Hanns Heinz Ewers
Immaculata

Immaculata, a volume by Hanns Heinz Ewers just published by Edizioni Hypnos, represents a fundamental piece in the rediscovery of this author.

As Alessandro Fambrini writes in the introduction, “The works collected in this volume belong to three different periods of Hanns Heinz Ewers's life and production.” Immaculata is worth purchasing just for the fact that it includes the essential essay Edgar Allan Poe written in 1905 but never published in Italy until now. In reality, rather than talking about the American writer, the suspicion is that Ewers is speaking about himself and his own conception of art. The work of the Boston writer is, in fact, only marginally discussed, citing a few of his stories in broad strokes. However, the figure of Poe always looms like a shadow and is, as Fambrini writes again, “eternally present in the multiple forms of art and beauty of which he is the supreme epitome.” This is then filtered through Ewers' experience in Spain at the Alhambra. It is, in any case, an interesting text with a decadent imprint that is not foreign to the influences of poets and writers like Baudelaire (whom he considered the only one to have understood Poe) and Oscar Wilde.

The first two stories presented here, “Immaculata” and “The Second Sight,” can be placed in the late period of the German writer's work. The stories were published for the first time in 2020 thanks to the research of Wilfried Kugel. In 1943, Ewers had already fallen into disgrace with the Nazi regime, despite having written a hagiographic book about Horst Wessel, the inspirer of the SA anthem. In hindsight, his phrase “This is Germany, this is my country” in his novel Alraune (The Mandrake) almost foreshadows the tragic epic of National Socialism. As Fambrini rightly notes (following Kugel's work), the two stories probably date back to the same period as the Nachtmarhr (Nightmare, 1922) collection and were only later reworked. The additions in this volume are highlighted “in italics”: these are frankly satirical remarks on the Third Reich, demonstrating how, in the last period of his life, Ewers had distanced himself from National Socialism. It is likely to imagine that the German writer exhausted his creativity in the last part of his existence. However, both "Immaculata" and "The Second Sight" are small gems of the macabre”: the first story revolves around the character of Jans Olieslagers (a sort of alter ego of Ewers, as was Frank Braun of the novel trilogy), telling of a sort of "miraculous" conception of a woman impregnated by her brother through a "succubus." “The Second Sight” delves into the realm of the occult (remember that at the time, many theosophically derived sects thrived in Germany), discussing clairvoyance and introduced as a kind of fictional correspondence with a phantom Baron. This Ewers story presents very interesting autobiographical aspects: the writer indeed discusses the figure of his mother in a morbid way, which we will find in the subsequent "My Mother, the Witch". In “The Most Atrocious Betrayal,” we encounter the character of Jans Olieslagers while the story ventures into very perverse territories, discussing necrophilia. In "Extreme Love" we read about Hagen Dierks, a successful violinist who always lacks something to excel completely, thus dividing the critics. The whole thing becomes an interesting reflection on the nature of art. He eventually gains glory through the fragment of a rope belonging to a woman who hanged herself just to gift him a macabre amulet to keep while he played. The concluding "My Mother, the Witch" is a counterpart to "The Second Sight" and again discusses the figure of Ewers' mother, here transfigured into a witch. The woman greatly influenced her son's life (as did his painter father) by encouraging him to write, even though the writer probably had incestuous fantasies about her.

After the aforementioned Poe essay, the volume concludes with an expert afterword by Walter Catalano entitled Hanns Heinz Ewers: Rise and Fall of a Successful Pornographer in which he investigates the reasons for his conversion to National Socialism based on Eric Kurlander's research. Catalano correctly points out how the NSDAP was an advocate for many neo-pagan and mystical themes to which Ewers himself was not a stranger, although (despite his contacts with various such associations) he was never a devotee of the subject like a Gustav Meyrink. It is regrettable that the author considers the late Giorgio Galli “a fanciful storyteller” when he was a great political scientist and historian.

Immaculata is an essential volume for enthusiasts of early 20th-century fantastic literature and Ewers, but these stories are still enjoyable today and have a macabre and perverse touch that I believe will appeal to many.