His goal was to create a mythology for his native England. Language genius and fantasy author JRR Tolkien died 50 years ago. The world he created fascinates millions of people to this day.
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” With these words, JRR Tolkien begins his 1937 book The Hobbit. Scribbled on a blank sheet of paper out of boredom while his students were correcting their exams, the sentence is the starting signal for a seminal work of literature that no fantasy author has been able to ignore ever since.
The epic work “The Lord of the Rings”, published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955, about the adventures of the hobbit Frodo in the prehistoric fantasy world of Middle-earth, makes the professor of Old English at the University of Oxford one of the most widely read authors of all time. Tolkien, whose unusual name probably comes from ancestors who immigrated to England from Prussia in the 18th century, died 50 years ago, on September 2, 1973. However, his legacy could hardly be more living.
John Ronald Reuel: born in Africa, grew up in Birmingham
The Englishman, whose full name is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, was born on January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein in what was then the Boer Republic of Orange Free State in today’s South Africa. The father had gotten a promising job there as a bank clerk. When the mother is on home leave with her two sons, the father dies unexpectedly. The family does not return to Africa.
Tolkien grew up in Birmingham. His mother later converted to the Catholic faith, to which her son remained closely linked throughout his life. From her he also learns his love for languages, legends and mythology. A treasure trove of legends is missing from his English homeland, he finds – and sets about creating it.
Some of the inhabitants of the English Midlands may have been a role model for the lovable and simple hobbits. These are good-natured and sociable, short stature, hairy-footed humanoid creatures who are more fearful than heroic, but always excel in the face of a challenge. They take the leading role in Tolkien’s works alongside elves, dwarves, orcs and other beings.
Through “The Lord of the Rings” Tolkien becomes a star who himself receives fan mail from royalty such as Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II, who sends him hand-painted illustrations of his stories.
Tolkien worked on Middle-earth for four decades
What distinguishes Tolkien’s fantasy books from earlier and many later ones is the great depth of detail and coherence of the narratives. Decades of work precede the publication of his books. “Forty years passed between the beginning and the publication of Lord of the Rings, during which he worked on his mythology,” says Stuart Lee, who works as a lecturer in English at the University of Oxford, in an interview with the German Press Agency.
As a soldier in World War I, Tolkien began to work out maps and names. The philologist speaks a good dozen languages, including Gothic, Old and Middle English, Welsh, Finnish and several Scandinavian languages. He invents fantasy languages such as the Elven languages Quenya and Sindarin for his mythical creatures. He also draws on his vast knowledge of medieval literature such as the heroic poem Beowulf and other epics.
Among the impressions from his early years that are later reflected in the books are the mountains of the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland, which Tolkien visited as a young man.
Europe’s battlefields in World War I: the real Mordor
But the experiences from the First World War are also formative: the battlefields covered with craters are inspiration for the hostile landscape of Mordor, the kingdom of the evil ruler Sauron – just like the landscape of the Black Country, blackened by smoking chimneys, a place of industrialization in Tolkien’s youth shaped metropolitan area of the Midlands.
Tolkien was wary of machines and the modern world throughout his life. The ring created by Sauron, which he uses to oppress all beings, is an analogy for a machine-dominated world in which, in his eyes, man and nature are enslaved. “The Ring is the ultimate machine because it was created for oppression,” Tolkien’s son Christopher, who manages his father’s literary legacy, once said in a documentary.
The “secondary world”, as Tolkien also called the fantasy world he created, is a place that can only be visited in spirit. Lee sees it as a medium that allows adults to return to emotional worlds whose access has been buried. “It’s very powerful because it allows us to explore some real things in a framework that’s free from the bounds of reality,” says Lee.
Peter Jackson’s film trilogy wins 17 Oscars
Unlike his close friend CS Lewis, who creates the fantasy world around the fictional kingdom of Narnia, the devout Catholic Tolkien is inspired by his religion, but he does not want to spread the Christian message directly. His work remains open to interpretation. The fact that right-wing extremists also want to appropriate the stories inspired by the Nordic world of legends for themselves would have “simply appalled” Tolkien, believes Lee.
Tolkien’s material did not become a huge success on screen until almost half a century after the books were published. New Zealand director Peter Jackson brings the mountains of Middle-earth back to his homeland. The “Lord of the Rings” trilogy alone won 17 Oscars. This is followed by a three-part film adaptation of The Hobbit. With “The Rings of Power” this success story is continued in the form of a TV series for the streaming service from Amazon, Prime Video, but only very remotely based on Tolkien’s works. The narrative created by Tolkien continues to circulate.