Herbert Thomas Mandl

Herbert Thomas Mandl ( born August 18, 1926 in Bratislava, † 22 February 2007 Sea - Busch Buederich ) was a Czech- German - Jewish author, concert violinist, professor of music, philosopher, inventor, traveling lecturer. He wrote novels, short stories, dramas, which are closely linked to his extraordinary life's destiny.

Life

As a young man he survived the concentration camp Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Dachau. As a professor of violin in Ostrava he pursued various projects in order to escape from oppression in communist Czechoslovakia to the West. The flight finally he succeeded when he was allowed to settle in Cairo by a tour group and ask in the local U.S. embassy for asylum. First suspected by the CIA as a spy and interrogated for months, he was released from detention Fuerth. ( " There were just as many spies as genuine refugees "). Recognized as a political refugee, he came to Cologne and became the private secretary of Heinrich Böll. Mandl's wife, the concert pianist Jaroslava ( " Slavi " ) Mandl was left in Ostrava. Böll was driving with his wife and son Raymond with a car in Czechoslovakia, in which a hiding place had been built with the help of a magician, and smuggled Slavi so in the West.

Later Mandl edited for Deutsche Welle in Cologne cultural programs for Czechoslovakia. He tried twice to emigrate with his wife in the United States. One of his jobs there was the keeper of a lunatic in an asylum for criminal psychopaths in the U.S. state of Washington. Finally returned to Germany, he found employment as a teacher with the English for the Episcopal Abendgymnasium Neuss.

Besides, he was an inventor. He designed and patented got two different kinds of devices. One was a transparent dummy head ( " Phonetichead " ), inside which the externally adjustable speech organs were visible in order to help students with pronunciation problems. The other was a " Suggestometer ", a complex device with which the suggestibility of a subject can be measured - what is deemed impossible by empirical psychology generally. In retirement, he became a very successful psychotherapist. In his last years he appeared as a witness to the musical life in the ghetto Theresienstadt; he had played there 1943/44, in the prisoners' orchestra violin.

Literary work

His literary work has the central theme of the struggle of the individual against the refined instruments of totalitarian oppression: intelligence, mental torture, brainwashing. Similar to Edgar Allan Poe (eg, The Pit and the Pendulum ), the individual finds himself at Mandl alone with his reason the ingenious torture arts of his overpowering opponents over. Similar to Aldous Huxley ( Eyeless in Gaza ) at Mandl effective narrative is interspersed with philosophical considerations that are kept in a very clear language. His novel The bet of the philosopher (1996 ) is also noteworthy in that both the oppressed and the everyday so amazingly intense cultural and musical life in Theresienstadt is described.

Works

Fiction

  • The hero and his secret. Short stories, Bernardus, 1991.
  • Thirst, Music, Secret Services. Autobiography, Boer, 1995.
  • The bet of the philosopher. Novel, Boer, 1996.
  • On the island of phantoms. Novel, Dittrich, 2003.
  • Love and spoilage at phantoms. Novel, Wishbohn Publisher Mülheim a.d.Ruhr, 2005.
  • 1994-2000: work of fiction published in the Czech Republic

More unpublished short stories, plays and lectures with philosophical and political issues can be found in the estate Mandl in the archives of Moses Mendelssohn Academy in Halberstadt.

Film

  • Traces to Theresienstadt / Tracks to Terezín (Interview: Herbert Gantschacher, Camera: Robert Schabus, cut and design: Erich Heyduck / DVD German / English; ARBOS, Vienna -Salzburg -Klagenfurt 2007)
  • Unknown Boell / The Nobel Prize winner as a courageous escape helpers film by Gloria de Siano. 3sat Arts Journal 14 January 2004

Theater

  • The journey to the center of reality (performances in Hallein and Klagenfurt, Austria, world premiere by ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre 1997)
  • The three-time dream of the machine (performances in Prora / Rügen, Germany, Salzburg, Villach and Arnold Stein; premiere by ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre 2004)
  • The adjourned hero ( Prora / Rügen, Germany; Villach and Arnold Stein, Austria; premiere by ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre 2005)
  • The aim of the Disappeared ( Arnold Stein, Austria; premiere by ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre 2006)
  • Other stage works: The brain piano or the second experiment, the guest of transcendence, the supernatural conspiracy, interrogations with an uncertain outcome

Opera

  • Šarlatán / The Charlatan opera by Pavel Haas, German version of Herbert Thomas Mandl and Jaroslava Mandl ( Prague National Library, 1993)

Quotes

  • " As long as you still creeping and crawling, you should open as a witness of the Nazi era, his beak " - Herbert Thomas Mandl at the premiere of his drama The journey to the center of reality 1997
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