Hermann Löns



Hermann Löns (1866–1914) was a German journalist and writer. He is most famous as "The Poet of the Heath" for his novels and poems celebrating the people and landscape of the North German moors, particularly the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. Löns is well known in Germany for his famous folksongs. He was also a hunter, natural historian and conservationist.

Life and work
Löns was born in Kulm in West Prussia on 29 August 1866 and went to school and university in Münster and Greifswald. Interested in the biology of molluscs, he studied medicine and natural science. However, he did not finish his studies, but started to work as a journalist instead during the 1890s, when he began writing poems. In the 1910s he changed to short stories and novels. Inspired by pre- and post-Christian folklore and history, his most famous novel is Der Wehrwolf (The Warwolf - 1910, the word being a play on 'Werwolf', the German word for Werewolf), an alternately heart-warming and heart-rending chronicle of a North German farming community suffering tragedies and ultimate triumph during the harrowing period of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). His literary work has been categorised under the völkisch movement, but his character was also one of intense individualism.

At the age of 48 he volunteered for service in the German Army in the First World War. He served with the 73rd Fusilier Regiment and was killed in action on 26 September 1914 whilst on patrol at Loivre near Reims in France just three weeks after enlisting.

Reception in Nazi-Germany
As in some of his writings Löns had shown nationalistic ideas, he was later considered by the Nazis as one of 'their' writers (despite the fact that Löns' lifestyle didn't match the Nazi ideals). Some parts of his works fit well within the 'Blood and soil' ethos of National Socialism, with National Socialist ideologues such as Walther Darre and Alfred Rosenberg lauding the peasantry and small rural communities as the true lifeblood of the German nation.

On 5 January 1933 a French farmer found the boots of a German soldier in one of his fields. With the help of the local sexton, he uncovered a skeleton and identification tag. The sexton buried the body in an individual grave in a German graveyard near Loivre. It took almost 18 months for the tag to reach Berlin via the German embassy in France. This tag has been lost during an Allied bombing raid on Berlin, an extant photograph does not allow a definite conclusion on whether the tag said "F.R." (Füselier-Regiment) or "I.R." (Infanterie-Regiment). However, on 8 May 1934 the Völkische Beobachter announced that the grave of Löns had been discovered. In October 1934, at the behest of Adolf Hitler, Löns' body was exhumed and brought to Germany. There was no medical examination to try and verify that these were indeed the remains of the writer.

The exhumed Löns was supposed to be buried in the Lüneburg Heath, given his links with the area. However, the exact location of his new grave posed problems. The initial plan to bury him at the Sieben Steinhäuser was abandoned since the military at the time had (still secret) plans to establish the military training area Bergen at the site. An alternative site near Wilseder Berg was rejected due to concerns about the environmental impact of large numbers of visitors to the grave. Finding a suitable place became an issue for the top echelons of the regime, including Hermann Göring, Rudolf Heß, Joseph Goebbels, Werner von Blomberg and even Adolf Hitler.

To deal with what was increasingly becoming an embarrassing situation, members of the SA snatched the remains from the graveyard chapel in Fallingbostel where they were awaiting reburial. They buried them near the roadside of what was then Reichsstrasse 3 (today B3) south of Barrl, near the area known today as Reinsehlen Camp on 30 November 1934. However, on 2 August 1935, the anniversary of the start of Word War I, the Reichswehr exhumed the remains and transferred them to the Tietlinger Wacholderhain near Walsrode, where an earlier (1929) memorial had been erected, for a ceremonial reburial.

Memorials
There are 113 memorials in total to Löns in Germany plus eight in Austria and 19 in other countries. In addition, 247 streets and roads in Germany have been named after him. Finally, twelve schools bear his name.