Otto Basil

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Otto Basil (born December 24, 1901 in Vienna ; † February 19, 1983 there ; legal name until October 1935 Otto Adam Franz Bazil ; pseudonym Markus Hörmann , Camill Schmall ) was an Austrian writer, publicist and journalist.

Life

After completing his education at the Vienna Commercial Academy , Basil began studying German and palaeontology in Vienna and Munich. After that he was active in various professions; he worked as a journalist and editor , bar pianist and industrial worker (from 1927 at the Böhler works ). He also worked as a dramaturge and as a publicist in cultural magazines. In the early 1920s he was one of the editors of the magazine Das Wort . He also wrote articles for the Prager Abendblatt in the mid-1920s .

After the connection of Austria to Germany in 1938 he was banned from writing. When Basil was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 for “mocking the Führer” , Josef Weinheber successfully campaigned for his release.

After the Second World War, Basil worked as a press officer and dramaturge at the Vienna Volkstheater under the direction of Günther Haenel (until 1947) and, together with Haenel and Gustav Manker , organized exhibitions by contemporary artists such as the surrealist Edgar Jené in the walkways of the Volkstheater . Günther Haenel led the theater as a demanding temporary theater and showed many pieces that were withheld from the audience during the fascist systems. Otto Basil wrote: "There was an élan about the house that was reminiscent of the wildest days of Expressionism."

Basil also re-published the avant-garde literary and art magazine PLAN (discontinued in 1948), in which contributions by many contemporary Austrian writers, musicians and scientists were published. Partly on the basis of articles prepared as early as 1937, he subsequently set standards for new Austrian post-war literature and steered with names such as Bertolt Brecht , Albert Camus , TS Eliot , Hermann Broch , Heimito von Doderer , Paul Celan , Erich Fried , Theodor Kramer , Joseph Kalmer and Ernst Waldinger , Ilse Aichinger and Friederike Mayröcker take a literary look at European pre- and post-war literature. The PLAN was the socio-political counterpoint to the Christian conservative magazine Turm , which was financed from party funds of the ÖVP . Basil's magazine was non-party (although Basil was a member of the KPÖ for a short time ) and saw itself as the successor to Karl Kraus' torch . The PLAN was open to writers of various stripes and was therefore "the only magazine that combined a certain political and aesthetic line with a liberalism that allowed it to be open to Hugo Huppert and Hans Weigel , Johann Gunert and Paul Celan at the same time " ( Hans Heinz Hahnl ). It was the first time that Huppert's own poems and his adaptations by Soviet poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Boris Pasternak appeared . Thanks to its commitment to the visual arts, the PLAN also became the journalistic nucleus of Fantastic Realism .

From 1948 to 1964 Basil was head of the culture department of the daily newspaper Neues Österreich , where he wrote of a “time of excavations” - with a view to the repertoire of the Viennese theaters, but, according to his critical judgment, “the evil and uncomfortable contemporaries: the Bruckner , Brecht , Zuckmayer , Horváth , Csokor , Hochwälder are now being put to bed in the cool crypt. "

Honorary grave in the Vienna Central Cemetery

In 1966, Basil's novel Wenn das Führer Wüßte was published , a satire on the “Third Reich” in which he shows the madness of National Socialism. A victorious German Reich triumphs and puts its insane ideological aberrations into practice in the long term. The empire is in the process of ruining itself, in a country in which brutality and inhumanity have horribly become part of everyday (in) culture, where spirit and science are “racially” oriented and people stand stuffed in museums. It has been 20 years at Basil since the first atomic bombs were dropped, but the atomic bomb fell not on Hiroshima , but on London, and the Nazis won the war. Africa and the USA also belong to the empire. The world is divided into east and west. West, that is the German Empire, with its vassals and conquered territories in America. East is Japan. After the glorious victory, the empire itself became deeper and deeper immersed in myths, superstitions and truism, and those who are not fortunate enough to conform to the Nordic image of man are serfs, the slave of the masters. The Pope and the Dalai Lama are held captive in a neurosurgical clinic in Cologne. From Ireland to the Urals, the SS Ordensburgen rise up, such as B. the Wewelsburg , the breeding mother monasteries, the whale halls of the Ariosophene , the Napolas and subhuman camps . The first-person narrator is a “commuter” and tracker of earth rays, serious science such as psychology must take place underground. This Nazi esotericism was hardly ever discussed before the novel was written. The novel contains allusions to the real present at the time, such as the Cold War (in the course of the novel there is a nuclear war between Germany and Japan) and also contains parodic elements (there are characters who represent alienations of Heidegger and Doderer ).

Basil was a freelance writer and PEN member in Vienna until his death in 1983 and a member of the Equality Lodge from 1959 to 1963. Basil rests in an honorary grave in Vienna's central cemetery (group 40, number 153).

Awards

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His literary work consists mainly of poems and stories, a novel and two basic monographs on Georg Trakl (1965) and Johann Nestroy (1967). A selection from his profound theater reviews of the period 1947–1966 are gathered in the volume Lob und Tadel , published by Paul Wimmer in 1981 .

In his poems, influences from Rainer Maria Rilke , French modernism and expressionism are reflected. His literary role model was Karl Kraus .

  • Libra constellation. Poems from two cycles . Müller Verlag, Vienna 1945.
  • Johann Nestroy. Represented with testimonials and photo documents . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2001, ISBN 3-499-50132-5 (reprint of the Reinbek edition 1967).
  • Apocalyptic verse . Müller Verlag, Vienna 1947.
  • Georg Trakl. Represented with testimonials and photo documents . 18th edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2003, ISBN 3-499-50106-6 (reprint of the Reinbek edition 1965).
  • A wild garden is your body. The woman at the turn of the century , Forum Verlag, Vienna 1968.
  • with Herbert Eisenreich and Ivar Ivask : The great legacy. Essays on Austrian literature; Panorama of the fall of Kakania . Stiasny publishing house, Graz / Vienna 1962 ( Stiasny library , vol. 100).
  • If the Führer only knew! Roman Milena-Verlag, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-85286-197-5 (reprint of the Vienna 1966 edition).
  • We are already mouth and urn. Selected poems . Rimbaud Presse, Aachen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89086-565-2 .

estate

Basil's literary estate is kept in the literary archive of the Austrian National Library.

literature

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  1. ^ Murray G. Hall: Austrian publishing history 1918-1938: The Krystall publishing house
  2. ^ Paulus Manker : The theater man Gustav Manker . Search for clues. Amalthea, Vienna 2010 ISBN 978-3-85002-738-0
  3. ↑ If the Führer only knew that! , at Milena-Verlag
  4. ↑ John Dillinger : Uchronie. Unhappened story from ancient times to steampunk. Schöningh, Paderborn 2015, p. 143 ff
  5. ^ Günter K. Kodek: The chain of hearts remains closed. Members of the Austrian Masonic lodges 1945 to 1985. Löcker, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-85409-706-8 , p. 15 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Basil, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bazil, Otto Adam Franz (legal name until 1935); Hörmann, Markus (pseudonym); Schmall, Camill (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, publicist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH February 19, 1983
Place of death Vienna