Paul Oskar Höcker

Paul Oskar Höcker was born the third son of author and actor Oskar Höcker in Meiningen, in the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen. He was raised in Karlsruhe, where his father was engaged to the court of Baden. At the age of 19, in 1884, he moved to Berlin, where he graduated secondary school.

That same year he enrolled at the Berlin University of the Arts and until 1888 studied composition. From 1888 to 1889 he performed his military service, and in 1893 married Margarete Linke.

In 1908 he had a house built in Westend, Berlin (Lindenallee 21) by architect Emilie Winkelmann in the Italian country house style, the Landhausstil. In 1928-1929 he had another house built, nearby in the Nussbaumallee 8, by Alfred Gellhorn, with a garden designed by Gustav Allinger. He wrote comedies, crime novels, historical novels, memoirs, and children's books. A prolific and successful author, some of his novels were adapted for the movies. He was the father of musician and author Karla Höcker.

In the beginning of the twentieth century he wrote a number of Leatherstocking Tales for children in the vein of James Fenimore Cooper, and attracted attention in the United States; The Pittsburg Press, in a short biographical article published in 1905, describes him as the author of "delightfully humorous stories."[1] During World War I he was a captain in the Landwehr in Lille, France. He wrote of his experiences in the first three months of the war in An der Spitze meiner Kompagnie. Drei Monate Kriegserlebnisse (Berlin: 1919), which drew attention in the US: The New York Times praised the "admirable pen-pictures of life at the front" by "one of Germany's most popular writers";[2] the paper also reported on other adventures by Höcker at the front, translating and printing his letters detailing war experiences.[3] From 1914 to 1918 he was the publisher of the Liller Kriegszeitung, and in 1917 published his war memoirs, Ein Liller Roman.

After the Nazi Party came to power, he was one of the 88 German authors who signed the Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft, in which the undersigned promised their "most loyal obedience" to Adolf Hitler.[4] This did not hinder Nazi authorities to take a dismissing view of "nationalist kitsch from the feathers of the Gleichschaltarios, opportunists and fellow travelers who are watering down the National Revolution (of the likes of Paul Oskar Höcker)". His autobiography, published in 1940 as Gottgesandte Wechselwinde, was banned in 1948 by the authorities of the Soviet occupation zone.[5] He died in Rastatt, in 1944.

• The Prisoner (1920)
• Tannenberg (1932)

• Paul Höcker in the Neue Deutsche Biographie
• Paul Oskar Höcker in the German National Library

• Paul Oskar Höcker at IMDb