Background
Richard Euringer born on 4 April 1891 in Augsburg.
Richard Euringer born on 4 April 1891 in Augsburg.
Richard Euringer served as an aeroplane pilot in World War I and subsequently headed a Bavarian pilot-training school. During the Weimar years he tried to make a living as a worker in a sawmill and as an office boy in a bank. His early works showed the adventurous side of war, while some of them dealt with the problem of unemployment.
From 1931 a contributor to the leading Nazi newspaper, the Völkische Beobachter, Euringer was considered, along with Johst, Grimm and kolbenheyer as one of the most active National Socialist authors and a herald of the coming Third Reich.
His outstanding success was Deutsche Passion (1933), a radio play which revived some traits of medieval mysteries.
In the same year, Euringer was appointed chief librarian of the Essen public library, though he had no previous training for such a position.
A freelance author from 1936, Euringer was the leading practitioner and theorist of the Thingspiel - open-air epic theatre which combined Nazi agit-prop, battle scenes, circus performance, choral declamations and fanfares. The elements of Thingspiel were fire, water, earth and air, stones, stars and solar orbits, mermaids, fairies, nymphs and fauns - according to Euringer, it was ‘the theatre of nature' through w hich the people honoured their martyrs and enacted the cult of the dead, replete with blood-oaths and exorcism.
Euringer died in Essen on 29 August 1953.
Die Jobsiade
1933Totentanz
1934Deutsche Dichter unsere Zeit
1939In his Deutsche Dichter unsere Zeit (1939) he expressed a characteristic statement of the official ideology underlying Nazi drama and literature.
Quotations: 'My books are the continuation of my vocation as a soldier through other means.'