning family, he was the half-brother of Elisabeth von Thadden, a prominent critic of the Nazis who was executed by the Nazi g ...
,
Edda Göring
Edda Carin Wilhelmine Göring (2 June 1938 – 21 December 2018) was the only child of German politician, military leader, and leading member of the Nazi Party Hermann Göring, by his second marriage to the German actress Emmy Sonnemann.
Born ...
, and
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...
.
[Gottfried Wagner, ''Wer nicht mit dem Wolf heult – Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen eines Wagner-Urenkels'' (Cologne, 1997), p. 69]
Ziegler died in
Bayreuth
Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of U ...
on 1 May 1978.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ziegler, Hans Severus
1893 births
1978 deaths
People prosecuted under anti-homosexuality laws
Antisemitism in Germany
German anti-communists
20th-century German educators
German male journalists
German male writers
German people of American descent
German theatre managers and producers
Nazi propagandists
Officials of Nazi Germany
LGBT people in the Nazi Party
People from Eisenach
Politicians from Thuringia
20th-century German journalists
20th-century LGBT people