By Harald Küst
[An article about one of Portsmouth's more famous citizens from our twin city in Germany of Duisburg]
Literature lovers in Duisburg remember the 2010 exhibition at the Duisburg Central Library on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), the spiritual father of private detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion Doctor Watson. Beyond that, however, very little is known about Arthur Conan Doyle in Germany and also in Duisburg. But his biography reflects an extraordinary life.
Doyle created a new type of detective with the scientifically rational thinking artificial figure Holmes. Ingenious powers of observation, logical chains of evidence, and razor-sharp deduction were his trademarks. Evidence gathering methods, such as dactyloscopy (fingerprinting), which he described, were ahead of the police methods of his time.
For all his success, Doyle always had a split relationship with his hero and finally had him die in 1893 after 16 successful years, then "resurrected" in 1905 under pressure from his fan base and probably for lack of money. In fact, Doyle found that Sherlock Holmes was getting in the way of his other projects. In addition to his detective stories, Conan Doyle wrote "Lost world" (Early template for Jurassic Park) with the main character Professor Challenger.
Historical novels, mystical tales, novels of the future, adventure novels and non-fiction show his productivity. Doyle was truly multi-talented and highly educated. He attended a private Catholic school, studied medicine, worked as a ship's doctor, was a talented sportsman (cricket, golf, cross-country skiing), a member of the Masonic Lodge in Portsmouth, was involved in the Boer War as a doctor and reporter, was passionate about photography, worked as a journalist, and wrote a political polemic against the Congo atrocities of the Belgian king.
In 1911, the urbane gentleman took part in the Prince Heinrich Homburg-London car tour. The disintegration of friendly Anglo-German relations after the outbreak of World War I then led to a distancing from Germany's wartime adversary.
Doyle was a family man, married twice, father of five. His turn to spiritualism began early and was probably spurred by the great loss of life in World War I and by the "Spanish flu." In October 1918, a few months before the official end of the war, his son Kingsley died of the insidious lung disease; the pandemic also took his brother. With the help of a medium, Conan Doyle hoped to connect with the dead. It was the time of public séances, and the movement's appeal cut across classes - and not just in England.
Arthur Conan Doyle cultivated contacts with spiritualists and show artists. Probably his most prominent counterpart was the magic and escape artist Harry Houdini (1874 to 1926). The initial friendship between the two broke down when Houdini increasingly exposed spiritualist tricks, of whose authenticity Conan Doyle was firmly convinced. The proof, from Doyle's point of view, was provided by spectacular photographs that made the deceased visible. In the 1920s, he opened a "Psychic Bookstore" in London that offered literature on clairvoyance, tele-plasticity, and spirit photography.
In a 1927 interview, three years before his death, Doyle explains how he invented Sherlock Holmes - and why he believed in ghosts. He died three years later at the age of 71. His master detective Sherlock Holmes, however, lives on in the "221b-German Sherlock Holmes Club."
Image from the BBC News Website linked at the top of the page
RHEINISCHE POST, Newspaper, author Harald Küst
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