Rudolf G. Binding

Olympic medal record
Art competitions
	1928 Amsterdam	Lyric works

File:Rudolf Georg Binding, portrait.jpg

Rudolf G. Binding

File:Traben-Trarbach, Rudolf-G.-Binding-Denkmal, 2012-08 CN-02.jpg

Plaque at a Rudolf G. Binding memorial in Traben-Trarbach

Rudolf Georg Binding (13 August 1867 – 4 August 1938) was a German writer.

Biography

Rudolf Binding was born in Basel, Switzerland to wealthy parents. His father Karl came from a traditional family of lawyers and was an internationally recognized teacher of criminal law, who married a year before Rudolf Georg's birth and was appointed to the University of Basel. Around 1870, the family moved to Freiburg im Breisgau. After the war, the family moved on to Strasbourg, which was now part of Germany. His father taught for a short time (1872) at the newly founded university and in 1873 moved with his family to Leipzig, where he was dean of the law faculty. The son grew up well protected in a stately town house and went to school in Leipzig. After World War I, he lived in Buchschlag near Frankfurt am Main until 1935, then in Starnberg until his death.

Binding studied law and medicine in Tübingen, Heidelberg and Berlin respectively. He was much more interested in writing and horse racing and thus became a jockey and horse breeder. He also took study trips to Italy and Greece, which had a lasting influence on him. In the World War I he became a cavalry master and then a field officer.

After the war, Binding published his first works as a freelance writer, consisting primarily of short stories, novellas, autobiographical tales and legends. Thus, he became known as early as 1919 with the story Keuschheitslegende. In 1925, his work Aus dem Kriege ("From the War"), based on diaries, was published, which became known primarily for its realism and partly visionary content. Binding was nationally minded and glorified the "male soldierly spirit" and the willingness to make sacrifices in the descriptions of his war experiences.

In 1924, the poetic story Riding Instructions for a Mistress was published. In the years from 1912 to 1948, medals were also awarded for artistic achievements at seven Olympic Games. One of them (silver) was awarded to Binding at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam for Riding Instructions. The same year also saw the publication of Erlebtes Leben, an autobiography that was also strongly influenced by his wartime experiences. Other well-known works include the novella Moselfahrt aus Liebeskummer, filmed in 1953, and the philosophical dialogues Die Spiegelgespräche, both written in 1932. His works were widely popular and respected during the Weimar Republic and the National Socialist era. Armin Mohler counts Binding among the authors of the German Conservative Revolution.

In his Reply of a German, he defended National Socialist Germany against its critics. In October 1933, his name was on the list of 88 writers who had pledged loyal allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Although he had allegedly not been asked beforehand, he accepted this and commented on it in 1934 in the exile journal Die Sammlung. He said that he was too committed to the new era to be allowed to surprise the public, and likewise the Reich Chancellor, with a solemn pledge of allegiance.

Binding was married twice, the second marriage produced a son. During his marriages (1907–1919 to Helene Wirsing; 1922–1935 to Hedwig Blaser-Blanc) he had intense friendships with women, Eva Connstein and Elisabeth Jungmann. He met the latter in 1933. She had been Gerhart Hauptmann's secretary since 1922. Attracted to Binding, she decided to work for him. The two became a couple and remained involved until his death. Jungmann was Jewish; Binding's prominence protected her from persecution and vilification until his death. He praised her in the poem cycle Nordische Kalypso.

For the German government, Binding (who belonged to an elite class of authors), was an important propaganda tool; he himself willingly allowed himself to be used as a figurehead for the Reich, although he later harbored reservations about his position.

On August 4, 1938, Binding died of tuberculosis in Starnberg at the age of 70. Since he left no will, Elisabeth Jungmann had to emigrate almost penniless to England, where she married Max Beerbohm, with whom she had been on friendly terms for decades.

Several of Binding's works were placed on the list of literature to be censured and discarded in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the German Democratic Republic after the end of the war.

Trivia

The poem Lt. Werner cites in Das Boot when the submarine stuck in the Strait of Gibraltar is "Schlacht - Das Maß" from Rudolf G. Binding ("Einmal vor Unerbittlichem stehen...").

Major publications

• Coelestina: Eine Märchenlegende (1909)
• Der Opfergang. Eine Novelle (1912; 1993)
• Die Geige. Vier Novellen (1918)
• Unsterblichkeit (1921)
• Aus dem Kriege (1925)
• Erlebtes Leben (1928)
• Sankt Georgs Stellvertreter: Legende (1930)
• Moselfahrt aus Liebeskummer, Novelle in einer Landschaft (1932)
• Antwort eines Deutschen an die Welt (1933)
• Vom Leben der Plastik. Inhalt und Schönheit des Werkes von Georg Kolbe (1933)
• Wir fordern Reims zur Übergabe auf (1934)
• Die Waffenbrüder (1935)
• Die Perle und andere Erzählungen (1938)
• Dies war das Maß. Die gesammelten Kriegsdichtungen und Tagebücher (1940)
• Legenden der Zeit (1943)
• An eine Geliebte – Briefe für Joi (1951)
• Das große Rudolf-G.-Binding-Buch. Eine Auswahl aus dem Werk (1979)
• Reitvorschrift für eine Geliebte (1995)

Translated into English

• A Fatalist at War (1929)

Filmography

• Opfergang (1944) Directed by Veit Harlan. With Carl Raddatz, Kristina Söderbaum, Irene von Meyendorff, Franz Schafheitlin and others.
• Heartbroken on the Moselle (1953) Directed by Kurt Hoffmann. With Will Quadflieg, Elisabeth Müller, Oliver Grimm and others.

References

• Jay W. Baird, "Rudolf G. Binding and the Memory of the Great War." In: Hitler's War Poets: Literature and Politics in the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Roger L. Cole: The Ethical foundations of Rudolf Binding's 'gentleman'-concept. The Hague and others: Mouton. 1966. (= Studies in German literature; 7)
• Kirstin M. Howard: The concept of honour in the context of the World War One. Accounts of Walter Flex, Rudolf G. Binding and Ernst Jünger. Dunedin, New Zealand: Univ. of Otago, Diss. 1996.
• Bernhard Martin: Dichtung und Ideologie. Völkisch-nationales Denken im Werk Rudolf Georg Bindings. Frankfurt am Main and others: Peter Lang. 1986. (= Europäische Hochschulschriften; Reihe 1; Deutsche Sprache und Literatur; 950) ISBN 3-8204-9532-0
• Anton Mayer: Der Göttergleiche. Erinnerungen an Rudolf G. Binding. Potsdam: Rütten & Loening. 1939.
• Heinz Millotat: Rudolf G. Bindings erzählerisches Werk. Würzburg-Aumühle: Triltsch. 1939.
• Peter Scholl-Latour, La vie et l'œuvre de Rudolf G. Binding. Paris 1954.
• Traude Stenner: Rudolf G. Binding. Leben und Werk. Potsdam: Rütten & Loening. 1938.

External links

• Works by Rudolf G. Binding at German National Library
• Works by Rudolf G. Binding at Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek
• Rudolf G. Binding at the Internet Movie Database