The Mother of Hanns Heinz Ewers

The Mother of Hanns Heinz Ewers

Maria Ewers Aus’m Weerth was born Johanna Bertha Hubertina Feldman-Simons on May 16, 1839 in Bonn. Her father, Franz Heinrich Wilhelm Friedrich Feldman, was a wealthy industrialist in the silk and velvet industry. Her mother was Friederica Simons. The Simons were also wealthy industrialists and she went by the name Feldman-Simons because of the importance of both family names.

In keeping with this tradition an arraigned marriage was formed between Maria Feldman-Simons and Jakob Friedrich Aus’m Weerth, another influential and important industrial family. They were both married at the age of twenty-two and lived in Bonn. Jakob Friedrich was made CEO of the local family business, Weerth & Peill.

They lived in a large mansion with many servants and held lavish parties. It was not long before they went through a large portion of the family fortune and brought the business to bankruptcy. At that time he was forced out of the family business and the couple moved into a small house without any servants. A short time later Jakob Friedrich Aus’m Weerth left his family never to return.

In 1856 he went to the United States and fought in the Civil War as a Union officer and received a military pension later in life. At the time Maria refused a formal divorce but later got one. She corresponded with him until his death.

Her father almost forcibly took her and her children back to live with him. It was a very rocky situation and she alternated between living with the extended family and living on her own in small rented houses or apartments. Living with her mother was intolerable and finally her father helped her get a small home in Cleve.

She often went to Berlin and met many important and influential people. It’s not known when or how she met the painter Heinz Ewers who would later become her husband. At that time she had three daughters. She was a beautiful woman with short-sighted green eyes and a shy disposition like her son.

When her father refused to help her she turned to her uncle Emil Aus’m Weerth who was an avid scholar and had many old books. She read many of his books and was able to recite long ballads by heart to her uncle. Her love of books was passed onto her son.

She was interested in the occult and once confided to a schoolmate, “Oh, if I could just once be lucky enough to meet the Devil, to really see him!” Friend of the family, Herbert Eulenburg said, “She boasted that she was in league with the Devil and that …”

She loved telling stories and fables and later began making up ones of her own. She also collaborated with her son in producing German translations of various authors.

She remained healthy, spry and spirited until her death at the old age of 87 on July 18, 1926 in Düsseldorf.

Hanns Heinz Ewers - A Biography

This blog is going to be a rough draft for my biography of Hanns Heinz Ewers. I will be drawing from several sources including Hanns Heinz Ewers : die Geschichte seiner Entwicklung by Hans Krüger-Welf and Der Unverantwortliche: Das Leben des Hanns Heinz Ewers (German Edition) by Dr. Wilfried Kugel.

Dr. Kugel's biography in particular is considered the definitive source for information about Hanns Heinz Ewers. It was originally a doctoral thesis and is encyclopeadic in nature as well as dry as a dinosaur bone. It is brilliant work that can not be found anywhere else and any biography must make reference to it.

Having said that, my biography is about an occultist writing a biography of an occultist. I will be drawing from my own lifetime of metaphysical research and personal life experience which includes extensive knowledge of the western mystery tradition that Hanns Heinz Ewers belonged to with reference to the OTO, Rosicrucian Order,Martinism and Freemasonry.

I draw very different conclusions from the same data than what Dr. Kugel does. Certain life experiences mean different things to an initiate than to the profane. When possible I will be drawing from the writings of Hanns Heinz Ewers as well since much of his material is heavily autobiographical in nature.

Private Hanns Heinz Ewers Study Group

Hanns Heinz Ewers Private Study Group

I translate Hanns Heinz Ewers out of love and interest. Most of the stories or novels I have never read before and I get to read them for the first time with everyone else. It is frustrating for me to spend hours translating Alraune when I could be translating something else that I have never read before. Still, the most pressing need is a new uncensored edition of Alraune and I’m up for it.

I’m trying very hard to introduce Ewers to new readers. By now everyone should realize my translations do stand apart from what you might have read before and that is my particular skill and passion. Hanns Heinz Ewers needs to reach a modern audience with modern translations. I seem to be the only one doing it.

I wish that there were more hours in the day available to me for translation work. I truly love to translate more than any other hobby I’ve ever had. Here’s the bottom line. I’d like to create a Hanns Heinz Ewers Private Study Group. This is how it would work:

I would create several private blogs available only to the study group:

Horst Wessel
Rider in the German Night
Fundvogel
The Cabaret
The Girl Wonder of Berlin
Ghost Seer
India and I
Travels Through the Latin World
Short Stories of Hanns Heinz Ewers

I have all but these two, Rider in the German Night and Travels Through the Latin World. I have all the rest and am itching to discover what is inside them but don’t have the time. I will be ordering these last two books within the next few months. I would not be publishing these but offering them for private study and discussion.

Each week I would post about six pages of never before translated text into one of these blogs. It would be a grab bag with no rhyme or reason. I would email everyone which blog I posted in. But each blog will be continuous. Horst Wessel will start with the first six pages and each time I post in that blog it will carry on from where it left off. If I started a thirty page short story that story would be completed before I started another story in that blog but it might be weeks before I once more posted six pages to that blog.

This might seem crazy but after six months or a year there would be significant material in all of these blogs that no one else in the world has ever read in English before. Progress would be slow but it is a study group and hopefully conversations and friendships can develop. Some people buy limited editions because they want to be the first ones to read the material or in some cases the only ones that can afford to read the material.

This is a way for people to get advance knowledge of material that might be years away from publication. If you love Hanns Heinz Ewers this would be perfect. It would cost $5/mo, the price of a cup of coffee and a donut. There would be a membership subscription set up through paypal.

The first three entries will be to Horst Wessel, Ghost Seer and India and I. I hope to have these set up this coming week to get a jump start on things. If you are interested in joining this private study group please email me at anarchistbanjo@live.com and have private study group in the heading. I will need at least ten people interested before I will do it. In the meantime I will be doing these scattered six pages anyway to take a little break from Alraune once in awhile. Let me know if you are interested and then I will set things up.

Email me and let’s talk. Please realize that these studies will be slow going at only six pages per week but it is also material that will have never been in English before and that might be worth something to some of you. I know it is to me. I translate simply because I want to know how it reads.

-joe

Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I

Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I is now available at

Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I

Includes these short stories and essays:

Hanns Heinz Ewers and the Nation of Culture

The Spider

The Crucified Minstral

Delphi

The Curve

My Burial

Anthropoovaropartus

The Death of Baron Jesus Maria von Friedel

The Button Collection

Bible Billy

The Blue Indians

My Mother the Witch

Intoxication and Art

Edgar Allan Poe

plus three sample chapters from the upcoming novel, Alraune

My Mother the Witch by Hanns Heinz Ewers

My Mother the Witch is a story about a grown man that discovers his mother is a witch and tries talking his brother out of getting married because his children might become witches as well. This story has never been translated into English before. Here is the link:

My Mother the Witch

Here is a short excerpt:

If that isn't amazing enough, there is something else she finds just as interesting. What can a person say about her collection of brooms?

In the dark narrow passage that goes between the other rooms into her bedroom mother has no less than forty three brooms, new and old! I believe there is an example of every kind of broom ever made in our house. They are all resting like retired civil servants in rows and files on both sides of the narrow passageway. You can't see them from the stairs because of the curtain that blocks the view.

There is certainly a much better place for such a collection. The great loft next to the kitchen that leads to the garden is almost completely empty and would be a good place for such a collection. You could hang hundreds of brooms there quite comfortably. But no, she presses them tightly together in the small narrow passageway that leads to her bedroom! There are more. One or two brooms stand by themselves in her bedroom behind a small curtain in the corner where her dressing table stands.

You know what a very capable and talented healer mother is. People are always coming and going from the house. She does not treat them as a professional but as a friend. Indeed, mother always tells them that she does not know much but they ask her for every little bit of advice and then follow it faithfully.

She has absolutely no tolerance of quacks and charlatans. Instead she uses herbs. Never on herself, but on the entire neighborhood and she has a loyal following. She is very limited to what she does. She only cures corns, barleycorns, warts and freckles.

For the corns she prepares a brown paste. When you smear it on you must pray the paternoster. The paternoster doesn't seem to help with the barleycorns though, and the cure for them is somewhat complicated and requires the Ave Maria. She caresses the barleycorn with her wedding ring while slowly saying three Ave Maria's. It works best when done by moonlight.

Removing warts takes longer. The person with warts must come every other day for two weeks and get a greenish ointment put on the wart. While this dries, preferably in the sun, they must pray profoundly. This cure works beyond any question. I have seen half a dozen splendid warts disappear with my own eyes.

Even more remarkable is her cure for freckles. She only makes it in the spring. The young girls during the last three weeks of April must smear the bluish ointment on their faces in the mornings and in the evenings and then say the Regina prayer a few times. I haven't heard of any young boys taking the cure.

Mother counts among her patients not only devout Catholics but the daughters of Protestants and free-spirited elders as well. She has learned their beautiful prayers and uses them at times like she uses the paternoster and Ave Maria's.

On Mayday the young girls must get up very early without saying a word and go straight to the garden. There they must throw themselves on the ground and rub their faces in the grass, bathing in the beautiful morning dew of Mayday. After that is another three weeks of ointment and Regina prayers, then the freckles are gone! I tell you, dear brother, they are really gone, just like the barleycorns, warts and corns.

Little Lotte, the doctor's daughter, swears that mother can do more than her papa can, that he doesn't know how to remove freckles. She gave a very lame speech about how he is only a medical doctor and not a corn and wart doctor! The doctor himself is very happy with his daughter's smooth face and takes the competition gladly declaring that he recognizes mother's work and takes the Regina prayers and other foolery into the bargain as well.

Mother has an entire chest full of dried seahorses. They are to be sewn into the petticoat or trouser bottoms as an excellent cure for hemorrhoids. Unfortunately, it appears that this remedy is not widely used in our city. I can't even think of any case that might be in need of a seahorse except for the old washerwoman. She freely maintains that it is an excellent remedy.

All of that is child's play. There are other things much less harmless. Mother never tells fortunes; she never reads palms, never reads cards or other things. When the prophecy comes to her she always calls it stupid stuff; at least that's what she wants us to think.

My Burial by Hanns Heinz Ewers

My Burial is a light hearted story about a corpse that wants to have a little fun at his funeral and gets into trouble with the law. This story has never been translated into English before. Here is the link:

My Burial

Here is a short excerpt:

It sounded out across the cemetery to where another group was singing at the 3rd crossroads, 8 corridors down and left from the main road. That is to say, to where another funeral was taking place at grave #48679 on the left side diagonally across from me.

They were burying some honorable Privy Councillor and there was a horrendous number of people, Professors, Judges, Military Officers and wealthy industrialists"all refined people! But it was still only an old style funeral without Red Riders.

The Chief Rider waited politely until the people finished singing. Then he cried anew, "Now we sing the favorite song of the departed."

"Daughter of Zion be glad"," but he couldn't finish because the fat pastor began a droning eulogy over at the other funeral.

The Chief Rider waited another five minutes, ten minutes, but the pastor would not stop and was making it bad for me.

"Such speech will speed the decomposition of my corpse considerably," I thought to myself.

The Chief Rider thought so too and looked at his watch. But the pastor talked and talked.

Finally it was too long for the Chief Rider. He had only been paid for two hours. He commanded anew and all forty-five Red Riders let out once more:

"Daughter of Zion be glad!"

The pastor fought on and would not give in. But what is the power of a preacher against forty-five Red Riders? I felt solid satisfaction that the youths were winning and my modern funeral would clear the battlefield and put the old middle class world to shame.

The pastor stopped. But the clergy can never really be defeated. That will not do. He spoke to a couple of gentlemen in top hats and they in turn spoke to some guards. The guards put their helmets on their heads and came over to my grave. They were eager to speak with the Chief Rider but he held his position.

"We are doing our job," he said coldly.

"Do you have a permit?" One of the guards asked.

"Certainly!" The Chief Rider answered and reached into his wallet. "Here it is. An official permit for my Red Riders!"

"Hmm," remarked the guard. "A permit for burials?"

"The Red Riders will do anything!" The Chief declared bravely.

"Bravo! Bravo!" I cried in my crate.

"No one here shouts Bravo!" The guard yelled.

He demanded that all the Red Riders leave but the Chief Rider would not. He was not yet finished with the celebration that he had been commissioned and paid for. He was an honorable man and his highest principle was a strict sense of duty. He requested that the guards leave in an orderly way.

"Such a shrewd citizen!" I thought. "Now it will get into the press and make good publicity for him."

The guards yelled but the Chief Rider yelled even louder. Slowly all the Professors, Judges, Military Officers and wealthy industrialists came over from the other funeral and mixed in. When the pastor came it was entirely too late.

He saw the Red Riders in their red caps and jackets with cigarettes in their mouths.

"Pfui!" He said.

Then he took his glasses off and set them on my crate.

" 'Fragile', 'Do not drop', What's going on here?" He asked sharply.

It was little Fritz that gave him the dreadful answer. He really couldn't smoke and the cigarette was making him sick. He bent forward and then back and then forward again in even faster motion. That's when the accident happened all over the black gown of the pastor.

At first he was speechless, but then everyone was trying to give him his or her handkerchiefs. He got hold of himself and declared seriously:

"That really oversteps all boundaries. I am publicly offended."

"I am also publicly offended," voiced a gentleman with twenty-seven medals.

"We have jurisdiction because we are publicly offended," said the guards.

Things were getting much too colorful for me. I saw that I must come to the help of my hard-pressed Red Riders. I shoved the lid open, stood up and cried in wrath.

"And I, gentlemen, for your disrespectful participation in my burial, I am publicly offended!"

The pastor stared horrified into the grave.

"Is this a Christian burial?" He stammered.

"No," I said. "This is a modern burial with Red Riders."

The Crucified Minstral by Hanns Heinz Ewers

The Crucified Minstral has never been translated into English before. It is the story of a mime and his strange rendezvous with death. Here is the link:

The Crucified Minstral

Here is a short excerpt:

Then he stretched his arms out wide on both sides and looked up. The blue up there above laughed and sang as if it wanted to take him away from everything. If he raised his head a little he could see the ocean, blue with little white clouds just like those in the sky above. Blue, luminous, radiant blue! He sucked it in with his eyes, touched it with his hands, let it soak into all his pores.

He listened to the music of the blue colors, closed his eyes and still saw them perfectly. He felt a soothing languor as his limbs lay like a corpse. He longed to dissolve into the whitish blue mist that surrounded him like a soft gentle breath. Then it seemed to him as if his head rested on a woman's yielding breasts. He noticed her breathing as they lightly lifted and fell.

He felt so protected and cared for, he didn't want to move or open his eyes. He lay completely still, unmoving, as if he were slumbering. Now he breathed in a fragrance like peach blossoms. He noticed a thin white apparition near his feet. It was Lili. She knelt down and urgently pressed her pale childish cheeks against his shoe.