Charlotte Beradt

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Charlotte Beradt (born December 7, 1907 in Forst , † May 15, 1986 in New York , née Charlotte Aron, married Charlotte Pollack ) was a German journalist and publicist .

Live and act

Charlotte Aron grew up as a merchant's daughter in a Jewish family in Berlin. She gained her first journalistic experience as a freelancer for various daily newspapers and magazines. In 1924 she married the journalist and writer Heinz Pollack (1901–1972) with whom she wrote the travelogue of Charlie Chaplin Hello Europe! edited and translated. The marriage ended in divorce in 1938. Since 1930 she has been one of the authors of Ossietzky's “ Weltbühne ”. Beradt belonged to the KPD , but left the party under the impression of its Stalinization .

Since she came to power in 1933, she was no longer allowed to work as a journalist. In 1938 she married the writer Martin Beradt (1881-1949) and left National Socialist Germany with him a year later . Via London, the couple traveled to New York for their American exile . There the two were initially completely destitute. The situation was also made more difficult by the husband's blindness. Charlotte Beradt initially earned their living for both as a hairdresser.

After the end of the war , Charlotte Beradt was able to publish again in Germany, but stayed in New York. Her articles appeared in various German newspapers. She also produced radio programs and became a regular freelancer for West German Broadcasting in Cologne.

After the death of her husband, she compiled his estate and handed it over to the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. She also translated five political essays by Hannah Arendt from American English into German, which appeared in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956 (four essays) and 1957 (text on the Hungarian uprising ). At times she was friends with Arendt.

Her first book was published in German in 1966. It documents a large number (50) of politically influenced “dreams” from the time of National Socialism , the collection of which Beradt had already begun in 1933 and which ended in 1939 with her flight. A first selection appeared in an American magazine in 1943. The book met with great interest and was reprinted several times and translated into English, French and Italian (new edition 1981 with an afterword by Reinhart Koselleck ; the English edition from 1968 has an afterword by Bruno Bettelheim ). In 1969 she presented a biography of the social democratic or communist politician Paul Levi , whom she had met personally. In 1973 she published Rosa Luxemburg's letters to her secretary and friend Mathilde Jacob .

Charlotte Beradt was active as a journalist well into old age. From 1962 to 1978 she described autobiographical experiences in radio broadcasts entitled "Diaries". She also emerged as a translator and theater critic. It expresses itself politically in many texts. She was particularly fond of the American civil rights movement .

She died in New York in 1986.

Works

  • The Third Reich of Dream , Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1966
  • The Third Reich of Dream. With an afterword by Reinhart Koselleck, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1981 (new edition: Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1994.)
    • edited and with an afterword by Barbara Hahn : Bibliothek Suhrkamp Volume 1496, Berlin, 2016, ISBN 978-3-518-22496-0 .
    • English edition: The Third Reich of Dreams. The nightmares of a nation 1933-1939. Translation from the German by Adriane Gottwald. With an essay by Bruno Bettelheim, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968.
    • Italian edition: Il Terzo Reich dei sogni. Pref. di Reinhart Koselleck. Postf. Di Bruno Bettelheim. Trad. di Ingrid Harbach, Torino: Einaudi, 1991.
    • French edition: Rêver sous le IIIe Reich. Préf. de Martine Leibovici. Postf. De Reinhart Koselleck et de François Gantheret. Trad. de l'allemand par Pierre Saint-Germain, Paris: Payot et Rivages, 2002.
    • Croatian edition: Snovi pod Trećim Reichom. S njemačkog preveo Damjan Lalović. Postf. Reinhart Koselleck. Zagreb: Disput, 2015.
    • Spanish edition: El tercer Reich de los sueños, traductores Soledad Nívoli y Leandro Levi, Editorial LOM 2019.
  • Paul Levi. A democratic socialist in the Weimar Republic , Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969.

Editor

  • Rosa Luxemburg in Prison: Letters and Documents from the Years 1915–1918 , Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1973 (Unabridged Edition, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1987).
  • Paul Levi: Between Spartacus and Social Democracy . Writings, essays, speeches and letters, Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt / Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1969.

Translations

  • Hannah Arendt: Questionable traditions in contemporary political thinking. Four essays. Translated from English by Charlotte Beradt, Frankfurt a. M .: Europ. Publishing house, 1957.
  • Hannah Arendt: The Hungarian Revolution and Totalitarian Imperialism. Transfer from d. Engl. By Charlotte Beradt, Munich: Piper, 1958.

literature

  • Renate Wall: Charlotte Beradt, in: Lexicon of German-Language Writers in Exile 1933–1945, Gießen: Haland & Wirth / Psychosozial-Verlag, 2004, pp. 38–39 ( Internet version ).
  • Beradt, Charlotte. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 2: Bend Bins. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-598-22682-9 , pp. 104-108.
  • Jutta Schwerin: Ricarda's Daughter - Life Between Germany and Israel , p. 223, Spector Books Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-940064-33-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Review: Contemporary History. Dream about terror . Der Spiegel, June 6, 1966
personal data
SURNAME Beradt, Charlotte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Forest
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1986
Place of death new York