Paul Kornfeld (playwright)

Paul Kornfeld ( born December 11, 1889 in Prague, † April 25, 1942 in the Lodz ghetto ( Łódź) ) was a German dramatist and writer.

Life

Paul Kornfeld was born in the New Town of Prague in House V Jámě No 1671 near the Wenceslas Square. He came from a Jewish family. His ancestors were rabbis and Talmudic scholars, including his great-grandfather Aron Kornfeld (1795-1881), who had led the last yeshiva in Bohemia. The father Moriz Kornfeld (1852-1934) had in Prague a spinning mill and a dyeing, but was next to a connoisseur of philosophical, religious, and works of fiction.

Kornfeld received after visiting the Prague School in Panská street and the high school in the STEPANSKA street ( Stephan Gymnasium) in June 1908 to finish his schooling and studied at the Karl- Ferdinand University. Among his classmates at school were Stephan Franz Werfel and Willy Haas, who later became editor of the weekly newspaper The Literary World. Even during school time they went back to Georges Algabal, Goethe's Faust and the work of Byron. Together with Max Brod organized the meetings with friends, where they were reading each other 's literary texts. Here About Franz Werfel reported in his work The Abituriententag and Max Brod quarrelsome in his memoirs of life. Occasionally found the meeting place in the family home of the cornfield.

A frequent guest was Paul Kornfeld in the literary cafe Arco, where at the beginning of the 20th century met the Bohemian writers and poets: in addition to his own circle of friends, these included Oskar Baum, Rudolf Fuchs, Hans Janowitz and his brother, the poet Franz Janowitz, Franz Kafka, Egon Erwin Kisch, Otto Pick and John Urzidil ​​. As a publication organ served the so-called Prague district 1911-1912 especially the Herder- leaves.

After the death of his elder brother in June 1905 expected the family that Paul Kornfeld would succeed in his father's company after graduation. To escape his literary ambitions, but also to the Prague atmosphere of an overheated and mainly destructive intelligence, Paul Kornfeld moved in 1914 to Frankfurt am Main, where he succeeded his poetic breakthrough. And in Frankfurt married Paul Kornfeld and actress Fritta Brod ( * 1896) in 1918. This year Kornfeld told him the address Kronberg im Taunus, Frankfurter Straße 10 The marriage ended in divorce in 1926. His play hopscotch was 1918/19, accepted by Hermann Bahr for the Burgtheater, but was not allowed to be listed in a row.

1925 brought Max Reinhardt cornfield as a dramaturge to Berlin, and in 1927 he moved to Darmstadt, the Hessian State Theatre to Gustav curing. Here, there was an uproar:

Paul Kornfeld countered by a guest performance by the Habima - an existing since 1916 Hebrew theater companies - the clearly racist embossed objections of local criticism. In this controversy the publicist Stefan Grossman took in his magazine The day book party for the grain field, but he resigned anyway and moved again in 1928 to Berlin, where he was able to publish articles now in Grossman's journal.

In December 1932 he moved to seventeen years back to Prague. Impulse for his return was his father's 80th birthday. After Germany Kornfeld did not come back because of the assumption of power in January 1933. From Rowohlt he had now received the offer that he would lay Kornfeld's first novel. From 1933 to 1941 Paul Kornfeld wrote the so-called Blanche- compilation, was first published in 1957 Rowohlt publishing an abridged by Kurt Kusenberg version under the title Blanche or the workshop in the garden.

Paul Kornfeld was then living in the Prague district of Vinohrady in the street Horni Stromce and Mánesova street. Although he knew that he is not safe in Prague and was allowed to go away to England, he did not want to leave Prague. Before his arrest on October 31, 1942 by the SS and deportation to Poland in the Lodz ghetto ( Łódź ), where he was assassinated after a year, he managed to hide his novel manuscript to a Czech woman who is after the war his relatives was in London.

Located in Prague's Pinkas synagogue, a memorial plaque bearing the name Paul Kornfeld.

Works

• Legend. Fischer, Berlin, 1916.
• The seduction. Tragedy in five acts. Fischer, Berlin, 1916.
• Heaven and hell. Tragedy in five acts and an epilogue. Fischer, Berlin, 1919.
• The eternal dream. Comedy. Rowohlt, Berlin 1922.
• The palm or offended. A comedy in five acts. Rowohlt, Berlin 1924.
• Jud Süss. Tragedy in three acts and an epilogue. U: October 7, 1930 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. Role Book Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Reinbek.
• Kilian or the yellow rose. Comedy ( Stage manuscript from 1926). Rowohlt, Hamburg circa 1950.
• Blanche or the workshop in the garden. Novel. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1957. Edition 1980 ISBN 3499125374
• Revolution with flute music and other critical prose 1916-1932. Edited and annotated by Manon Maren- Grisebach. Schneider, Heidelberg 1977.