Hans Baumann
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Hans Baumann (* April 22, 1914 in Amberg; † November 7, 1988 in Murnau) was a German poet, songwriter, author of books for youth and children as well as a literary translator.
Born in Amberg (Bavaria) in 1914 in a military family, Baumann was a German nationalist and a devout Catholic, belonging to the Catholic nationalist organization "New Germany". He started writing songs and poems when he was still an adolescent (Macht keinen Lärm, 1933). In 1934 he was noticed by the Hitler Youth leadership and invited to Berlin to work as a songwriter, author and journalist. In the 1930s he authored numerous poems, ballads and songs with various themes, both political and romantic. His songs, like the famous "Es zittern die morschen Knochen" ("The frail bones tremble") were enormously popular within the National Socialist movement, but are less known today. Others, like the ballad "Hohe Nacht der klaren Sterne" are still popular. The song collections "Unser Trommelbube", "Wir zünden das Feuer", "Der helle Tag" and others date from that period. At the outset of World War II he joined the German army in 1939 and spent most of the war on the Eastern front in a propaganda unit (Propagandacompanie 501). Continuing his work as much as possible throughout the war, he authored two collections of war poems (Briefgedichte, 1941 and Der Wandler Krieg. Briefgedichte in 1942).
After the war and a period spent in a POW camp, he distanced himself from the policies of the National Socialist government and made a remarkable comeback as one of the most popular contemporary children and youth books authors. His books dealt with natural and historic themes (I marched with Hanibal, The son of the Steppe, Barnaba the dancing bear, Wings for Ikarus, Son of Columbus, The Land of Ur etc.) winning a number of international prizes, including the New York Herald Tribune prize for the best children book in 1968. His attempted strides into other literature genres were less successful as he was viewed with suspicion by the post-war German literary and political circles because of his past NS involvement. In 1962 he was at a center of a literary controversy when forced to return the prestigious Gerhard-Hauptmann Prize received in 1959 for his drama "Im Zeichen der Fische" (written under a pseudonym), after his real identity was revealed. Baumann was also an accomplished translator, having translated numerous books from Russian to German, including works by Dostojevski, Tolstoi, Anna Achmatova and others. He died in Murnau (Bavaria) in 1988.
[edit] External links
- Marcel: Hans Baumann "Die Zeit" article (in German, 1962).
- Hans Baumann song Lyrics
