Hanns johst biography for kids

German National Socialist poet and playwright

Hanns Johst (8 July 1890 – 23 November 1978) was a German poet and playwright, directly aligned with Nazi philosophy, as a member of the officially approved writers’ organisations in the Third Reich.

The statement “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”, variously misattributed to Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, was in fact a corrupted version of a line in his play Schlageter.

Background

Hanns Johst was born in Seerhausen (now part of Stauchitz) in the Kingdom of Saxony as the son of an elementary school teacher.

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He grew up in Oschatz and Leipzig. As a juvenile he planned to become a missionary. When he was 17 years old he worked as an auxiliary in a Bethel Institution. In 1910 he earned his Abitur in Leipzig and then started studying medicine and philosophy and—later—history of art.

He volunteered for the army in 1914. In 1918 he settled down in Allmannshausen (part of Berg) at t