Hanns Johst grew up as the son of an elementary school teacher in Oschatz and Leipzig, where he finished school in 1910. He discontinued his studies of German literature, philosophy, and art history in Leipzig, Munich, and Vienna in 1915, married the wealthy Johanna Feder of Nuremberg, and became a writer. Initially, Johst was part of the left-pacifist milieu and a representative of literary expressionism. Under the influence of the November revolution in 1918-19 in Munich, he turned to ethnic-chauvinist, anti-democratic, anti-semitic, and race-biological positions. In 1919, he purchased an estate in Oberallmansshausen (in the community of Berg) on Lake Starnberg, where he lived for almost 60 years.
Hanns Johst was one of the highest-ranking cultural functionaries of the Third Reich, a celebrated poet of the National Socialist movement, and one of the first members of the National Socialist ‘Fighting Association for German Culture’ founded by Alfred Rosenberg, founded in 1928. With plays such as “Prophets” (1922) and “Thomas Paine” (1927), he detailed the ethnic-chauvinist ideology. His play “Schlageter” (1933) glorified the life of Albert Leo Schlageter, who was claimed as a martyr by the National Socialists; it is dedicated “in loving adoration and unshakable loyalty” to Adolf Hitler.
Hanns Johst joined the Nazi Party in 1932. As a thinker, agitator, speaker, and propagandist, he played a key role in the ideological reorientation of cultural life in the Third Reich. He was president of the poetry section at the German Academy of Arts (1933) and participated in the founding of the Union of National Writers (1934). He was among the 88 writers who, in October 1933, signed the “pledge of most loyal allegiance” to Adolf Hitler, and he was named to the Prussian State Council in January 1934. From 1935 to the end of the war, he was president of the Reich Literature Chamber, and starting in 1935, a member (no. 274.576) of the general SS. His longtime friend, the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, promoted him to the rank of a SS brigade leader. In 1944, Johst was included on the “Divinely Gifted List,” which included 1041 famous artists of the Third Reich, and was on the special list of the six most important German writers.
In May 1945, Johst was arrested by American soldiers and imprisoned until October 1948. His works were banned until 1952. His last publication, the novel “Blessed Impermanence,” appeared in 1955. Until his death, Hanns Johst saw no occasion “to subject his ideological axioms to revision” (Düsterberg, p. 125). No longer recognized by the public, he lived reclusively in Oberallmanshausen until shortly before his death.
