Hermann Kesten

Hermann Kesten ( born January 28, 1900 in Podwoloczyska, Galicia, Austria - Hungary, now Pidwolotschysk in Ukraine; † 3 May 1996 Basel) was a writer of one of the main representatives of the literary " New Objectivity " during the 1920s in Germany.

Kesten was a passionate promoter literary talents ( " friend of the poet " ) in the literary history. Expelled because of his Jewish faith and his views of Germany, who came " protective father [ ... ] all over the world stragglers " ( Stefan Zweig ) later from the United States as a savior and supporter of many persecuted by the Nazi regime artists in appearance. He suggested in the post-war period as a militant, committed PEN President fierce debates and took an active part in the literary life of the young Federal Republic.

  • 3.1 monographs and anthologies
  • 3.2 Academic work (not self- published )
  • 3.3 Papers

Life

Hermann Kesten was the son of a Jewish merchant and grew up in Nuremberg. His father had immigrated from the east and died in 1918 in a military hospital in Lublin (Poland). 1919 put Kesten be graduating from the Royal Humanist Altes Gymnasium in Nuremberg and then studied in the years 1919-1923 law and national economics, also history, German language and philosophy at Erlangen and Frankfurt am Main; a doctoral dissertation on Heinrich Mann remained unfinished; In 1923, he broke off his studies. 1923 to 1926 he worked with in the junk trade his mother, and he later traveled through Europe and North Africa.

In 1926 he published the novella Futile Escape in the Frankfurter Zeitung. In 1928 he published his first novel, Joseph seeks freedom in the Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, the first part of a tetralogy, which was projected under the title The end of a great man and the Kesten until 1932 with three other novels - a dissolute man ( The life of a gannet ), 1928; Happy people, 1931; The Charlatan, 1932 completed it. Josef seeks freedom in 1928 honorable mention at the award ceremony of the Kleist Prize; However, the Kesten repeated imputed price of 1928 went to Anna Seghers. Even in 1927 moved Kesten to Berlin, where he first worked as a writer, then as a lecturer with Fritz H. Landshoff and Walter Landauer Kiepenheuer.

By 1933, in addition to the novels exist primarily narratives, some dramatic work ( partly in cooperation with Ernst Toller ) and numerous journalistic texts in important political and cultural publications of the Weimar Republic ( Frankfurter Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt, The Literary World, The World Stage). Due to its author and lecturer activity Kesten made ​​the acquaintance of many well-known writers: Bertolt Brecht, Erich Kästner, Joseph Roth, Anna Seghers, Henry, Thomas and peers Klaus Mann, some of whom he knew in "his " Publisher accommodate.

As the editor of several anthologies and author its period novels Kesten applies to today as a prominent representative of the " New Objectivity " - poetologically this categorization is the lyrics Kestens but only partially meet.

In 1933 he fled to France; in the following years he lived in Paris and stayed in exile Centre Sanary -sur- Mer near Toulon, in London, Brussels, Oostende and Amsterdam. Where he led - again with Walter Landauer - the German department of the publisher Allert de Lange and published in competition but also in cooperation with the second large Dutch exile publishing house, the Querido publishing house ( there was Fritz H. Landshoff now publishing director ), works of German emigrants. In 1934 he lived for a short time in the same household in Nice with Joseph Roth and Heinrich Mann. After the righteous (1934 ) published in the early years of exile, the historical novels Ferdinand and Isabella (1936) and King Philip the Second (1938 ) and The Children of Guernica ( 1939). After brief internment in 1939 in the French camps Colombes and Nièvres as an "enemy alien " Kesten fled in 1940 on a visitor's visa to the United States. There he lived primarily in New York and was active from 1940 to 1942 as "honorary advisor " in the Emergency Rescue Committee for the Rescue mainly German-speaking authors and creative artists from persecution by the Nazi regime.

In 1949 Kesten to the American nationality. In the same year he participated in the International PEN Congress in part in Venice and undertook a trip to Europe, during which there was a reunion with Germany, Nuremberg and old friends. 1950 Hermann Kesten member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. In addition, it conducted numerous long stay in Switzerland and New York; Kesten was a corresponding member of the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt. In 1953 he moved to Rome, which was to remain his primary residence until 1977. In 1954 he received the Prize of the City of Nuremberg. 1972-1976 worked Kesten as president of the PEN Centre of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1974 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize, 1977 Nelly Sachs Culture Prize of the city of Dortmund. When his wife Toni Kesten died in 1977, Kesten moved to Basel, where he spent the last years of his life in the Jewish old people's home " La Charmille " ( in Riehen near Basel).

In 1978 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Erlangen- Nuremberg, 1980 Honorary Citizen of the City of Nuremberg, in 1982, together with Fritz H. Landshoff honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin. 1985 founded the PEN center of the Federal Republic of Germany for the 85th anniversary of its Honorary President of the Hermann Kesten Medal (since 2008 under the title Hermann Kesten Prize ) for outstanding services to persecuted writers in the Charter of International PEN Among the previous winners include, inter alia, Johannes Mario Simmel (1993 ), Günter Grass ( 1995), Harold Pinter (2001) and Anna Politkovskaya ( 2003). 1995 Kesten donated the prize money for the first Nuremberg International Human Rights Award.

Works

Novels

  • Josef seeks freedom (1927 )
  • A dissolute man ( The life of a gannet ) ( 1929)
  • Happy People (1931 )
  • The Charlatan (1932 )
  • The righteous (1934 )
  • Victory of the daemons ( Ferdinand and Isabella ), (1936, re: 2006, ISBN 3-85535-978-4 )
  • I, the king ( King Philip II of Spain), (1938, re: Ullsteinhaus, Frankfurt / M., 1982, ISBN 3-548-37112-4 )
  • The children of Gernika ( 1939: re: Ullsteinhaus, Frankfurt / M., 1981, ISBN 3-548-37103-5 )
  • The twins from Nuremberg ( 1947 again: 2004, ISBN 3-921590-00-0 )
  • The foreign gods (1949 )
  • A son of Happiness (1955 )
  • The Adventures of a moralist ( 1961 again: 2007, ISBN 3-85535-363-8 )
  • The time of fools (1966 )
  • A man of sixty years (1972 )

Collections of short stories

  • Futile Escape and other stories (1949 )
  • The 30 tales of Hermann Kesten (1962 )
  • Dialogue of Love ( 1981)
  • The friend in the closet (1983 )

Biographies, Essays

  • Copernicus and His World (1948 )
  • Casanova ( 1952)
  • My friends, the poet (1953, re: 2006, ISBN 3-85535-977-6 )
  • The spirit of unrest (1959 )
  • Poet in the Café (1959 )
  • Branches of Parnassus (1961 )
  • Lauter writers (1963 )
  • The love of life. Boccaccio, Aretino, Casanova ( 1968)
  • An optimist (1970 )
  • Anthem of Holland (1970 )
  • Revolutionaries with patience (1973 )

Stage lyrics

  • Maud loves both (1928 )
  • Admetus (1928 )
  • Babel or The Path to Power (1929 )
  • Housing or The Holy Family (1930 )
  • One tells the truth (1930 )
  • Miracle in America (together with Ernst Toller ) ( 1931)

Poetry

  • I am who I am. Verses of a contemporary (1974).
  • A year in New York

Essays

  • Five years after we left: The new diary, Paris 1938
  • We Nuremberg. First Nuremberg speech (1961 )
  • Twenty years after. Second Nuremberg speech (1965 )

Editions

  • 24 new German Narrator ( 1929)
  • New French narrator (together m. Félix Bertaux ) ( 1930)
  • Novellas German poets of the present (1933 )
  • Heinrich Heine. Masterpieces in prose and verse (1939 )
  • Heart of Europe (together with Klaus Mann ) ( 1943)
  • The Blue Flower. Beautiful romantic tales of world literature (1955 )
  • Joseph Roth. Works (1956 )
  • René Schickele. Works (1959 )
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Works (1962 )
  • I do not live in the Federal Republic ( 1964)

Translations

  • Julien Green, Leviathan (1930 )
  • Henri Michaux, My goods ( 1930)
  • Emmanuel Bove, history of a madman (1930 )
  • Jules Romains, the capitalist (1931 )
  • Jean Giraudoux, The Adventures of Jerome Bardini (1932 )

Letters to and from Hermann Kesten

  • German literature in exile. Letters written by European authors 1933-1949 (1964 )
  • Franz Schoenberner / Hermann Kesten: correspondence in Exile 1933-1945 (2008)
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