Paul Nikolaus Cossmann

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Paul Nikolaus Cossmann (6 April 1869 – 19 October 1942) was a German journalist.

Biography

Born in

Jewish family, his parents were cellist Bernhard Cossmann and his wife Mathilde Hilb, the daughter of a Karlsruhe merchant. He never married. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1905, and subsequently was a devout practitioner of the faith.[1]

The elder Cossmann had been working in Moscow, but returned to his native country so that his son could be educated "as a German in Germany". While a gymnasium student in Frankfurt, he became a friend and devoted admirer of Hans Pfitzner; the two were the same age. He studied the natural sciences and philosophy, with a focus on Arthur Schopenhauer, and settled on a career in journalism. He launched Süddeutsche Monatshefte in Munich in 1903, leading it for the next three decades and soon establishing the review as one of the leading German cultural magazines of its day. During World War I, he intransigently promoted victory for Germany, while the magazine's special editions propelled its circulation upward, both on the front and among civilians. He retained a nationalist outlook in the wake of the German defeat, joining Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten as a political adviser in 1921.[1]

Cossmann's tireless struggle against the

Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he soon died in the hospital. During his stay there, he consoled and spiritually strengthened his fellow inmates, some of whom revered him as a saintly figure.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c (in German) Karl Alexander von Müller, "Cossmann, Paul Nikolaus", in Neue Deutsche Biographie 3 (1957), p. 374-375
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