| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: In the history of Russo-German literary relations, the poet Henry VON HEISELER (1875-1928) has long embodied the ideal of a champion who stands between Germany and Russia while communicating each other. But it must be remembered that we owe the literary form of Henry von HEISELER’s biography primarily to the efforts of his son, Bernt VON HEISELER. This essay is concerned with the son’s endeavours on behalf of his father’s posthumous image. On these can be exemplarily demonstrated how biography - when presented as a heroic legend - can be used as a promotional strategy - a phenomenon not limited to the posthumous reputation of Henry VON HEISELER. Moreover, this essay will attempt a critical examination of the ideal image that Bernt VON HEISELER created of his father as an “intermediary between the East and West”. Bernt VON HEISELER’s conceptualization of his father’s “life path” as that of a cultural intermediary emerged in the 1930s, an ideologically not unfraught moment in German history, and Bernt VON HEISELER himself was - as will be shown here on the basis of materials recovered from the archives and from contemporary publications - an enthusiastic Nazi. It must solely on these grounds be inadmissable for the concept of a cultural “mediator”, as used by Bernt VON HEISELER in reference to his father, to be taken up so unproblematically into the lexis of culture-historical research, something that occurs regularly in the present literature about the two HEISELERS. This examination of Henry VON HEISELER’s posthumous literary biography will demonstrate how the historical context (such as Germany during the National Socialist era) can determine how broadly the concept of “mediator” is extended - as well as how problematic it is that we have adopted an earlier time’s apologias for a “mediator” whole and unscrutinized. |
