Hans Aufricht-Ruda

Hans Aufricht-Ruda (actually Hans Aufricht ; born January 8, 1899 in Ruda in Upper Silesia , † September 29, 1970 in Pasadena (California) ) was a German-American writer and psychotherapist.

Aufricht was the son of the Jewish timber wholesaler Isidor Aufricht and von Berta, née Centawer. After attending the Johannesgymnasium in Breslau and completing his military service, he was an actor at the Königsberg City Theater for a year or two . He was friends with Jakob Wassermann , with whom he lived in Alt-Aussee and whose stepdaughter he was to marry. During his time in Alt-Aussee he worked on his novel The Trial against La Roncière , which is now regarded as an important work of the New Objectivity . He had published several articles about Wassermann in the Neue Rundschau and the latter recommended him to S. Fischer Verlag , where the novel was published in 1927 with an enthusiastic foreword by Wassermann.

The situation after 1933 finally forced Aufricht to leave Germany. In 1935 he trained in psychotherapy in Stockholm and in 1939 emigrated via the Netherlands to the USA , where he worked as an educator, youth therapist and child psychotherapist .

The novel The Trial against La Roncière takes place in 1835 in the France of the “citizen king” Louis-Philippe . Lieutenant La Roncière, 29, is charged with raping Marie von Morell, his commander's 17-year-old daughter. He is arrested and refrains from proving his innocence, as he recognizes the disturbed form of true love in the delusional accusation of Marie, who is depicted as a hysteric. The novel was originally planned as the middle part of a novel trilogy entitled The Arch of the Century , but the other parts never appeared.

The estate of Aufricht is in the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar .

Works

• The trial against La Roncière. With a foreword by Jakob Wassermann . S. Fischer, Berlin 1927.
  • New edition: S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-10-502201-5 .
  • Translation: The Case for the Defendant. Translation by Bernard Miall. Little, Brown & Co., Boston 1929.

literature

• Peter Härtling : Epilogue to The Trial against La Roncière. Frankfurt am Main 1974.
• Franz Heiduk : Oberschlesisches Literaturlexikon. Biographical-bibliographical manual. Palatina, Heidelberg 1990, vol. 1, sv Aufricht-Ruda, Hans .
• Thomas B. Schumann: Aufricht-Ruda, Hans . In: Walther Killy (Ed.): Literaturlexikon . Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh & Munich 1988, Vol. 1, p. 250.
• Thomas B. Schumann: The first and at the same time last book. In: (ders.): Asphalt literature. Berlin 1983.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Aufricht-Ruda in the catalog of the German National Library