Gustav Leutelt


Gustav Leutelt was a German Bohemian poet and writer. Most of his poetry concerned the area around his birthplace of Josefsthal causing him to be described as a "poet of the Jizera Mountains."

Life

Leutelt was born the son of a teacher in Josefsthal in Jizera Mountains, northern Bohemia, then a part of the Austrian Empire, now the Czech Republic. He was the great grandson of the "miracle doctor" Josef Johann Kittel. Leutelt settled in Leitmeritz to train at a teacher's training college and work as a teacher at the elementary school of his father. As a senior teacher, he took over the local elementary school in the nearby town of Untermaxdorf first but later at the training college. At this institution he came in contact with glass workers and he chose this craft as his life's study. In 1906, he founded a museum in Untermaxdorf in which he documented the history and economy of the Upper Kamenice valley. After 1922 he moved as a pensioner near Gablonz an der Neiße.
As a result of the Beneš decrees, Leutelt, an 85-year-old, was expelled from his home in 1946. He died in 1947 in Seebergen, Germany at the age of 86. His grave stone in the cemetery of Seebergen reads: "Here rests away his beloved forest homeland, a former champion of German art, Gustav Leutelt, poet of the Jizera Mountains, born in Josefsthal on 21 September 1860; 17 February 1947 died in Seebergen." At the memorial is a plaque: "This memorial stone was donated by Gablonzer compatriots of the Jizera Mountains in the Sudetenland from which the people of Thuringia were expelled in 1945. Renewed by the Leutelt Society in Schwäbisch Gmünd in 2002".

Quotes

"The home is not everything but rather the root system of the rising World Tree. Neither patriotism, as escapism, or the global love for the homeland of contempt are good. Home education is probably not an end in itself, but it should lead to respect from the home. And we must find a way to this, it's possible even for those who are alienated. Global love in our heart for the home is the ultimate."

Awards and honors