Anna Katharina Rehmann-Salten

Portrait photo of Anna Katharina Salten around 1928, in: Die Bühne , Heft 214 (1928), p. 11. Photo: Edith Barakovich

Anna Katharina Rehmann-Salten (born August 18, 1904 in Vienna ; † March 27, 1977 in Zurich ) was a translator, journalist, illustrator and actress. Her birth name was Salzmann, in 1911 the family name was changed to Salten. Her publications after her first marriage occasionally only bear the surname Rehmann, but mostly Rehmann-Salten. After her second marriage she was called Wyler or Wyler-Salten. Katherina is occasionally given as the middle name, but this does not match the author's notes of her own publications. Further variations of the first names are Annerl and Katja. She was born an Austrian and acquired Swiss citizenship through her first marriage.

Rehmann-Salten is best known today for her translations, especially of John Steinbeck's anti-fascist novel The Moon is Down , which she also edited for theater. The stage version of the play was performed many times in Switzerland during the Second World War. She also plays an important role in the biography and estate administration of her father, Felix Salten .

Life

Anna Katharina Salten was the daughter of the journalist and writer Felix Salten and his wife Ottilie, née Metzl (1868–1942), an actress at the Vienna Burgtheater . She had an older brother, Paul Salten (1903-1937), who became a film director. After attending grammar school, Anna Katharina Salten learned painting and life drawing at a school of applied arts from 1921, but left it again in 1924. In 1925 she created the illustrations for a book by her father, Bob and Baby . As a result, she devoted herself to acting and lived in Berlin and Vienna. She appeared around 1928 in Tolstoy's The Living Body , staged at the Berlin Volksbühne , alongside Heinrich George and Agnes Straub , among others , and in the same year in Stephan Kamare : Linen from Ireland in the Vienna Theater in der Josefstadt , which was then run by Max Reinhardt was headed.

In 1928 Salten married the actor Hans Rehmann , a Swiss citizen, through which she herself also acquired Swiss citizenship . When Rehmann fell ill with bone tuberculosis , she accompanied him to Switzerland. The couple finally lived in Langenthal with Rehmann's sister. Rehmann died in August 1939.

Since Rehmann-Salen's parents, as Jews, were at great risk after the annexation of Austria in 1938, she tried to enable them to emigrate to Switzerland. She succeeded in that in February 1939, but Felix Salten had to undertake not to publish any journalistic work in the Swiss media and not to accept any position as editor or lecturer. Therefore Rehmann-Salten was forced to pay for the family's maintenance. She earned the necessary money with journalistic work, activities for the publishing house Bermann Fischer and, above all, translations of English texts into German. This did not turn out to be easy, of course, because Swiss publishers often wanted to publish on the German market and the Germans required proof of the author and translator of the books in Aryan , as can be seen in a letter from Walter de Haas, the editor of Albert Müller Verlag .

The translated works included three crime novels by Agatha Christie , novels by John Boynton Priestley and Richard Aldington , a crime novel by Lassie inventor Eric Knight , as well as biographies and travelogues.

Her biggest success was but the translation and theater editor of the novel The Moon is down ( went the moon ) by John Steinbeck . The novel, published in the USA in 1942, described the occupation of a northern European city by a foreign power, easily recognizable motivated by the German occupation of Norway in 1940. Rehmann-Salten translated it into German in autumn 1942, it was published in 1943 by Humanitas Verlag in Zurich and saw at least eight editions in 1943 and 1944 alone. She also arranged the dialogues for a staged performance. The first performance of the drama took place on October 27, 1943 at the Theater Basel ; the piece was played there 46 times and was, according to a contemporary chronicler, "the real train and box office piece of the season". The Zurich Schauspielhaus initially rejected the play because it seemed too sensitive to the subject of a fascist invasion. After the success of the Basel premiere, however, the people of Zurich gave in, and from December 2, 1943 , The Moon went under ran for weeks in front of a sold-out theater in the Schauspielhaus, then on numerous other German-Swiss theaters. The drama was considered one of the greatest successes of Swiss theater during the Second World War. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, in September and October 1945, it was also shown at the Wiener Kammerspiele in Rehmann-Salen's adaptation .

On December 13, 1944, Rehmann-Salten married the lawyer Veit Wyler , an anti-fascist and Zionist who, among other things, had been involved in the defense of David Frankfurter . The couple had two daughters, Lea Wyler, actress and co-founder of the Rokpa charity , and Judith Siano-Wyler, an art therapist in Israel.

Anna Wyler-Salten continued to write translations under the established name Anna Katharina Rehmann-Salten, wrote theater reviews for Weltwoche until she was replaced by Friedrich Dürrenmatt , and worked on Wyler's magazine Das neue Israel . After Felix Salten's death, she put together an English-language anthology of his favorite animal stories (including Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach , Rudyard Kipling and Jack London ) for the American market and wrote the introduction to it.

As heir to Felix Salten, she also took care of her father's estate administration and the exploitation of his rights. In 1954, she renewed Salen's American copyright to his successful work Bambi, and in 1958 negotiated three contracts with the Walt Disney Company , which Disney granted the further exploitation of the rights. After her death, there was an extensive legal battle in the USA over these rights, in particular the question of the public domain of the work and the right of disposal of Veit Wyler, who had inherited the rights from his wife.

In old age, Anna Wyler-Salten suffered from cancer that led to her death in 1977.

plant

As an illustrator

• Felix Salten: Bob and Baby . With 37 colored drawings by Anna Katharina Salten. Zsolnay, Vienna 1925.

As a translator

• Agatha Christie: The Dead in the Library (Original: The Body in the Library ). Scherz, Bern 1943.
• John Steinbeck: The moon went down (Original: The Moon is Down ). Humanitas, Zurich 1943.
• Jan Struther: Mrs. Miniver experienced the pre-war period (Original: Mrs. Miniver ). Scherz, Bern 1943
• Agatha Christie: Die Schattenhand (Original: The Moving Finger ). Scherz, Bern 1944.
• Agatha Christie: Last Weekend (Original: Ten Little Niggers , also published under the title: And Then There were None ; better known in German under the title: And then there were none ). Scherz, Bern 1944.
• Eric Knight : Whoever loses wins (Original: You play the black and the red comes up ). Scherz, Bern 1944.
• John B. Priestley : Blackout in Gretley (Original: Black-Out in Gretley ). Pan, Zurich 1944.
• Richard Aldington : Heaven itself (Original: Very Heaven ). Humanitas, Zurich 1946.
• John B. Priestley: Three Men (Original: Three Men in New Suits ). Pan, Zurich 1946.
• Erna Barschak : Experiences in USA (Original: My American Adventure ). Pan, Zurich 1947.
• Rhoda Truax: Joseph Lister . Father of Modern Surgery (Original: Joseph Lister, Father of Modern Surgery ). Scherz, Bern 1947.
• Ethel Wilson: Lilly (Original: The Equations of Love: Lilly's Story ). Pan, Zurich 1952.

As an author and editor

• Anna Katharina Salten: poet children - III. Well protected. In: Der Cross Section , Volume 9 (1929), No. 3 (March), pp. 160–162. On-line
• Anna Katharina Salten: Bench song . In: Der Cross Section , Volume 12 (1932), No. 4 (April), p. 252. Online
• Felix Salten's Favorite Animal Stories . Compiled and introduced by Anna Wyler-Salten. Julian Messner, New York 1948. Table of contents
• K. Wyler-Salten: "It's my children ...". Acting in 7 scenes. For the day of the Jewish child. First performed in Zurich on March 27, 1955.

Sources

There is a short biography of Susanne Blumesberger, which is based on published sources and personal conversations with Rehmann-Salten's daughter Lea Wyler. Unless otherwise stated, the article is based on this representation.

literature

• Susanne Blumesberger: Rehmann-Salten. In: Ilse Korotin (ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 3: P-Z. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , pp. 2667–2668 ( online ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Season chronicle 1920 to 1930 of the Volksbühne, season 1928/1929, online .
2. ↑ See the archive of the theater in der Josefstadt, [1] .
3. ↑ These could have included corrections, but also PR and sales activities. In a letter to Gottfried Bermann Fischer dated February 19, 1946, Carl Zuckmayer asked whether “still Annerl Salten” was working in Switzerland for the publisher's “publicity and distribution”, and the commentary explained that this was done in Switzerland, among other things Corrections for fishermen read. See Irene Nawrocka (ed.): Carl Zuckmayer - Gottfried Bermann Fischer. Correspondence. 2 volumes. Wallstein, Göttingen 2004. The letter can be found in vol. I, p. 285, the commentary in vol. II, p. 165.
4. ↑ Karl Gotthilf Kachler: The artistic life in Basel from October 1, 1943 to September 30, 1944. In: Basler Jahrbuch, 1945, pp. 196–204, online . Here: p. 198f.
5. ↑ Donald W. Coers: John Steinbeck as propagandist. The Moon Is Down goes to war. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa 1991, pp. 118-119; see also Michael Peter Loeffler: Oskar Wältin. A profile. Birkhäuser, Basel 1979, p. 132f.
6. ↑ See, among others, Österreichische Volksstimme of September 15, 1945, p. 3; Oberösterreichische Nachrichten of September 26, 1945, p. 3; The stage 9/1945 and 10/1945, each p. 23.
7. ^ Zlata Fuss Phillips: German children's and youth literature in exile, 1933–1950. Biographies and bibliographies. Saur, Munich 2001, pp. 67-68, 191.
8. ↑ See e.g. Twin Books Corporation v. Walt Disney Company , online at caselaw.findlaw.com.
9. ↑ An autobiographical outline of her childhood and youth. The contribution Dichterkinder also brought together memories of Anselm Eulenberg, the son of Herbert Eulenberg (“little gifted”), Rainer Schickele, the son of René Schickele (“uninteresting”), and Klaus Mann (“early poisoned”).
10. ^ Preliminary report in Das neue Israel , Vol. 7, No. 9, 3.1955, pp. 236–239. Online .