Rudolf Binding

Rudolf Binding, born in Switzerland as the son of well-off parents, was a German writer. His father Karl was an internationally recognized criminal justice teacher, who was appointed to the University of Basel. In 1870 the family moved to Freiburg, and after World War I to Strasbourg and then to Leipzig. Binding studied law and medicine in Tübingen, Heidelberg and Berlin and was a cavalry officer during World War I. He then became more interested in writing and horse racing and became a horse racer and breeder. The writer lived in Buchschlag near Frankfurt am Main, subsequently until his death in Starnberg. After the war he became the “favorite poet of the conservative bourgeoisie” and counted among the upper middle-class and elitist leading thinkers.

In 1924 he published the poetic novel _ Reitvorschrift für eine Geliebte_ (Riding Instruction for a Beloved), which earned him the silver medal at the Games of Amsterdam 1928. It consists of “45 short lyricisms composed in highly stylized prose called ‘episodes’ by the author. Titles of the episodes are, for example, ‘horse chatter’, ‘horse riding is saying yes’, ‘choice of horse’, ‘riding out of the yard’, ‘paces of the horse’ or ‘Muhammad’s horses’”. The work was published many times after his death. The illustrated title page of the 1936 edition was designed by Renée Sintenis.

In 1933 he defended Adolf Hitler against foreign critics in his writing Antwort eines Deutschen (A German Answer to the World), but within a year, he distanced himself cautiously from these thoughts. Nevertheless, the Nazis still abused him as a willing instrument of propaganda. Rudolf Binding died in 1938 at the age of 70 years due to tuberculosis.