Hanns Theodor Wilhelm Freiherr von Gumppenberg (4 December 1866 – 29 March 1928) was a German poet, translator, cabaret artist and theatre critic. He used the pseudonyms Jodok and Professor Immanuel Tiefbohrer.
Gumppenberg was born in 1866 in Landshut, the son of Karl Freiherr von Gumppenberg (1833–1893), a postal clerk from Bamberg and a scion of the original Bavarian noble family of Reichsfreiherren von Gumppenberg. His mother was Engelberta von Gumppenberg, née Sommer (1839–1920), daughter of a geographer.
Both the father and already the grandfather Wilhelm von Gumppenberg[1] were active in literature. The father wrote mostly dialectal drama and poetry, the grandfather belletristic works and witty Punch and Judy plays.[2]
(Bavarian member of parliament, landowner and major)Gumppenberg received an education at the Königlich Bayerische Pagerie[3] After the page school and the Abitur at the Wilhelmsgymnasium München[4] he took up studies in philosophy and literary history in Munich in 1885. For reasons of better livelihood, however, Gumppenberg decided three years later to take up legal studies. He eventually abandoned law studies to work as a freelance writer and journalist.[5] In 1894, he married Charlotte Donnerstag (born 1870) in Berlin, who died in 1895.
in Munich, where he ventured his first attempts at poetry.Gumppenberg was theatre critic of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten from 1901 to 1909. From 1910 to 1913, together with Alfred Auscher, he was editor of the new artistic-literary journal Light and Shadow. Wochenschrift für Schwarz-Weiß-Kunst und Dichtung. Afterwards he worked as an author and editor for the magazine Jugend until his death. From 1902 onwards, Gumppenberg also regularly worked as a translator of foreign poetry, for example Swedish poems by Bellman, Fröding and Karlfeldt.[5]
After 1889, Gumppenberg moved in the circles of the Munich modernists, to which Michael Georg Conrad and his followers belonged first and foremost.[5] Together with Georg Hoffmann, Julius Schaumberger and Otto Julius Bierbaum, he founded the Gesellschaft für modernes Leben in 1890.[6] In 1897, he married Helene Bondy (1868–1954), the daughter of the factory owner Ignaz Bondy and the Austrian women's rights activist Ottilie Bondy, in his second marriage.
In 1901, under the pseudonym Jodok, he became a co-founder of the Munich cabaret Die Elf Scharfrichter[7] His parodistic work also eventually made him famous. Gumppenberg's collection of parodies Das Teutsche Dichterross, 1st edition 1901, went through a total of 14 editions. However, he remained unsuccessful with the main part of his work – mostly worldview and idea dramas.
as a writer of poetry and drama parodies.The First World War and inflation brought Gumppenberg into financial difficulties and from 1922 he was also in poor health. On 29 March 1928 he died in Munich of a heart condition at the age of 61.
Gumppenberg's estate is housed in the Monacensia literary archive of the city of Munich.