Wilhelm Schmidtbonn

Schmidtbonn, Wilhelm, name assumed by Wilhelm Schmidt of Bonn (Bonn, 1876-1952, Bad Godesberg). He studied at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen, and Zurich, worked for a time as dramatic adviser (Dramaturg) to the municipal theatre at Düsseldorf, and then concentrated on authorship, living for a time in Bavaria, and later in his native district. During the 1914-18 War he was a war reporter.

Schmidtbonn began to write as a Naturalist (see Naturalismus), but quickly developed into a regional novelist and story-teller and a dramatist dealing with legendary as well as contemporary themes. The play Mutter Landstraße (1901) is a modern version of the story of the Prodigal Son, which, however, ends tragically. The novel Der Heilsbringer (1906) recounts the conversion of a young working-class radical to the belief that man's salvation lies in a return to rural life. The play Der Graf von Gleichen (1908) gives its legend a tragic conclusion. Der Zorn des Achilles (1909) was a venture into verse tragedy, and in Lobgesang des Lebens (1911) the author attempted rhapsodic poetry. Other plays are the comedies Der spielende Eros (1911) and Der Schauspieler (1921), and the Schauspiele Stadt der Besessenen (1915), Der Geschlagene (1920), and Der Pfarrer von Mainz (1923). His later work consists mainly of novels and stories of the Rhineland, written with knowledge and sympathy. The novels include Mein Freund Dei (1928), Der dreieckige Marktplatz (1935), Hü Lü (1936), and Anna Brand (1939); Uferleute (1903) and Die unberührten Frauen (1925) are collections of tales. The short narratives of Der Wunderbaum (1913) are described as legends (Legenden). An einem Strom geboren (1935) is his autobiography.