Józef Wittlin
Józef Wittlin ( born August 17, 1896 in Dmytrow at Radziechów, Galicia (now in Ukraine), † February 28, 1976 in New York) was a Polish writer and an important expressionist and realistic poet.
Life
Józef Wittlin was on the estate Dmytrów in the Galician Podolia (then belonging to Austria - Hungary) was born on August 17, 1896 as the son of a Jewish Gutspächters. Much of his youth was spent in Lviv. There he attended from 1906 to 1914 the school. Because of his father's second wife was German, Józef Wittlin was known early with the German language and literature. In 1915 he graduated in Vienna. He was very good friends with Joseph Roth. Both came forward in the fall of 1916 volunteered for the Austrian army. After his discharge from the army in September 1918 Wittlin began a study in Lviv and, after its termination, first as a teacher and later as a journalist for several newspapers, as a dramaturge and a freelance writer.
In 1922 he moved to Lodz, about 1927 to Warsaw. Since 1924 he was married to the doctoral Polonistin and German studies Halina merchant. He undertook at that time traveled extensively in Europe, who greatly influenced his work. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was in Paris, from where he was evacuated in May 1940 to Biarritz. From Nice of him and his family succeeded in January 1941 by the help of Hermann Kesten about Spain and Portugal to escape to New York. He remained there even after the end of the war.
Creation
Since 1917 he worked on the transmission of the Odyssey into Polish. From his friend Joseph Roth, he has translated Job, Zipper and his father and the Emperor's Tomb, by Hermann Hesse 's novel Steppenwolf. His main work is the novel The Salt of the Earth ( Sól ziemi, 1935) considered the first part of the unfinished trilogy The story of the patient infantrymen.
Works ( in German )
- The salt of the earth. Allert de Lange, Amsterdam 1937; Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-518-39669-2
- The story of the patient infantrymen. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-518-02594-5
- My Lviv. Suhrkamp ( Bibliothek Suhrkamp 1156 ), Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-518-22156-6