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Heinrich Hellmund
© Gernot Sommer

Heinrich Hellmund * 1897

Borgfelder Straße 51 (Hamburg-Mitte, Borgfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
HEINRICH HELLMUND
JG. 1897
ENTRECHTET / GEDEMÜTIGT
FLUCHT 1933 SCHWEIZ
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
SOMMER 1937
SALMAISE / FRANKREICH

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Heinrich Hellmund
Borgfelder Strasse 51 (Hamburg-Mitte, Borgfelde)

The philosopher Heinrich Hellmund, born on 14 Feb. 1897 in Saarbrücken, is an author largely forgotten today. He committed suicide in July 1937, dying in the tiny village of Salmaise, about 25 kilometers (some 15 miles) northwest of Dijon.

On 28 May 1930, Hellmund was awarded his Ph.D. by the University of Giessen for his dissertation entitled Das Wesen der Welt ("The nature of the world”). The file concerning the conferring of his doctorate, available in the university archive (call number: Phil 0 18 1930), contains a number of handwritten letters by Hellmund, including a résumé. Passages of it read as follows:

"I was born in Saarbrücken in 1897 and lived with my parents in Munich from 1901 until 1927. There I completed the Realgymnasium [translator’s note: a high school focused on science, math, and modern languages] in 1916 and then served in the field for two years. In 1919, I registered at the University of Munich, taking courses for ten semesters until 1923. Even in high school, during my entire spare time I concerned myself with philosophy, which soon filled my life completely and became equivalent to it. In 1914, I began for the first time to set down my work and overall, I put it in writing four times. I was enabled to do so partly by the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft [Emergency Association of German Science], partly due to assistance by the publisher and contributions from private patrons. In 1927, my work entitled Das Wesen der Welt appeared in its first edition, in 1928 in its second edition (3 volumes, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart). The readers’ responses I received mostly from Northern Germany prompted me in 1928 to move to Hamburg, where I have been living for two years. In the summer semester of 1929, I registered at the local university. In addition, I was appointed an instructor at the Hamburg Community College [Volkshochschule].

The first conception of my work’s basic ideas dates to the years 1913–1914. Since then, I did not have to change them but rather expand them further all the time. I was influenced most significantly by Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. However, it became apparent to me that other thinkers, such as, above all, Giordano Bruno and Spinoza, had anticipated in their thinking many ideas at which I had arrived on an independent path. A great clarity of perceiving and experiencing that distinguished my childhood rose and condensed in me into abstraction of an ever-increasing degree. Thinking is my only passion; it pervades me constantly. For many years after the war, I had very hard battles to fight with the unprecedented inauspiciousness of the times. However, the feeling of my inner vocation gave me the strength to tread forward on the chosen path.”

In Hamburg, Hellmund appears to have had closer contact to the philosophy professors Ernst Cassirer (emigrated to Britain in 1933) and the epistemologist August Messer, as emerges from a letter written on 12 Feb. 1930. In the letter, he asks to be admitted to doing his doctorate at the University of Giessen, even though he is not registered there:

"Work on my oeuvre had entailed such an amount of studies that mentally attendance of lectures was not conducive to providing me with anything essentially new, instead only imposing the strain of material to memorize. The Hamburg department chair Prof. Cassirer, whom I consulted on this matter, certainly showed utmost willingness to accommodate me, but at the same time, he explained that basically it was not possible to make any exemptions from the Hamburg regulations governing the conferring of doctorates (submission of a dissertation not published yet and adequate knowledge of classical Greek). Unfortunately, I do not see myself in a position to meet these two conditions.

Incidentally, this time coincided with Prof. Dr. August Messer looking into my work, something that yielded a very favorable result. I subsequently got in touch with Prof. Messer in writing and verbally, presenting to him my entire case. What emerged in this connection was that the conditions above were not part of the regulations governing the conferring of doctorates at the University of Giessen. Therefore, Prof. Messer stated conditions as fulfilled in my case to be able to do my doctorate at this university and thus to complete my external studies with the desired degree.

I thus ask, in recognition of these circumstances, to enable me to obtain my Ph.D. before the end of the current semester. I believe that both the number of semesters of which I can provide proof and the knowledge I actually acquired and particularly the independent scholarly research manifested in my work – which I request to have deemed as the doctoral thesis – would probably justify such a course.”

Nothing is known (yet) about the exact time of Heinrich Hellmund’s emigration, nor whether he returned to the Saarland anymore after 1933. Moreover, I have not yet succeeded in finding any police files about his suicide in France. What emerges from reports about scholarship recipients of the "Lincoln Foundation” is that he was among the earliest individuals sponsored.

I have available a very extensive (1,323 pages strong) one-volume edition of the work published in 1927, though not, as Hellmund mentioned, with DVA but, according to the imprint, with the Amalthea publishing house (Zurich, Leipzig, Vienna).

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Dr. Ralph Schock is literary editor with the Saarländische Rundfunk [broadcasting corporation] and author

Stand: October 2016
© Ralph Schock

Dr. Ralph Schock ist Literaturredakteur beim Saarländischer Rundfunk und Autor

Heinrich Hellmund (given name: Ernst Rosenthal), born on 14 Feb. 1897 in Saarbrücken, suicide on 10 June 1937 near Dijon

Borgfelder Strasse 52

Carl Jacob Burckhardt (diplomat and High Commissioner of the City of Danzig) wrote to Thomas Mann on 28 Oct. 1933: "Among the numerous refugees calling on me here almost on a daily basis, I was struck by a peculiar man, who due to the degree of his desperation, the modesty and discretion of his conduct and the enormous bitter exertion of his self-confidence and pride, moved me more than others and left a strong impression on me. It is Dr. Heinrich Hellmund from Hamburg. I tried to procure a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation for the lonely scholar deprived of all of his financial means … the answer was negative. … In Hellmund’s conversation, your [Thomas Mann’s] name surfaces repeatedly, not along the lines of any intent or tangible hope but in terms of trust and consolation: You have done him a lot of good once with a comment about his work, and in his desertedness, he draws on this joy.”

Thomas Mann also endeavored to get help for Hellmund; he answered Burckhardt, "So he, too? Why? Does this mean he is Jewish? I did not know that. … That something has to be done for Hellmund in any case is a sentiment I share with you entirely. He is an extraordinary mind, an astounding intellectual power … and that the new Germany did not know how to keep that power is a further plea on behalf of those who one holds in one’s heart in opposition to it; and I must say that his great philosophical work, … for whose printing I advocated along with others, made an immense impression on me. It is an achievement on a grand scale, a system of thought developed and expanded from a central idea with brilliant obstinacy and of such astounding richness that … in these confused and baffled times can work in ordering and helping ways.” Thomas Mann interceded with Prof. Gottfried Bohnenblust in Geneva on Hellmund’s behalf: For the winter semester 1935, he received a teaching assignment at the University of Geneva.

Hellmund’s father was the white goods dealer Max Rosenthal, born on 28 Apr. 1855 in Lautenburg, District of Strasbourg, who died on 19 Dec. 1936 in Munich. The family of the mother, Clara, née Wolff, came from Hamburg. Clara herself, born on 17 Jan. 1870 in Tilsit (today Sovetsk in Russia), grew up in New York, returning to Hamburg at the age of 20. She died by taking her own life in Munich on 15 Nov. 1938. The father ran a retail business at Bahnhofsstrasse 88 in Saarbrücken, before selling the store in early 1901 and relocating with his family to Munich. At the beginning of the First World War, the father invested his entire assets in war loans, which became worthless due to inflation after the end of the war. Therefore, the family was always dependent on public welfare assistance for persons receiving small pensions (Kleinrentnerfürsorge) in Munich.

From age eleven, Ernst Rosenthal first attended the Theresiengymnasium high school, then the Realgymnasium in Munich. Later he summed it up as follows: "Even in my high school days, during my entire spare time I concerned myself with philosophy, which soon filled my life completely. Thinking became my only passion. Starting in 1913, in the seventh grade of high school, I began writing my work entitled Das Wesen der Welt ["The nature of the world”]. At age 17 – during a walk in Munich’s English Garden – suddenly, like an inspiration, the very thought struck me that would later form the foundation of my entire philosophy, a metaphysical ‘world view’ encompassing all fields of knowledge. I acquired all necessary knowledge purely autodidactically, mostly by means of the Bavarian State Library, to which I was admitted then as a special exception at the intercession of my teachers.”

After completing high school in 1916, Ernst Rosenthal served as an infantryman at the front for 29 months and was decorated with the Iron Cross Second Class and the Bavarian Military Merit Order Third Class. During the turmoil of war and the post-war period, he had to interrupt work on his oeuvre. "After the war, I had very hard battles to fight with the unprecedented inauspiciousness of the times. However, the feeling of my inner vocation gave me the strength to tread forward on the chosen path.” In vain, he tried for a short time to earn his livelihood as a bank employee. From 1919 onward, he studied at the University of Munich for six semesters, without completing a degree, however.

In 1923, he relocated his place of residence from Munich to Obermenzing, where he stayed until late 1927. He used the move as an opportunity to drop his real name, going only by the name of "Heinrich Hellmund” henceforth. Later, in applications to the Hamburg judiciary and the Bavarian State Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, he gave the following reasons for his name change:

"I have, under my current name [Heinrich Hellmund] – by which I am known to the public – developed a … German political philosophy that aims at the mission of overcoming the rifts and differences in German national life. … However, I would never have been able to fulfill this mission if only the slightest shadow were cast on my person due to my former last name, which immediately brands me with the prejudice of certain circles in a particular way and makes me suspicious.”

The Hamburg State Justice Administration (Landesjustizverwaltung) approved the application for name change in Feb. 1930. The choice of name represented his program, with "Heinrich” as a concise and typically German first name and "Hell-Mund” (literally, "bright mouth”) as a herald of illuminating philosophical insight.

By joining the Eucken-Bund (an association named after the philosopher Rudolf Eucken, who wished to activate the collective creativity of people) in Munich and by holding public presentations to members, Hellmund succeeded in establishing contact to noted figures and in financing his livelihood essentially through private donations. In addition, was awarded a longer-term scholarship from the Emergency Association of German Science (Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft). The Prussian Minster of Cultural Affairs, Becker, arranged for a donation by Paul Kempner, the co-owner of the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house in Berlin. Hellmund described these years as "the most wonderful in my life except for my carefree youth.”

The search for a publisher of his philosophical work initially turned out to be rather difficult, since to any contemporary publisher, the "unwieldy” subject matter held out little hope for considerable profit. However, on 15 May 1927, the work entitled Das Wesen der Welt, by then having grown to more than 1,300 printed pages, became available in bookstores. The Amalthea Verlag had published the book. Already one year later, the second edition was published as a three-volume edition with Deutsche Verlagsanstalt in Stuttgart. When Hellmund later complained that his work had not become a "bestseller,” Thomas Mann consoled him by saying, "That your work would act as a bombshell and become a vogue book like [Oswald Spengler’s] The Decline of the West was not to be expected and hardly to be desired.”

In his enthusiasm for what he had read, the Hamburg pediatrician R. Guido Möring proposed to Hellmund in 1927 that he come to Hamburg. He offered to find sponsors in the Hanseatic city who would finance his livelihood. In return, Hellmund was to give lectures on his new worldview. Hellmund agreed and moved to Hamburg in Jan. 1928. At first, he found an audience in private circles but soon he was able to hold public lectures at the Detaillistenkammer (the advocacy group of the retail trade). In this way, a number of personalities took notice of Hellmund, including Paul Theodor Hoffmann, the city archivist in Altona, through him also the Hamburg Council of State Adolf Buehl, the historian of natural sciences Prof. Hans Schimank, Walter Schirren, the Hamburg head of the German Monist League (Deutscher Monistenbund), as well as the local press. As a result, Hellmund was appointed lecturer in the Schopenhauer Society as well as in the community colleges (Volkshochschulen) of Altona, Hamburg, and Harburg.

Hellmund’s audience – as Adolf Buehl assessed in his memoirs – was comprised of an elite of mid-level civil servants and members of the middle classes hungry for knowledge. He reports about Hellmund the person: "Hellmund was short, slight, and delicate; he was filled with German sentiment to an extent I had never encountered before among his racial fellows; he played the piano with masterly command, exclusively Bach, Beethoven, and particularly Wagner. A broody character with a bent to a life of solitude, he dwelled on philosophical problems very early on. … In personal intercourse, Hellmund was a plain, modest human being, who at times could have something childlike touching in his nature. … We considered him a ‘human with a touch of genius’ at least, his work a scholarly achievement of the first order.”

In the context of the world economic crisis in 1929, lecturers’ fees of the Hamburg post-secondary institutions were drastically cut several times. As a result, Hellmund increasingly ran into economic difficulties and tried to obtain financial support from third parties, including a subsidy by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation [Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, also translated as German National Merit Foundation] in Dresden. There, an aid organization founded by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and provided with (though modest) financial means had assumed work shortly before, the "Abraham-Lincoln-Stiftung.” Since management of this US foundation was in the hands of the Deutsche Studienstiftung, Hellmund received a scholarship as one of the first candidates, enabling him to continue his work in Hamburg.

Hellmund’s wish to obtain the doctoral degree at the University of Hamburg proved impossible to realize because he did not meet the formal prerequisites of the Hamburg regulations governing the conferral of doctoral degrees. Instead, in Feb. 1930, he was awarded the Ph.D. at the University of Giessen by Prof. August Messer with the highest distinction of "summa cum laude.”

Three additional books took shape in 1932: Kritik der Politik ("Critique of politics;” unpublished to this day) and Das Problem unseres Daseins ("The problem of our existence;” also unpublished). Publication with Broscheck Publishers in Hamburg was also supported by Hamburg Mayor Carl Wilhelm Petersen, but time was working against Hellmund. The third book, Die ewige Weltordnung ("The eternal world order”) was published posthumously only in 1967 with the Hamburger Kulturverlag publishing house.

At the suggestion of Reinhold Schairer (managing director of the German National Association for Student Affairs [Deutsches Studentenwerk e. V.] and vice president of the International Student Service [Weltstudentenwerk], and at the same time general manager of the Abraham-Lincoln-Stiftung, which had granted Hellmund a scholarship), early 1932 saw the foundation of a Hellmund society designated as "Society for the Philosophy of Reality” ("Gesellschaft für Wirklichkeitsphilosophie”) in Hamburg at Borgfelder Strasse 51.

In Jan. 1933, via a contact to Heinrich Landahl (until 1933 Member of the Hamburg City Parliament for the German Democratic Party [DDP], in 1933 briefly Member of the German Reichstag, and after 1945 Senator for Schools in Hamburg with party membership in the German Social Democratic Party [SPD]), Hellmund was invited to an evening of discussion in Landahl’s private apartment. Hellmund’s talk culminated in the statement that "if the Nazis take the helm, it would be over with Germany; we would awaken to serious lamenting.”

For the beginning of February, Hellmund had an appointment with the theology professor Paul Tillich in Frankfurt/Main in order to negotiate about a habilitation and a lecturing post. However, the "radical change” ("Umbruch") on 30 Jan. 1933 dashed his hope. Tillich and Hellmund agreed that intellectual life in Germany would be gagged by the new rulers in Berlin. Thus, after visiting Tillich, Hellmund did not even return to Hamburg at all, instead immediately traveling on to Basel and going into Swiss exile.

Hellmund’s time in exile was marked by constant ups and downs of hope and disappointment. Always in economic worries about daily survival, he felt under surveillance by the Gestapo. He undertook a suicide attempt in the Swiss Alps and was rescued. After a subsequent stay in a sanatorium, he took up residence in France. One more time, his star seemed to rise in Paris, when the Sorbonne University granted him a small scholarship, which was limited until July 1937, however.

In Paris, Hellmund accepted an invitation to a competition of the French Ministry of Education on the topic of "The foundation of morality,” submitting the revised text of his book Die ewige Weltordnung ("The eternal world order”).

On a lecture tour through Sweden in early 1937, Hellmund met in Stockholm a countess by the name of Kerstin Hamilton, who arranged for him support from a fund for intellectual refugees. In May, Hellmund got word that he would be able to accept a prize of 9,000 French francs in Paris for the text he had submitted, though he would have to spend the money in France. At the end of May 1937, Hellmund traveled back to Paris to receive the prize in person. After that, his traces disappear. In Dec. 1937, hunters found, in a forest near Salmaise not far from Dijon, the skeleton of a man that turned out to be the mortal remains of Hellmund according to investigations by French police. The police inquiries also established that Hellmund had ended his life by committing suicide around 10 June 1937.

In the summer of 1932, Hellmund had visited his parents for the last time on the occasion of a holiday trip to Carinthia in Austria. In Dec. 1936, his father died at the age of 81. In Mar. 1938, his mother wrote about her son to Maria Eggers in Hamburg: "The fact that after five and a half years, I did not even see him once more or at least receive a few lines from him is what will not let me come to rest inside, instead tearing open the wound again.” A few days after the infamous "Crystal Night,” the November pogrom of 1938, the mother Clara Rosenthal took her own life in her apartment in Munich. She died on 15 Nov. 1938, the last of the Rosenthal family.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Gernot Sommer

Quellen: Hellmund, Heinrich: Das Wesen der Welt, Zürich, Leipzig, Wien 1927, 2. Aufl. Stuttgart 1928; ders.: Die ewige Weltordnung, posthum Hamburg 1967; ders.: Dokumente, Manuskripte, Vortragsunterlagen, persönliche Notizen, Eingaben, Briefe; Archiv der ETH Zürich. Brief von C. J. Burckhardt an Thomas Mann vom 28.10.1933, Brief von Thomas Mann an Hans Ludwig Held vom 1.8.1926; Archiv der Rockefeller-Stiftung, New York, zum Teil veröffentlicht in: Malcolm Richardson/Jürgen Reulecke/Frank Trommler (Hg.) "Weimars Transatlantischer Mäzen: Die Lincoln-Stiftung 1927 bis 1934", Essen 2007; StaH, 622-1/17 Familie Buehl, 218-9 Lfd. Nr. 1, S. 177–181; Mann, Thomas: Tagebücher 1933–1934, 1935–1936; ders. Briefe an Erika Mann; Philosophische Warte, Ges. für Wirklichkeitsphilosophie, Hamburg; in Privatbesitz: Amalthea-Verlag, Briefe und Verlagsprospekte, Briefe anderer Verlage; Briefe an Hellmund, Erinnerungen, persönliche Gutachten und Rezensionen von Persönlichkeiten des öffentlichen Lebens über Hellmund und sein Werk; Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Stuttgart; Briefe und Verlagsprospekte anderer Verlage; diverse Zeitungen, Zeitschriften und Periodika: Rezensionen von Journalisten und Wissenschaftlern über Hellmund und sein Werk; Eggers, Maria, Erinnerungen, Briefe der (früheren) Verwalterin des Nachlasses von Hellmund, an diverse Personen; Hamburg-Altonaer Buchhändlerverein, Vortragsankündigungen, Unterlagen, Dokumente; Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft Altona, Vortragsankündigungen, Unterlagen, Dokumente; Volkshochschule Hamburg, Vortragsankündigungen, Unterlagen, Dokumente; "Le Matin", Paris, Dezember 1937; "Pariser Tageszeitung", Jg. 2, Dez. 1937, Nrn 550, 551, 552, 553, 556; Schwedische Zeitungen (Stockholm und Uppsala), 1937.