Wilhelm "Willy" Schürmann-Horster (21 June 1900 – 9 September 1943) was a German actor, dramaturge, and director, who was a
marxist
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
and dedicated communist,
and who became a resistance fighter against the Nazis.
As a young man, Schürmann-Horster trained as an actor at the Düsseldorf Drama School. During the 1920s he worked in various acting troupes in theatres in the Rhineland. By the mid 1930s, he had become a communist and in 1934 and 1935 he was arrested for political agitation but acquitted for lack of evidence. After moving to Berlin in 1937, he met and became friends with Cay and Erika von Brockdorff. Through them, a discussion group of like-minded friends was formed who openly discussed current affairs and Schürmann-Horster became their spokesman. Through contacts in the group, connections were made with a resistance organisations that was run by
Harro Schulze-Boysen
Heinz Harro Max Wilhelm Georg Schulze-Boysen (; Schulze, 2 September 1909 – 22 December 1942) was a left-wing German publicist and Luftwaffe officer during World War II. As a young man, Schulze-Boysen grew up in prosperous family with two sibl ...
and
Arvid Harnack
Arvid Harnack (; 24 May 1901 – 22 December 1942) was a German jurist, Marxist economist, Communist, and German resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. Harnack came from an intellectual family and was originally a humanist. He was strongly influen ...
in 1940. Although Schürmann-Horster wasn't a physical resistance fighter in the cast of Harro Schulze-Boysen, he was an intellectual opponent of the Nazis who displayed his convictions on the stage and as a result never took part in any of the operations that his friends undertook. After falling ill in 1941, Schürmann-Horster moved to
Konstanz
Konstanz ( , , , ), traditionally known as Constance in English, is a college town, university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the Baden-Württemberg state of south Germany. The city ho ...
where he worked as a dramaturge at the Grenzland Theatre. In October 1942, he was arrested and sentenced to death for "high treason", "dissemination of illegal writings" and "aiding and abetting the enemy" by the 2nd senate of the
Volksgerichtshof.
He was executed in
Plötzensee Prison
Plötzensee Prison (, JVA Plötzensee) is a men's prison in the Charlottenburg-Nord locality of Berlin with a capacity for 577 prisoners, operated by the State of Berlin judicial administration. The detention centre established in 1868 has a lon ...
on 9 September 1943.
He was described by his close friend, the communist trade unionist in the daily newspaper ''
Südkurier
The ''Südkurier'' is a regional daily newspaper in Germany serving the regions northwest of Lake Constance, Hochrhein and Black Forest with its headquarters in Konstanz. The paper appears with a circulation of around 130,000, six times per we ...
'' as
::''Willy, tall, skinny, a little cross-eyed, with an idiosyncratic artist's mane, was the typical stage man – always witty, often critical and always full of energy''.
Life
On 2 November 1928, Schürmann-Horster married the actor Hedda, née Lindner-Leuschner. In October 1940, Schürmann-Horster married his second wife, Klara Harprath who was an elementary school teacher.
Schürmann-Horster had known Harprath from the Rhineland theatre scene since 1923.
In April 1941, the couple had a son.
Career
After his school education, Schürmann-Horster became interested in acting. In 1918, he started studying at the Düsseldorf Drama School (Schauspielschule Düsseldorf, a private drama school that was attached to the
Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
The is a theatre building and company in Düsseldorf. The present building with two major auditoria was designed by the architect and built between 1965 and 1969. It opened in 1970.
History
The theatre dates back to 1747 when during the ...
) under German actor and theatre director
Louise Dumont.
After leaving Düsseldorf in 1920, he staged and acted in political theatre in
Rhineland
The Rhineland ( ; ; ; ) is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly Middle Rhine, its middle section. It is the main industrial heartland of Germany because of its many factories, and it has historic ties to the Holy ...
.
At the time, he worked with the Russian writer
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...
, the German playwrights
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller (1 December 1893 – 22 May 1939) was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, ...
and
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
and the German dramatist
Georg Kaiser
Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, (25 November 1878 – 4 June 1945) was a German dramatist.
Biography
Kaiser was born in Magdeburg.
He was highly prolific and wrote in a number of different styles. An Expressionist dramatist, ...
, amongst others.
From 1920 to 1922, Wilhelm Schürmann-Horster worked as a lecturer at adult education colleges in
Remscheid
Remscheid () is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is, after Wuppertal and Solingen, the third-largest municipality in Bergisches Land, being located on the northern edge of the region, on the south side of the Ruhr area.
Remscheid ha ...
and
Essen
Essen () 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 Dortmund, as well as ...
in an acting troupe known as "Young Activists' League".
It was during this period that he began to publish articles in prominent cultural and political journals.
In 1923, he became a member of
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany (, ; KPD ) was a major Far-left politics, far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, German resistance to Nazism, underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and minor party ...
, however, according to the transcripts of the 1934 trial, he was excluded due to political differences.
On 28 September 1924, he formed an acting troupe known as "Junge Aktion" ("Young Action"). From 1926 to 1928, Schürmann-Horster worked in an acting engagement at the
Schauspielhaus Bad Godesberg with an acting troupe that was known as "Notgemeinschaft Düsseldorfer Schauspieler" (Düsseldorf Actors' Difficulty Community) that included many members of his previous company. In 1929, he became a dedicated promoter of political propaganda (
agit-prop
Agitprop (; from , portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in the Soviet Union where it referred to popular media, such as literatu ...
,
political theatre) with a troupe known as "Truppe im Westen" that performed the plays of the German doctor and playwright
Friedrich Wolf.
The plays were particularly successful, enabling the actors to continue in work until 1932.
The actors staged the plays in local bars and factories, believing they should be played where people lived and worked. Around 1933, he was appointed to the role of director for a short time at the Düsseldorf cabaret "Klimperkasten" until the Nazi
seizure of power led to the theatre being closed down by the police.
He continued working in theatre engagements in
Bad Godesberg
Bad Godesberg () is a borough () of Bonn, southern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. From 1949 to 1999, while Bonn was the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, most foreign embassies were in Bad Godesberg. Some buildings are still used as br ...
until 1935.
On 27 September 1934, Schürmann-Horster along with his partner Harald Quedenfeldt and the trade unionist Rudy Goguel were arrested
by the Gestapo. Schürmann-Horster had known Quedenfeldt, a stage designer and later theatre director since 1919 and had become partners in 1923.
Quedenfeldt's parents Erwin and Emma Quedenfeldt had taken Schürmann-Horster in as a
foster child
Foster care is a system in which a minor has been placed into a ward, group home (residential child care community or treatment centre), or private home of a state-certified caregiver, referred to as a "foster parent", or with a family member ...
.
At that time, their house at 41 Schwerinstraße in
Düsseldorf-Golzheim
Golzheim is a quarter of Düsseldorf in Borough 1 on the Rhine, just north of the city center. It is primarily a business and hotel district, but retains some of the old stately villas.
History
The oldest parts of Düsseldorf are to be found ...
, had been used to hold meetings for the local opposition to the Nazis.
The indictment to prove the charge of "High Treason" could not be proven and they were both released two days later on 29 September.
On 23 January 1935, Schürmann-Horster was again arrested and indicted for "High Treason". As no evidence could be found, he was once more cleared by the Düsseldorf court, however, both himself and Quedenfeldt were placed under constant surveillance by the Gestapo.
During the spring of 1935, Schürmann-Horster along with 70 other communists were arrested and charged at the Higher Regional Court in
Hamm Hamm may refer to:
Places
;Germany:
* Hamm, North Rhine-Westphalia, a city north-east of Dortmund
* Hamm (Sieg), a municipality in the eponymous ''Verbandsgemeinde'' in the district of Altenkirchen, Rhineland-Palatinate
* Hamm, Bitburg-Prüm, part ...
but was once again acquitted.
From 1937 onwards, Schürmann-Horster lived in Berlin, at the time mostly unemployed, occasionally working as a freelancer in the German film industry.
He wrote a screenplay "Till Eulenspiegel" and dealt with questions of
theatre theory and the German classics.
Resistance
In 1938, Schürmann-Horster met the sculptor
Cay von Brockdorff and his wife
Erika von Brockdorff
Erika von Brockdorff (née Schönfeldt, Countess von Brockdorff) (29 April 1911 – 13 May 1943) was a German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime during the Second World War. Brockdorff was a member of what the Reich Security Main Off ...
at a costume party at the
Academy of Fine Arts
The following is a list of notable art schools.
Accredited non-profit art and design colleges
* Adelaide Central School of Art
* Alberta College of Art and Design
* Art Academy of Cincinnati
* Art Center College of Design
* The Art Institute ...
in Berlin. The acquaintance developed into discussion group soon afterwards. In 1938, several other people with similar artistic interests and ideological significance joined the group. Through Cay von Brockdorff, who studied sculpture with at the Berlin Arts Academy, Schürmann-Horster met the student sculptor
Ruthild Hahne who became part of the group
At the same time
Hanna Berger became part of the group whose early meetings were held in Hahne's apartment in Nachodstraße in
Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf () is an inner-city locality of Berlin which lies south-west of the central city. Formerly a borough by itself, Wilmersdorf became part of the new Boroughs of Berlin, borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf following Berlin's 2001 admin ...
, where art, freedom, love, current political events, the development of the Nazi state and what it meant for them and their future were discussed. In 1938, the group met the married couple Jutta and Viktor Dubinsky through Cay von Brockdorff. The couple were students and committed communists as members of the KPD.
Also in 1938, , an architect who knew Erika von Brockdorff began to attends meetings.
Schauer along with Walter Hoffmann and Willi Sänger were already working in a resistance cell and were looking for like-minded contacts.
In January 1939,
Herbert Grasse who was a printer joined the group. Later in 1939, the commercial clerk and KPD member, Karl Böhme became part of the group.
Also in 1939, Coppi was introduced to Schürmann-Horster through a friend from the banned KJVD, and joined their discussions.
In 1940, the group came into contact with
Harro Schulze-Boysen
Heinz Harro Max Wilhelm Georg Schulze-Boysen (; Schulze, 2 September 1909 – 22 December 1942) was a left-wing German publicist and Luftwaffe officer during World War II. As a young man, Schulze-Boysen grew up in prosperous family with two sibl ...
and
Arvid Harnack
Arvid Harnack (; 24 May 1901 – 22 December 1942) was a German jurist, Marxist economist, Communist, and German resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. Harnack came from an intellectual family and was originally a humanist. He was strongly influen ...
via through Coppi's friend Heinrich Scheel, who knew Schulze-Boysen personally. Schulze-Boysen had been collaborating with Harnack in what was then a resistance group that would be reformulated into espionage organisation that began in September 1940, that sent German intelligence to the Soviet Union. It is unknown whether Schürmann-Horster knew Harro Shulze-Boysen or Arvid Harnack personally.
Certainly the surviving documentation on the political, and social aspects of the theatre and for example the philosophical implications of artistic representation, created as part of Schürmann-Horster's commitment to his profession, don't show that he was involved in leafletting or in contact with Soviet intelligence or indeed conducting espionage.
Instead, during that period he worked on editing
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
's play ''
Egmont'' and
Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, philosopher and historian. Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright.
He was born i ...
's play ''
Don Carlos
''Don Carlos'' is an 1867 five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French-language libretto by Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle, based on the 1787 play '' Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien'' (''Don Carlos, Infante of Spain'') by Fried ...
'' for the theatre publisher ''Die Wende'', in a manner that attacked the cultural policy of the Nazis. In October or November 1940, the group decided to take a more robust approach to resistance instead of being a talking-shop. Schürmann-Horster selected three people using the same organisational structure as the KPD. One would be a political leader, one would be an organisational leader and one would be selected to be agitation propaganda leader. However, within two weeks it was decided by the group that was far too dangerous a task and the whole exercise was abandoned.
In 1941, Hahne's husband became part in the discussions. Already an active resistor, he had thrown leaflets from a train Hans Coppi knew the electrician
Eugen Neutert and he became part of the secret group, in the autumn of 1941.
Konstanz
From early-1941, Schürmann-Horster was ill and lived outside Berlin, and he failed to attend any of the regular meetings that were being held by the group.
He tried to find work in the regions, not as an actor but as a director of classical plays.
At the same time, he sent his new theatre briefs to the Reich authorities that controlled the theatre, for example, the
Amt Rosenberg
Amt Rosenberg (ARo, Rosenberg Office) was an official body for cultural policy and surveillance within the Nazi party, headed by Alfred Rosenberg. It was established in 1934 under the name of ''Dienststelle Rosenberg'' (''DRbg'', Rosenberg Depar ...
office
and the ,
a department of the
Reich Chamber of Culture
The Reich Chamber of Culture (''Reichskulturkammer'', abbreviated as RKK) was a government agency in Nazi Germany. It was established by law on 22 September 1933 in the course of the ''Gleichschaltung'' process at the instigation of Reich Ministe ...
for approval.
In the briefs, he criticized the use of
pathos
Pathos appeals to the emotions and ideals of the audience and elicits feelings that already reside in them. ''Pathos'' is a term most often used in rhetoric (in which it is considered one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside ethos and ...
, the idealisation of the heroic and exaggeration of the abysmal in the performances of the classics. He offered to form a new experimental acting troupe that would re-examine the classics. However, his ideas were rejected.
In the autumn of 1941 Schürmann-Horster moved to
Konstanz
Konstanz ( , , , ), traditionally known as Constance in English, is a college town, university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the Baden-Württemberg state of south Germany. The city ho ...
.
In November 1941, he gained employment as the director and
dramaturge
A dramaturge or dramaturg (from Ancient Greek δραματουργός – dramatourgós) is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and pr ...
(dramatic adviser, essentially head of propaganda) at the in Bodensee,
Konstanz
Konstanz ( , , , ), traditionally known as Constance in English, is a college town, university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the Baden-Württemberg state of south Germany. The city ho ...
on
Lake Constance
Lake Constance (, ) refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (). These ...
for the 1942-1942 season.
His friend Wolfgang Müller has recommended Schürmann-Horster to the artistic director of the Grenzland Theatre, Fritz Becker.
At the time the theatre was going to be closed as most staff had left due to conscription, including the previous artistic director. However, due to its closeness to Switzerland, and planned use by the Nazis, it was ordered to stay open.
He was responsible for examining incoming plays to determine if they were culturally suitable, submitting programme proposals and advertising the plays using press-releases as well as designing booklets and guiding guest performances.
During his time in Konstanz, he never worked as an actor.
Between October 1941 and May 1942 there were 247 performances that were made up of 84 operettas, 59 operas, 53 comedies and 51 plays.
On 15 March 1942, Schürmann-Horster wrote an article for the Bodensee Rundschau, a daily newspaper in Constance.
In the article, Schürmann-Horster criticised the performances of the German classics, ''
Wallenstein
Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland (; 24 September 1583 – 25 February 1634), also von Waldstein (), was a Bohemian military leader and statesman who fought on the Catholic side during the Thirty Years' War (1618–16 ...
'', stating that instead of fateful tragedy, they should be performed with a focus on human consciousness and the problems of human society.
This brought him into conflict with the leisure organisation
Strength Through Joy
NS Gemeinschaft ; KdF) was a German NSDAP-operated leisure organization in Nazi Germany. Richard Grunberger, ''The 12-Year Reich'', p. 197, It was part of the German Labour Front (), the national labour organization at that time.
Set up in Nove ...
(KdF) organisation, who accused him of promulgating "Berlin-Jewish Business Practices" ("Berliner-jüdisches Geschäftsgebaren").
The KdF accused him of being mediocre and only offering "worn-out" plays that had already been performed 25 times or more.
Fritz Becker, the director supported him and arranged a salary increase to show his support. In June 1942, an agreement was reached with the KdF on the number of ticket sales that would be expected and the setting of plays.
In order to protect the male actors from being convened, Schürmann-Horster successfully organized an additional summer season in 1942 after the end of the theatre season.
Arrest
On 29 October 1942, Schürmann-Horster was arrested while the theatre ship was returning from a performance
in
Überlingen
Überlingen (; ) is a German city on the northern shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Baden-Württemberg near the German-Swiss border, border with Switzerland. After the city of Friedrichshafen, it is the second-largest city in the Bodenseek ...
, Konstanz
and was transported to Berlin.
To the end, Schürmann-Horster was sure he would avoid conviction. His theatre director Fritz Becker, travelled to Berlin to appear in support of Schürmann-Horster, but to no avail.
The second senate of the
People's Court in case number "10 J 13/43g" on 20–21 August 1943
sentenced Schürmann-Horster, Neutert and Thiess to death.
Schauer, Bölter and Dubinsky were sentenced to eight years in prison. Schmidt and Hahne were sentenced to four years in prison while Hempel received two years, Hoffman to one year in prison and Hanna Berger was acquitted.
Schürmann-Horster was executed by hanging on 9 September 1943 in
Plötzensee Prison
Plötzensee Prison (, JVA Plötzensee) is a men's prison in the Charlottenburg-Nord locality of Berlin with a capacity for 577 prisoners, operated by the State of Berlin judicial administration. The detention centre established in 1868 has a lon ...
at the same time as Neutert and Thiess.
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schürmann-Horster, Wilhelm
1900 births
1943 deaths
Male actors from Cologne
People executed by hanging at Plötzensee Prison
Executed communists in the German Resistance
Executed Red Orchestra members
German actors
20th-century German male actors
German theatre directors
German male dramatists and playwrights
20th-century German dramatists and playwrights