![Hermann Georg Scheffauer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Hermann_Georg_Scheffauer.jpg)
Herman George Scheffauer (born February 3, 1876,
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
– died October 7, 1927,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
) was a German-American poet, architect, writer, dramatist, journalist, and translator.
San Francisco childhood
Very little is known about Scheffauer's youth, education and his early adult years in America, or, about his parents and siblings. His father was Johann Georg Scheffauer, a cabinet maker ("Tischler"), probably born in 1842 in the village of Unterkochen, Württemberg, who, according to Hamburg passenger lists, had first immigrated to America in 1868, returning again to Germany where he married Maria Theresa Eisele in Augsburg, and who then came back with him to America in 1872. His brother was the civil engineer, Frederick Carl Scheffauer, born in 1878 and he had another younger brother, Walter Alois Scheffauer (1882–1975). The family was related to the German painter and sculptor Philipp Jacob Scheffauer (1756–1808) who it was said was his great-grandfather, who went to the same school as the poet
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...
and in Stuttgart moved in a circle of German poets such as
Friedrich Haug
Friedrich Haug (Johann Christoph Friedrich Haug, born 9 March 1761 in Niederstotzingen, died 30 January 1829 in Stuttgart) was a German official and poet.
Biography
Haug is renowned particularly through his large number of epigrams, which he ...
,
Ludwig Ferdinand Huber
Ludwig Ferdinand Huber or Louis Ferdinand Huber (1764 – 24 December 1804) was a German translator, diplomat, playwright, literary critic, and journalist. Born in Paris, Huber was the son of the Bavarian-born writer and translator and his Fren ...
and
Friedrich Hölderlin
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (, ; ; 20 March 1770 – 7 June 1843) was a German poet and philosopher. Described by Norbert von Hellingrath as "the most German of Germans", Hölderlin was a key figure of German Romanticism. Part ...
.
Educated in public and private schools, he attended a Roman Catholic Sunday school in San Francisco, where services were conducted in German. He later wrote about the role of the nuns there and a certain Father Gerhard, instilling into the youth of this school terrifying and hellish religious imagery. His parents were not orthodox, in fact he spoke of being shocked by his father's religious indifference and scepticism. He discovered that he was a poet from about the age of ten, on a school outing, where the pupils ascended Mount Olympus in the Ashbury Heights neighbourhood of San Francisco. He impressed his school friends with his ability to recount the ascent, as he put it:
Suddenly I burst forth into a jog-trot doggerel. I chanted the heroic deeds of the day – the ascent of the peak, the routing of a belligerent bull, the piratical manoeuvres on a pond. The delivery of this improvised epic was volcanic. My companions regarded me with awe and suspicion. Thus, primitively and barbarically, I began. The climate had had its will of me – that marvellous 'Greek' climate of California which works like champagne upon the temperament. I was fated to become one of the native sons of song.
From then on he only wanted to write poetry but his parents insisted that he pursue a proper job. He began his career as an amateur printer, printing a broadsheet called ''The Owl'' while he was still at school writing satires on his schoolmates and teachers and "mournful valedictory odes". He went through a youthful period, through which he thought all young poets with an imaginative cast of mind must inevitably pass, namely a combination of what he termed "idealistic fanaticism and Byronic romanticism". He studied art, painting and architecture at the Arts School of the University of California (The Mark Hopkins Institute). He later worked as an architect, a teacher of
draughting and a water colourist.
Early intellectual influences
He was aware that "Ingersoll was in the air", a reference to the ideas of
Robert G. Ingersoll
Robert Green Ingersoll (; August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), nicknamed "the Great Agnostic", was an American lawyer, writer, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism.
Personal life
Robert Inge ...
the American freethinker and agnostic, and Scheffauer admitted that at first he looked upon Ingersoll and his followers as "enemies", and intellectually cowering, as it were, he read ''The Night Thoughts'' (1742) of the deeply religious English poet
Edward Young
Edward Young (c. 3 July 1683 – 5 April 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for ''Night-Thoughts'', a series of philosophical writings in blank verse, reflecting his state of mind following several bereavements. It was one of the mos ...
to reaffirm his faith.
However, he soon departed from his religiosity and became aware of the heated discussions about the "missing link" in the writings of
John Augustine Zahm
The Rev. John Augustine Zahm (pseudonym H. J. Mozans), CSC (June 14, 1851 – November 10, 1921) was a Holy Cross priest, author, scientist, and explorer of South America. He was born at New Lexington, Ohio, and died in Munich, Germany.
Education ...
, the priest and professor of physics at the
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...
(
South Bend, Indiana
South Bend is a city in and the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, St. Joseph County, Indiana, on the St. Joseph River (Lake Michigan), St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2020 United S ...
). He said that the following authors came to his aid in California bringing him "light and fire",
[Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken, op. cit., S. 77.] namely works by
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
,
Thomas Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The storie ...
,
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
,
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest" ...
,
Ludwig Feuerbach and
Ludwig Büchner
Friedrich Karl Christian Ludwig Büchner (29 March 1824 – 30 April 1899) was a German philosopher, physiologist and physician who became one of the exponents of 19th-century scientific materialism.
Biography
Büchner was born at Darmstadt on ...
.
Probably the greatest influence on his thinking, in the sense of a clearer scientific ''Weltanschauung'', was a chance encounter with a work of the German zoologist, biologist and philosopher, and popularizer of Darwin's evolutionary theory,
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
. He came across the massively popular book ''Die Welträtsel'' (The
world riddle
The term "world riddle" or "world-riddle" has been associated, for over 100 years, with Friedrich Nietzsche (who mentioned ''Welträthsel'' in several of his writings)
and with the biologist-philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who, as a professor of zool ...
s or enigmas) in the F.W. Barkhouse bookshop, 213 Kearney Street, San Francisco, which was translated by
Joseph McCabe as ''The Riddle of the Universe at the close of the nineteenth century'' (1901). He bought a copy and read half of it the same evening and the rest in his architect bureau the following day. He would later describe himself as a monist poet, and claimed that together with his close friend George Sterling they represented "a new school of poetry" in California, developing "a poetry that sought to unify poetry with science".
Protégé of Ambrose Bierce
Scheffauer later gave up his architectural day job and wrote poetry and short stories. He was encouraged by his friend and mentor
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book ''The Devil's Dictionary'' was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by t ...
the journalist, short story writer and veteran of the Civil War. How they actually first met is uncertain. It has been claimed, that Bierce had first noticed a poem of his entitled ''The Fair Grounds'' that he had entered in a literary competition in 1893, organised by the San Francisco newspaper ''The Call''.
Scheffauer who was only 17 years of age had used the pseudonym Jonathan Stone, and his poem was favorably compared to the American romantic poet
William Cullen Bryant. Bierce, who was 36 years older, became an alternative father figure for him and as a mentor criticized, encouraged and nurtured his poetic sensibility. Bierce published a number of his poems in his own "Prattle" columns. In 1899 Bierce was responsible for the so-called "Poe-Scheffauer affair". One of Scheffauer's poems, "The Sea of Serenity" (1893) was published in the ''
San Francisco Examiner
The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863.
Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...
'' on March 12, 1899, albeit not under his own name but heralded as "an unpublished poem" of
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
".
[See Carroll D. Hall, Bierce and the Poe hoax. With an Introduction by Carey McWilliams (San Francisco, The Book Club of California, 1934.)]
This carefully planned "Poe hoax" passed without creating too much attention. However, it elicited some of the greatest praise from Bierce for the young poet:
I am very far from saying that I think the poem mentioned was written by Poe ... As to internal evidence— evidence inhering in the poem itself— that is strongly in favor of Poe's authorship. If not written by him it was written by his peer in that kind of writing— by one who has so thoroughly mastered the method that there is nowhere a slip or fault. The writer, if not Poe, has caught the trick of Poe's method utterly, in both form and manner, the trick of his thought, the trick of his feeling and the trick of that intangible something which eludes nomenclature, description and analysis ... He need not fear any dimming of his glory, for distinctly greater than the feat of hearing "a voice from the grave of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
" is the feat of discovering a ventriloquist with that kind of voice.
Another early poem of his, also written in the spirit of Poe, entitled ''The Isle of the Dead'' (1894) was published the following year under his own name in the Californian ''
Overland Monthly
The ''Overland Monthly'' was a monthly literary and cultural magazine, based in California, United States. It was founded in 1868 and published between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
History
The '' ...
''. The poem was published together with the image of the painting 'Die Toteninsel' by the Swiss-German artist
Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin (16 October 182716 January 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter.
Biography
He was born in Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin (b. 1802), was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk tra ...
. Scheffauer translated
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
, read
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...
and
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
avidly, adored
W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
and discussed with Bierce varied themes such as the poems of the Irish poet
Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852) was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his ''Irish Melodies''. Their setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish ...
who he declared to be "the greatest of the lover poets" and the technical nature of
Algernon Swinburne's alliteration. The full correspondence with Bierce has not yet been published but the encouragement and belief that he showed in him as a young American poet is palpable: "I so like the spirit of your letter of July 7! It gives me assurance of your future. You are to do ''great'' work, believe me. I shall not see it all, but that does not greatly matter, having the assurance of it."
The publication of his first collection of poems ''Of Both Worlds'' (1903) was dedicated to Bierce. It has a number of English translations from Goethe, including ''Der König in Thule'' from ''Faust''. At about the same time he also began to read Nietzsche enthusiastically. Bierce was pleased with the effect this was having on him: "I can bless your new guide for at least one service to you—for overturning one of your idols: the horrible God of the Hebrew mythology, horrible even in his softened character, as we now have him." Bierce's ironic 'blessing' of Nietzsche reveals the extent and legacy of Scheffauer's Catholic upbringing. As late as 1900 Scheffauer had written an ''Ode to Father Mathew'' for the occasion of a 10,000 gathering of the "League of the Cross" in San Francisco, in memory of the Irish Catholic priest
Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1856), who was described as "the great apostle of temperance". His friendship with the poet
George Sterling, a contact encouraged by Bierce, had begun around February 1903, and it brought with it a whole circle of friends including
Jack London
John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...
, Dr. C.W. Doyle,
Herman Whitaker,
James Hopper, Frederick Bechdolt and especially other members of the
Bohemian Club
The Bohemian Club is a private club with two locations: a city clubhouse in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, California and the Bohemian Grove, a retreat north of the city in Sonoma County. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journal ...
, such as the sculptor
Haig Patigian, who all regularly met at the
Bohemian Grove amid the magnificent red oaks at Monte Rio in
Sonoma County, California
Sonoma County () is a county (United States), county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 488,863. Its county seat and largest city is Santa Rosa, California, Santa Rosa. It is to the n ...
.
Bierce would later claim his literary "idols" were
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
and
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
, and fell out with him much later (as he did with so many of his erstwhile disciples), irritated, as he wrote to him, with "the German ichor in the lenses of your eyes", an early and acute observation from Bierce of Scheffauer's troubled state of being as a hyphenated German-American:"You think your German blood helps you to be a good American. You think it gives you lofty ideals, knowledge, and much else. The same claim could be (and is, doubtless) made for every other nationality. Each tribesman thinks his tribe the best and greatest- even the Hottentot."
After his mysterious disappearance in 1913 in Mexico and his presumed death, and despite their estrangement, Scheffauer's devotion to his former master was such that he was responsible for publishing and editing translations of collections of Bierce's short stories in Germany. As with many other American writers, he made Bierce's name known to a fascinated and receptive German literary public: ''Physiognomien des Todes. Novellen von Ambrose Bierce'' (1920) which was a translation of ''In the Midst of Life:
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
''Tales of Soldiers and Civilians'' is a collection of short stories by American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer Ambrose Bierce, also published under the title ''In the Midst of Life''. With a stated publication date of 1891 (but actually publ ...
'', and ''Der Mann und die Schlange: Phantastische Erzählungen von Ambrose Bierce'' (1922). Scheffauer wrote the introductions to both these collections of short stories. As a satirist, he compared him to Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift and in the German language with Heinrich Heine. He said that the acidity of his merciless humour had been neutralized by his fellow Americans' natural born abhorrence for satire.
Tour of Europe and North Africa 1904–1906
Ambrose Bierce knew of Scheffauer's plans for a tour of Europe as early as August 1903
["When am I to see you on your way to Europe?" AB to HS, August 4, 1903, in: A Much Misunderstood Man: Selected Letters of Ambrose Bierce. Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (The Ohio State University Press, 2003), p.109.] and invited him to Washington beforehand. He provided him with letters of introduction for the English part of his journey. In July 1904 he left New York and sailed to Glasgow, before that he and Bierce were together in New York for about a month, and they also visited
Percival Pollard
Joseph Percival Pollard (January 29, 1869 - December 17, 1911) was an American literary critic, novelist and short story writer.
Biography
Born in Greifswald, Pomerania to English and German parents, he was educated at Eastbourne College in ...
the Anglo-German literary critic at Saybrook, Connecticut. Scheffauer went on a tour of Europe and North Africa 1904–1906. After about a month in England and Scotland where he cycled or 'wheeled' much, and clearly came to loathe English food, he went to Germany in October 1904 and was mesmerized by Berlin - which he spoke of as "the modern Babylon" and "the Chicago of Europe". He made what was almost a pilgrimage to Jena 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 ...
to see the world-famous scientist
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
. He presented Haeckel with works of poetry by his friend George Sterling ''The Testimony of the Suns and Other Poems'' (1903) and his own collection of poems ''Of Both Worlds'' (1903). He maintained a correspondence with him for over 15 years and would translate some of his works. As the European correspondent for the San Francisco magazine ''Town Talk'' in which he regularly sent back accounts of his travels and poems, his tour of the "old world" included Paris, Monte Carlo, Nice, Budapest, Vienna, Munich, Nuremberg, Switzerland, Italy (Palermo, Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples, Capri (where he met the romance philologist Alfons Kissner and the German painter and social reformer
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach Karl may refer to:
People
* Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name
* Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne
* Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer
* Karl of Austria, last Austria ...
), Spain (Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid, Toledo, Corboda, Seville ("The Spanish Paris"), Cadiz). He also travelled to Morocco (Tangier), Gibraltar, Algeciras, Granada, Tunisia and Algeria.
First residence in London 1905–1907
He was back in London in the summer of 1905 where he regularly "mined" the British Museum. He joined the New Bohemian Club at The Prince's Head in the Strand, and drank what he thought was rather tepid English ale with literary figures such as
Stephen Phillips
Stephen Phillips (28 July 1864 – 9 December 1915) was an English poet and dramatist, who enjoyed considerable popularity early in his career.
Biography
He was born at Somertown near Oxford, the son of the Rev. Stephen Phillips, precentor o ...
,
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, ''Time'' observed: "Wh ...
and the poet and parliamentarian
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
.
He met
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
who he found to be more English than American at a New Year's Eve party at the home of the writer
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhoo ...
. He made a pilgrimage to Plymouth: "From Plymouth, as you know, sailed forth the blue-nosed Puritans to make laws just as blue and to burn witches in Massachusetts." He also studied at Oxford University:
"I'm spending a short time up here in this picturesque place of dead creeds and living prejudices. Have been attending special lectures and studying the life. It appears to me like an immense boys' school. There is little of the true scholastic spirit or the impetus of scientific research about the place – nothing compared with the German universities."
In connection with his writings on Haeckel and his enthusiasm for the philosophy of
Monism
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
he worked closely with
Joseph McCabe, who had translated Haeckel, visiting his home in Cricklewood, north-west London, a number of times, and later writing articles for
Charles Albert Watts
Charles Albert Watts (27 May 1858 – 15 May 1946) was an English secularist editor and publisher. He founded the journal ''Watts's Literary Guide'', which later became the ''New Humanist'' magazine, and the Rationalist Press Association. H ...
and the
Rationalist Press Association
The Rationalist Association, originally the Rationalist Press Association, is an organization in the United Kingdom, founded in 1885 by a group of freethinkers who were unhappy with the increasingly political and decreasingly intellectual tenor ...
. He continued to publish many short stories and poems in both English and American literary magazines.
He was still in London at the time of the
1906 San Francisco earthquake
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
and fires (April 18, 1906), and as vice president of the
San Francisco Architectural Club, and one of
James D. Phelan
James Duval Phelan (April 20, 1861 – August 7, 1930) was an American politician, civic leader, and banker. He served as nonpartisan Mayor of San Francisco from 1897 to 1902. As mayor he advocated municipally run utilities and tried to protect ...
's lieutenants in the movement for beautifying the city, it was reported in ''Town Talk'': "He is vindicating his loyalty to San Francisco in a way that should prove far more beneficial to the city than he could be were he at home. He is acting as a San Francisco promotion committee of one, and through him, since the fire, the readers of some of the European papers are learning more of this city than they ever knew before."
Return to San Francisco and New York 1907–1911
He eventually returned to San Francisco early 1907. His second major collection of poems ''Looms of Life'' was published by Walter Neale in 1908, and in August of the same year his ''The Sons of Baldur. A Forest Music Drama'' was performed at the
Bohemian Club
The Bohemian Club is a private club with two locations: a city clubhouse in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, California and the Bohemian Grove, a retreat north of the city in Sonoma County. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journal ...
of San Francisco. The previous year Sterling had been the "Sire" - the term adopted to describe the producer-in-chief of the Grove play - with his own verse drama "The Triumph of Bohemia". As Scheffauer himself explained: "These plays, part masque, part music-drama, part allegory, are a direct outgrowth of the nature-worship of the Californian, and are given in the majestic forest amphitheatre of the club in Sonoma County, amidst colossal redwoods older than the Pyramids. Here my "Sons of Baldur" was produced on a beautiful midsummer night." Sterling's play had depicted a battle between the "Spirit of Bohemia" and Mammon for the souls of the grove's woodmen, Scheffauer's play was unmistakably Wagnerian with the god Baldur slaying the dragon Nidhugg that had been sent by Loki to destroy the woods and worshippers, symbolical of the Bohemians.
He wrote his first novel, ''Niagara. An American Romance of four generations'', finishing it in San Francisco in April 1909. A newspaper report suggested his journey to New York was connected with his novel. "On his way East Mr. Scheffauer will take in the North, in a roundabout way; will visit Seattle, attend the exposition, go on to Niagara Falls and remain there for some time before reaching New York. This young and brilliant author has met with instant appreciation and success." He lived in New York from 1909 to 1911 where he was a "worker" for more than two years at the University Settlement, very little is known about this period. As part of the University Settlement he lived in a house in the neighbourhood of lower east side, where he was clearly inspired to write his very successful play ''The New Shylock'' (1912), a study of Jewish-American life that addresses assimilation and acculturation.
Second residence in London 1911–1915
He moved back to London early 1911 and remained living there until 1915. He married the English poet, Ethel Talbot (1888–1976) who first published a collection of her poems with ''London Windows'' (1912). A contemporary review of her work said that in phraseology she follows largely Swinburne and
William Ernest Henley. She had written about how to read Poe in 1909 on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and Scheffauer had quoted her words, possibly from some correspondence between them: "The most perfect mood is a fugitive mental weariness that is neither sorrow nor longing; when you come then to Poe the lassitude gives way before the soothing sweetness of his unforgettable melodies".
Scheffauer was struck with this "most excellent advice", as well as her youth and intelligence, already in May 1910 he had proclaimed her: "one of the most gifted as well as youngest of England's poets". He had found not only an English protégé but his Diotima. Scheffauer's romantic notions of love and marriage are contained in a strident epithalamium published in his collection ''Looms of Life'' (1908) entitled ''The Forging of the Rings''. Their marriage took place at
Highgate, North London on June 25, 1912, where soon after, they also moved into a house, Bank Point, on Jackson's Lane. Satirically reflecting on the outbreak of German spy-mania in England a few years later he would write: "Our house bore little resemblance to the conventional and ugly London villas all arrow. It was just such a place as would have appealed to a German spy, for it commanded a lordly view over all London. Precisely the place to give signals to Zeppelins!" There is a further allusion to another novel he had written in London that has not been traced. A month before he was married it was reported in ''The Bookman'' in May 1912 that Scheffauer “has just finished a sort of epic novel of London, which will probably make its appearance this autumn”
International success of his play ''The New Shylock''
In 1913 his play ''The New Shylock'' was performed at Danzig in Germany. ''The New York Times'' under the headline: "Danzig Applauds Scheffauer's Play" wrote: "Mr. Scheffauer attended the opening and responded to a number of enthusiastic curtain-calls. The play has already been bought for production in Bonn, Strassburg, and Posen, and negotiations for its production in Berlin are pending." In November 1914 the play was performed at
Annie Horniman
Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH (3 October 1860 – 6 August 1937) was an English theatre patron and manager. She established the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founded the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety ...
's Repertory Theatre in Manchester, England, the first American drama ever written and performed at this theatre.
A minor legal battle ensued between Scheffauer (who had the full backing of The
Society of Authors) and the Jewish theatrical producer
Philip Michael Faraday
Philip Michael Faraday (1 January 1875 – 6 February 1944) was an English lawyer, surveyor, composer, organist and theatrical producer. He composed one of the last Savoy operas, staged several long-running shows in the West End theatre, West E ...
who attempted to censor some of the text. It was then transferred to London in 1914–15 under the changed title ''The Bargain''. In 1915 it was performed at the Hague and in Amsterdam by the great Dutch actor Louis Bouwmeester (1842–1925) who was well known for his Shylock in
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's ''The Merchant of Venice''. In January 1915 it was reported in the London theatrical press that
Princess Alexandra Kropotkin
Alexandra "Sasha" Kropotkin (1887–1966) was a New York-based writer and Russian language translator. Born in British exile to the Russian scientist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin, the socially prominent family returned to Russia from the 1 ...
had undertaken the adaption of the play for the Russian stage. It was also produced in America at the Comedy Theatre, New York in October 1915 in which the celebrated English actor
Louis Calvert
Louis James Calvert (25 November 1859 – 18 July 1923) was a British stage and early film actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and an actor-manager. He is perhaps best remembered today for having created roles in plays by George ...
appeared playing the leading role of Simon Ehrlich.
Scheffauer's translations of Heine and Nietzsche
In London he was a close friend of
Oscar Levy, the editor of the first complete edition of Nietzsche's ''Collected Works'' (1909–1913) and contributed many English translations of Nietzsche's poems. Some of his Nietzsche translations appeared in his third major collection of poems ''Drake in California Ballads and Poems'' (1912). He published his translation of
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...
's ''Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum'' (1913), with illustrations by
Willy Pogany
William Andrew Pogany (born Vilmos András Pogány; August 24, 1882 – July 30, 1955) was a prolific Hungarian illustrator of children's and other books. His contemporaries include C. Coles Phillips, Joseph Clement Coll, Edmund Dulac, Harvey Du ...
, the Hungarian-American illustrator, who had first illustrated a short story of Scheffauer's in 1906. Levy wrote an introductory essay for it. He knew J. M. Kennedy, and many of that small "crew" of British Nietzscheans and Imagists that also regularly published in ''The New Age. A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature and Art'', edited by
A. R. Orage
Alfred Richard Orage (22 January 1873 – 6 November 1934) was a British influential figure in socialist politics and modernist culture, now best known for editing the magazine ''The New Age'' before the First World War. While he was working as a ...
. Of all the British Nietzscheans he was undeniably closest to
Horace B. Samuel (1883-1950), who translated a number of Strindberg's plays and eventually Nietzsche's ''The Genealogy of Morals'' (1913). H.B.S. had dedicated his first collection of poetry ''The Arrows of Adolescence'' (1909) to him: "To my dear friend and poetical mentor Herman Scheffauer I dedicate this book".
In one letter to
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
, who also contributed regularly to ''The New Age'', he assured him of their spiritual affinity: "Mr. Pound's opinion of things American is, I take it through his confessions, quite as healthy and unabashedly modest as my own." Scheffauer printed here a number of his poems including "The Prayer of Beggarman Death (A Rime ''Macabre'')" and "Not After
Alma-Tadema", as well as his English translation of
Gabriele D'Annunzio's homage to Nietzsche "Per la Morte di un Distruttore". Following the outbreak of war he used the pseudonym "Attila" and published a number of poems in ''The New Age''. He published many short stories in the leading literary magazines such as ''Pall Mall'', ''The Strand'', ''The Lady's Realm'' and ''
T.P.'s Weekly
Thomas Power O'Connor (5 October 1848 – 18 November 1929), known as T. P. O'Connor and occasionally as Tay Pay (mimicking his own pronunciation of the initials ''T. P.''), was an Irish nationalist politician and journalist who served as a ...
'', and appears to have adopted a transatlantic strategy of publishing his stories in both British and American magazines.
Anti-war writings
Some of his earliest poems ''The Ballad of the Battlefield'' (1900), or those from his ''Of Both Worlds'' (1903), such as ''The Song of the Slaughtered'', ''Disarmament'' and ''Bellomaniacs'', showed that his pacifist tendencies were quite pronounced. In 1906 in an article he wrote for the London ''Westminster Review'', entitled ''The Powers Preservative of Peace'', he had even advocated an ''entente cordial'' between England and Germany. England ought to seek her "natural ally ... in a race and nation more closely related in all essential and significant points." In 1925 he declared: "War is the most terrible hostage of mankind. My voice has always been loud for peace, long before it became a passion, a mode or a necessity to be a pacifist. I have not only spoken for peace, I have even fought against war." In one of his rare science fiction short stories, "The Rider Through Relativity" (1921) the European battlefields of Flanders and the Champagne in World War I are seen through a reversed chronology narrative.
![Hollow head](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Hollow_head.jpg)
His visionary expressionist play ''The Hollow Head of Mars: A Modern Masque in Four Phases'' appeared in April 1915, but we know that it had already been finished in 1913. Written in staccato blank verse he said that it was not "an insurrectionary experiment in ''vers libre''" and that "It is useless to seek for parallels between the nations actually at war and these visionary combatants". His play had predicted the war and had seen through the hidden mechanisms that had encouraged its unfolding, depicting the sleepwalkers listening to the artificially produced voice of Mars, it is one of his most important but neglected works. The character of the 'Mountebank' is clearly presented as a Mephistophelean figure, whispering affectionately into the ear of 'The Minister of War' and gleefully drinking every drop of blood in his beaker and toasting "To Liberty". It is a character that is deliriously happy at the increasing numbers of soldier recruits that join him, their blood as the Minister says: "... shall manure The lilies of peace."
This macabre play on war shows him as a true protégé of Bierce, who had written some astonishing short stories about the American Civil War. After the onset of the First World War throughout 1914–1917, during America's phase of neutrality, his articles sent from London back to the New York-based American pro-German magazines, under the aegis of the German-American Literary Defense Committee (GALDC), were widespread and numerous, it was here that he "fought against war" and attempted to influence America's position. He wrote chiefly for ''The Vital Issue'' (edited by Francis J.L. Dorl) and ''The Fatherland'' (edited by
George Sylvester Viereck who Scheffauer had known in New York literary salons since late 1909)
The flight to Amsterdam and Berlin, 1915
Increasingly concerned about the anti-German riots in England and his "furrin" looking name, as well as having already received a visit from a Scotland Yard detective to his house, he left London with his wife for Berlin via Amsterdam in March 1915. He wanted to familiarize himself with the circumstances in Germany and "better orientate himself" so that he could write more convincingly, and was seriously considering returning to America. However, after finding a flat in Berlin-Friedenau he was soon appointed editor of the pro-German American newspaper, ''The Continental Times: A Cosmopolitan Newspaper published for Americans in Europe'', which was published three times a week. It boasted of sales in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, United States and the Netherlands and proclaimed itself on its headed paper as "The Leading Newspaper for Americans on the Continent".
Writing for this newspaper he continued to use the pseudonym 'R.L. Orchelle'. He was a close friend and colleague of the Irish nationalist
Roger Casement
Roger David Casement ( ga, Ruairí Dáithí Mac Easmainn; 1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916), known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irish nationalist executed by the United Kingdom for treason during Worl ...
in Berlin, who also wrote for the newspaper. His most ferocious attacks were reserved for President
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
, whom he later called "the most despicable miscreant in history,- a man whose incapacity, dishonesty and treachery brought about the most terrible failure in human history" calling him "... a new kind of monster- a super-
Tartuffe, unimagined even by Moliere, unachieved even by Shakespeare." As early as October 1915 he described
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
as " a bloodthirsty demagogue" who was "openly inciting with a fanaticism that amounts to delirium".
Scheffauer was indicted in the United States in absentia for treason in November 1919, and it was for his work at ''The Continental Times'' that was cited as the main reason, despite the fact that he had resigned his position as literary editor in December 1916 before the United States had even entered the war. In March 1916 he had been attacked in ''The New York Times'' as one of a triumvirate of American poets (together with Ezra Pound and Viereck) who had turned their backs on their country: "In childish wrath they seek a foreign shore;/There, turning on the land they loved before,/They smear foul rhymes upon her honoured name ...". It was a letter to J.M.(John McFarland) Kennedy, the English translator of Nietzsche, that was cited by the federal grand jury as an example of his treason:
You say that I turned upon a country to which I professed allegiance in favor of a country now its deadly enemy. I have never professed allegiance to any country. To England I owe none. To America, as a born citizen, I owed it only according to the dictates of my conscience. I oppose the policy of America now- or that of the powers which have my unfortunate country in thralls- as I have always opposed the English policy which dictated it, because I knew it to be hopelessly, damnably wrong ... The ultimatum presented to Wilson from Wall Street and the war profiteers, and its acceptance, constitute the most infamous betrayal of a nation that the world has ever seen.
His friend, the writer and publisher
Ferdinand Hansen
Ferdinand is a Germanic name composed of the elements "protection", "peace" (PIE "to love, to make peace") or alternatively "journey, travel", Proto-Germanic , abstract noun from root "to fare, travel" (PIE , "to lead, pass over"), and "co ...
congratulated him:
“...a few days ago I received word from Mr. Scheffauer that he had been indicted on a charge of “treason” for certain articles he had written! I congratulate my friend Scheffauer. He cannot consider this absurd charge a stigma to his name, but only a tribute to the power and brilliance of his pen. No writer has fought more passionately, more fearlessly for truth and fair play than he. His articles have been a constant source of strength and inspiration to me during these years of darkness and despair. He tore the sophistries of certain English intellectuals– such as H. G. Wells, Gilbert K. Chesterton and John Galsworthy to shreds and exposed the hypocrisies and falsehoods of the Entente politicians with merciless irony...”
Scheffauer never returned to the United States or to England where he had much earlier been placed on a blacklist. The notorious English populist editor and publisher and independent MP
Noel Pemberton-Billing
Noel Pemberton Billing (31 January 1881 – 11 November 1948), sometimes known as Noel Pemberton-Billing, was a British aviator, inventor, publisher and Member of Parliament for Hertford. He founded the firm that became Supermarine and promoted ...
, renowned for his anti-German homophobia and anti-Semitism, as early as November 1916 on the floor of the House of Commons had brought attention to Scheffauer’s journalism in ''The Continental Times'' and “to the articles containing abuse of all things British”. He goaded a reluctant
Lord Robert Cecil
Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, (14 September 1864 – 24 November 1958), known as Lord Robert Cecil from 1868 to 1923,As the younger son of a Marquess, Cecil held the courtesy title of "Lord". However, he ...
, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with confused questions concerning the issuing of passports to Scheffauer and his departure from England, “Will the Noble Lord give an undertaking that Hermann Scheffauer, who is stated to be on terms of intimacy with members of the Government, will not be permitted to return to this country?”. Lord Robert Cecil obliged him: ”Yes; I think I can safely give that promise.” The irony of being a persecuted poet and writer forced into exile could not have escaped him, he had translated Heinrich Heine's own introductory words written in 1841 to his great comic masterpiece ''Atta Troll'', "I am therefore celebrating my Christmas in an alien land, and it will be as an exile in a foreign country that I shall end my days". He wrote a trilogy of critical works on the theme of America (1923–25) believing that America was a natural 'biological' connecting link, or 'Bridge', between Germany and England. His only child was a daughter, Fiona Francisca Scheffauer (born circa 1919).
Friendship with Thomas Mann
In April 1924 Scheffauer wrote about
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...
's "crisp, skeptic,
ndcollected mind ... a mind almost pedantic in its precision of expression, its tortuous searching for the exact word, the luminous phrase. Mann, who might in his externals pass for an English M.P. or a youngish major ..." His wife had also interviewed him. He had by then already translated
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...
's ''
Herr und Hund'' which had appeared in ''
The Freeman
''The Freeman'' (formerly published as ''The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty'' or ''Ideas on Liberty'') was an American libertarian magazine, formerly published by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). It was founded in 1950 by John Chamberl ...
'' (1922–23) in six instalments, it was then published as a book ''Bashan and I. Translated by H. G. Scheffauer.'' (Henry Holt, New York, 1923).
Scheffauer was aware in July 1924 that Mann was close to finishing his "... study of a sick man in the environment of an Alpine sanatorium" and Mann wanted to entrust him with the translation of this novel ''Der Zauberberg'' (''
The Magic Mountain
''The Magic Mountain'' (german: Der Zauberberg, links=no, ) is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in German in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature.
Mann st ...
''), but failed, due to the opposition of his American publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
who was clearly influenced by the literary judgement and financial incentive of the London publisher
Martin Secker to share translation costs if Scheffauer was not chosen. ''The Magic Mountain'' was translated instead by
Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter
Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (June 15, 1876 – April 26, 1963) was an American translator and writer, best known for translating almost all of the works of Thomas Mann for their first publication in English.
Personal life
Helen Tracy Porter was the ...
. Scheffauer translated Mann's ''Unordnung und frühes Leid'' (''
Disorder and Early Sorrow'') that appeared in the American literary journal ''
The Dial''. Following Scheffauer's death in 1927 Knopf published in 1928 ''Children and Fools'' as the seventh volume of Mann's work in English translation, which consisted of nine stories all translated by Scheffauer, covering a period from 1898 to 1926. The blurb said: "Each work hitherto put into English represents Thomas Mann at one fixed point of his evolution as an artist. ''Children and Fools'' outlines, for the first time, that evolution as a process, and enables the reader to trace in one volume more than a quarter-century of the growth of as (sic) extraordinary a mind as our age is likely to know."
Romane der Welt dW(Novels of the World)
Scheffauer and Thomas Mann had a collegial, friendly relationship.
[Armbrust, Heinz J. & Gert Heine: "Herman George Scheffauer", ''Wer ist wer im Leben von Thomas Mann. Ein Personenlexikon''. Verlag Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt 2008, pp. 57, 247.] He acknowledged his translation skills and looked upon him as an authority in Anglo-American literature. Scheffauer told
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in 1924 that Mann had assured him that he much preferred reading his English translation of ''
Herr und Hund'' rather than the original German.
In April 1927, they launched a series ''Romane der Welt'' (Novels of the World), that was published by
Thomas Knaur Nachfolger Verlag in Berlin. Each week a novel that cost only 2,85 Marks appeared in the RdW series, on the back of the dust-jacket it proclaimed in German: "Every Friday a new volume/Every novel an experience". It included authors such as
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...
's ''Moby Dick oder Der Weisse Wal'' and ''Taipi'' and ''Cashel Byrons Beruf'' by
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
(with forewords by Scheffauer); works by
Hugh Walpole (with a foreword by Thomas Mann),
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
,
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, ''Time'' observed: "Wh ...
,
P. G. Wodehouse,
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy (; 14 August 1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include ''The Forsyte Saga'' (1906–1921) and its sequels, ''A Modern Comedy'' and ''End of the Chapter''. He won the Nobel Prize i ...
,
Radclyffe Hall,
Arnold Bennett
Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist. He wrote prolifically: between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboratio ...
,
Francis Brett Young
Francis Brett Young (29 June 1884 – 28 March 1954) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, composer, doctor and soldier.
Life
Francis Brett Young was born in Halesowen, Worcestershire. He received his early education at Iona, a pri ...
and
Liam O'Flaherty
Liam O'Flaherty ( ; 28 August 1896 – 7 September 1984) was an Irish novelist and short-story writer, and one of the foremost socialist writers in the first part of the 20th century, writing about the common people's experience and from their ...
.
The choice of American literature very much reflecting his ideas he gave in a key lecture at the University of Berlin in 1921 and contained in his chapter on 'Art and Literature' in his first work on America ''Das Land Gottes'' (God's Own Land) (1923), thus, the work of his friend
Sinclair Lewis ''Die Hauptstrasse'' (''Main Street'') and ''Babbitt'', appeared in the series, of which he had previously written:
"These books reveal the worm gnawing at the heart of American life, the inner doubt and unhappiness, the unhappiness which results from the hollowness within and the shallowness of life without- and which seeks to distract itself by a ceaseless external activity." Novels by
Joseph Hergesheimer
Joseph Hergesheimer (February 15, 1880 – April 25, 1954) was an American writer of the early 20th century known for his naturalistic novels of decadent life amongst the very wealthy.
Early life
Hergesheimer was born on February 15, 1880 Phil ...
such as ''Java Head''; and ''Tampico'' (also with a foreword by Scheffauer),
Floyd Dell, "George Challis", the pseudonym of
Max Brand
Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944) was an American writer known primarily for his Western stories using the pseudonym Max Brand. He (as Max Brand) also created the popular fictional character of young medical intern D ...
,
Lesley Storm and
Mary Borden, as well as many westerns by
Zane Grey. German works published in RdW were by
Eugen Binder von Krieglstein and
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (11 October 1825 – 28 November 1898) was a Swiss poet and historical novelist, a master of literary realism who is mainly remembered for stirring narrative ballads like "Die Füße im Feuer" (The Feet in the Fire).
Biogr ...
. The series also included French, Spanish, Swiss, Canadian, Swedish and Brazilian authors. The democratic intent of the series was palpable, and it was attacked in some conservative literary circles as unnecessary "flooding" of the German market. Mann wanted his ''Buddenbrooks'' to appear in the RdW in 1926. He thought it was quite unique, and from a social point of view something remarkable, he wanted his novel "to be thrown into the wide masses in a series of classical works of world literature in a popular edition" but his publisher Fischer, rejected the idea. Scheffauer was present at the first meeting of the German PEN-Group on December 15, 1924 that had named
Ludwig Fulda
Ludwig Anton Salomon Fulda (July 7, 1862 – March 7, 1939) was a German playwright and poet, with a strong social commitment. He lived with Moritz Moszkowski's first wife Henriette, née Chaminade, younger sister of pianist and composer Cécile ...
as its first president, and he was also a close friend of
Walter von Molo
Walter Ritter/Reichsritter von Molo (14 June 1880, Šternberk, Moravia, Austria-Hungary – 27 October 1958, Hechendorf (now Murnau am Staffelsee, Bavaria, West Germany), was an Austrian writer in the German language.
Life
Walter von Molo w ...
.
Berlin Correspondent for ''The New York Times''
Herman and Ethel Scheffauer both contributed regularly to ''
The Bookman: An Illustrated Magazine of Literature and Life'' providing fascinating details about the German literary and publishing world. They also both wrote regularly for the English monthly edition of the ''Berliner Tageblatt''. Scheffauer was also the Berlin correspondent for ''The New York Times'', as well as some other leading American newspapers, and he worked tirelessly as a literary agent for a number of British and American publishing companies. In 1925, eleven of his short stories were published in German translation ''Das Champagnerschiff und andere Geschichten'' (Berlin, 1925). He had already published the story that he gave as its main title "The Champagne Ship" back in January 1912 in New York in one of
Frank Munsey
Frank Andrew Munsey (August 21, 1854 – December 22, 1925) was an American newspaper and magazine publisher and author. He was born in Mercer, Maine, but spent most of his life in New York City. The village of Munsey Park, New York is named f ...
's so-called "pulp magazines", ''The Cavalier and the Scrap Book''.
Scheffauer never relinquished his original vocation as both poet and architect, he regarded words as things with which to build. His love of architecture in the 1920s was reaffirmed again with articles on
Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn (21 March 1887 – 15 September 1953) was a German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic Functionalism (architecture), functionalism in his projects for department ...
,
Walter Gropius,
Hans Poelzig
Hans Poelzig (30 April 1869 – 14 June 1936) was a German architect, painter and set designer.
Life
Poelzig was born in Berlin in 1869 to Countess Clara Henrietta Maria Poelzig while she was married to George Acland Ames, an Englishman. Uncerta ...
,
Bruno Taut
Bruno Julius Florian Taut (4 May 1880 – 24 December 1938) was a renowned German architect, urban planner and author of Prussian Lithuanian heritage ("taut" means "nation" in Lithuanian). He was active during the Weimar period and is know ...
and the
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
movement. Scheffauer played an important role in describing some of the contemporary art-movements in Germany for a wider English and American audience and his unique position was his personal acquaintance with these same figures. This is apparent from the collections of essays that he published in his ''The New Vision in the German Arts'' (1924), a work that received acclaimed reviews in America, particularly for its attempts to communicate to an English speaking audience the meaning of expressionism in German literature and poetry. Scheffauer also wrote considerably on German expressionist cinema such as
Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene (; 27 April 1873 – 17 July 1938) was a film director of the silent era of German cinema. He is particularly known for directing the German silent film ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'' and a succession of other German Expressionism, ...
's ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'' (1920),
F. W. Murnau
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888March 11, 1931) was a German film director, producer and screenwriter.
He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at t ...
's ''Nosferatu'' (1922), and much later Fritz Lang's ''Metropolis'' (1927). He wrote passionately about film and praised it as "a new stereoscopic universe" where space had been given a new voice in a "cubistic world of intense relief and depth". As both poet and
architect he would write on this ''Vivifying of Space'':
Space – hitherto considered and treated as something dead and static, a mere inert screen or frame, often of no more significance than the painted balustrade background at the village photographer's - has been smitten into life, into movement and conscious expression. A fourth dimension has begun to evolve out of this photographic cosmos.
The architectural historian, Anthony Vidler has written: "Scheffauer anticipates all the later commonplaces of expressionistic criticism from
Siegfried Kracauer to
Rudolf Kurtz." His aesthetic and sociological criticism was tinged with his own incomplete attempt at "de-Americanisation"
weil er nicht gänzlich ent-amerikanisieret ist"– as his friend Oscar Levy once put it, and it was also very clear to Levy that Scheffauer still retained a fair share of American puritanism that so animated all of his criticism. Scheffauer's collection of essays: ''The New Vision in the German Arts'' (London,1924) was testimony to this unique German-American poetical and philosophical sensibility.
Scheffauer's suicide 1927
Scheffauer killed himself and Katherine von Meyer, 23, his private secretary, in 1927 at the age of 51 years.
It was a horrific act of mental derangement brought on at a time when he was suffering from an extreme depression. Scheffauer cut his own throat and hurled himself from the window of his third storey flat; a search of his home quickly discovered the body of his secretary, apparently murdered by a single stab wound to the breast. He wrote to his wife shortly before he killed himself, who was staying with their daughter at their villa at Dießen am Ammersee,
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
, that he was in great "mental torment", and that each autumnal day it felt as if he was "... suffering the death of ten thousand mortal agonies". A couple of letters between Scheffauer and his wife were published (in German translation) to scotch some of the rumours that had arisen in the press about their own relationship and of the moral integrity of his secretary.
The PEN Club of Berlin, of which he was a founding member and its secretary, held a memorial service for him on October 27 together with a madrigal choir.
Karl Oscar Bertling the director of the
Berliner Amerika-Institut at the University of Berlin, gave a speech and spoke of Scheffauer's "poetic mission" (dichterische Sendung) and his "artistic priestliness" (kunstlerisches Priestertum). Thomas Mann also attended and in his speech praised his ability as a translator of his works and attempted to explain his unhappiness at the end of his life, of which he admitted he had not the slightest idea, he thought it was due to the nature of his "undomiciled internationality" (der unbeheimateten Internationalität). The American writer
Sinclair Lewis also gave a passionate speech at this memorial service for his "friend in struggle". According to newspaper reports, his body was transferred to Dießen am Ammersee, where he was buried. It was here and the German geographical beauty of the place, that despite his political banishment from California, he said he had in certain respects rediscovered San Francisco.
Selected works
Poems, stories and plays:
* ''The Isle of the Dead''. In:
Overland Monthly
The ''Overland Monthly'' was a monthly literary and cultural magazine, based in California, United States. It was founded in 1868 and published between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
History
The '' ...
and Out West Magazine, January, 1900
* ''Of Both Worlds: Poems''. A. M. Robertson, San Francisco 1903
* ''Looms of Life: Poems''. The Neale Publishing Company, New York 1908
* ''Drake in California: Ballads and Poems''. A. C. Fifield, London 1912
* ''The Ruined Temple'', 191
(Online edition)* ''The Masque of the Elements'', J. M. Dent & Sons, London and E. P. Dutton & Co., New York 191
(Online edition)* ''Der neue Shylock. Schauspiel in vier Akten'', Berliner Theaterverlag, Berlin 1913
* ''The Hollow Head of Mars''. Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., London 1915
* ''Atlantis'', ''London in Snow'', ''Manhattan'', undate
Selected short stories:
* ''The Arrested Stroke''. In: ''Macmillan's Magazine'', April, 1906
* ''The Black Fog''. In: ''The Atlantic Monthly'', February, 1908
* ''Hate''. In: ''The Pall Mall Magazine'', May, 1913
* ''The Thief of Fame''. In: ''
Harper's Magazine
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
'', August, 1913
* ''The Path of the Moth''. In: ''
The Smart Set
''The Smart Set'' was an American literary magazine, founded by Colonel William d'Alton Mann and published from March 1900 to June 1930. Its headquarters was in New York City. During its Jazz Age heyday under the editorship of H. L. Mencken and G ...
'', April, 1914
* ''Das Champagnerschiff und andere Geschichten'',
Ullstein Verlag
The ''Ullstein Verlag'' was founded by Leopold Ullstein in 1877 at Berlin and is one of the largest publishing companies of Germany. It published newspapers like '' B.Z.'' and ''Berliner Morgenpost'' and books through its subsidiaries ''Ullstein B ...
, Berlin 1925
Translations
* Friedrich Nietzsche: ''Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche'', Vol. 17, 1911
* Heinrich Heine: ''Atta Troll'', 1913
* Rosa Mayreder: ''Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit'', 1913
* Gabriele D'Annunzio: ''On the Death of a Destroyer. Friedrich Nietzsche, XXV August, MCM. From the Italian of Gabriele D'Annunzio. By Herman Scheffauer.'', in: ''The New Age'', Vol. 16, 1915
* Ernst Müller-Meiningen: ''"Who are the Huns?" The Law of Nations and its breakers'', 1915
* Rudolf Herzog (1869-1943): ''The German Road to Rome'', 1915
*
Bernhard Kellermann
Bernhard Kellermann (4 March 1879, Fürth, Kingdom of Bavaria – 17 October 1951) was a German author and poet.
Life
Bernhard Kellermann enrolled in 1899 at Technical University Munich initially in general studies, but later focused on G ...
: ''The Great Battle of Loos'', 1915
* Paul Barchan (1876-1942): ''When the Pogrom Came'', 1916
* Friedrich Stampfer: ''From Versailles to Peace!'', Berlin, 1920
* Siegfried Mette: ''The Treaty of Versailles and other peace treaties of the era Napoleon-Bismark'', 1921
* Bruno Taut: ''Architecture in the New Community'', in: ''The Dial'',1921
* Allemand Daudet: ''Tartarin on the Rhine'', 1922
.e. the pseudonym for Max Joseph Wolff (1868-1941)
* Thomas Mann: ''Bashan and I'', 1922/23
* Otto Braun (1897-1918): ''Diaries of Otto Braun'', in: ''Freeman'' 1923
* Georg Kaiser: ''Gas'', 1924
* Eric Mendelsohn: ''Structures and Sketches'', 1924
* Klabund: ''Peter the Czar'', 1925
* Leo Tolstoy: ''Letters from Tolstoi'', 1926
* Hermann Karl Frenzel: ''
Ludwig Hohlwein
Ludwig Hohlwein (27 July 1874 in Wiesbaden – 15 September 1949 in Berchtesgaden) was a German poster artist, a pioneer of the ''Sachplakat'' style. He trained and practiced as an architect in Munich until 1911, when he moved to Berlin and swit ...
'',1926
* Thomas Mann: ''Children and Fools'', 1928
* Thomas Mann: ''Early Sorrow'', 1930
Essays
* ''Haeckel, A Colossus of Science'', in: ''The North American Review'', August, 1910
* ''Nietzsche the Man'', in: ''Edinburgh Review'', July, 1913
* ''A Correspondence between Nietzsche and Strindberg'', in: ''The North American Review'', July, 1913
* ''Whitman in Whitman's land'', in: ''The North American Review'', 1915
* ''Woodrow Wilsons Weltanschauung'', in: ''Deutsche Revue'', April-Juni, 1917
* ''The German Prison-House. How to Convert it Into a Torture-Chamber and a Charnel. Suggestions to President Wilson'', Selbstverlag des Verfassers, Berlin 1919.
* ''The Infant in the Newssheet. An Ode against the Age'', The Overseas Publishing Company, Hamburg 1921
* ''Blood Money: Woodrow Wilson and the Nobel peace prize'', The Overseas Publishing Company, Hamburg 1921
* ''The Lear-Tragedy of Ernst Haeckel'', in: The Open Court, 1921
* ''Das Land Gottes. Das Gesicht des neuen Amerika'', Verlag Paul Steegemann, Hannover 1923
t was dedicated to his friend John Lawson Stoddard "Meinem teuren Freunde John L. Stoddard dem Vorbild edelsten Amerikanertums gewidmet"] (translated into German by Tony Noah)
* ''Joaquin Miller, der Dichter der Sierras'', in: ''Deutsche Rundschau'', January, 1923
* ''The New Vision in the German Arts'', Ernest Benn, London 1924
* ''The Work of Walter Gropius'', in: ''Architectural Review'', July, 1924
* ''Das geistige Amerika von heute'', Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1925
* ''Wenn ich Deutscher wär! Die Offenbarungen eines Amerikaners über Deutschlands Größe und Tragik'', Verlag Max Koch, Leipzig 1925 (translated into German by B. Wildberg)
* "Stone Architecture of Man and the Precisely Wrought Sculpture of Nature", in: ''World Review Incorporated'', April, 1927
Works about Scheffauer
* Heinz J. Armbrust, Gert Heine: "Herman George Scheffauer", ''Wer ist wer im Leben von Thomas Mann. Ein Personenlexikon''. Verlag Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt 2008, p. 247;
Online Archive of California: Herman George Scheffauer Photograph Album, ca. 1885-ca. 1925(Short biography, selected bibliography and photographs)
* The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Photograph of Hermann Georg Scheffauer and his wife Ethel Talbot, undated* Herman George Scheffauer papers, 1893–1927 BANC MSS 73/87 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Correspondence, manuscripts and other writings of Herman George Scheffauer. A good portion of the material pertains to Scheffauer's mentor, Ambrose Bierce (including copies of Bierce's correspondence with Dr. C.W. Doyle). The letters from Bierce to Scheffauer include references to Jack London, George Sterling and other writers (and include transcriptions as well as originals). Also included in the collection is a small amount of correspondence and writings of Scheffauer's wife, Ethel (Talbot) Scheffauer.
* Herman George Scheffauer Photograph Album, ca. 1885-ca. 1925. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. The Herman George Scheffauer Photograph Album contains 130 photographs taken circa 1885–1925. Nearly all the photographs in the album feature Scheffauer, many of them being portraits taken by professional photographers in San Francisco, London, and Berlin. Other notable persons featured in the collection include Ambrose Bierce, George Sterling, Haig Patigian, James Hopper, Frederick Bechdolt, as well as Scheffauer's wife, Ethel, and their daughter, Fiona. Identifiable locations featured in the collection include the Bohemian Grove, London, Scotland, Spain and Germany. A few of the photographs feature sculptural or painted portraits of Scheffauer.
* There are 93 letters of Scheffauer to
H.L. Mencken
Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, ...
(1921–1927) amongst the H.L. Mencken papers 1905–1956 (MssCol 1962) in the New York Public Library, Archives & Manuscripts.
References
External links
*
*
*
The Online Books Page, Herman George Scheffauer
*
''The New Shylock'' on Great War Theatre
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scheffauer, Herman Georg
1876 births
1927 suicides
San Francisco Art Institute alumni
Writers from San Francisco
Poets from California
American architects
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
American male poets
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American journalists
American male journalists
20th-century American poets
American translators
American science fiction writers
20th-century German writers
20th-century translators
English–German translators
Suicides by sharp instrument in Germany
Translators of Thomas Mann
American people of German descent
American expatriates in Germany
20th-century American male writers
Murder–suicides in Germany
American murderers