Albert Theile

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Albert Theile and Toshihiko Katayama in Japan, 1940

Albert Theile (born July 3, 1904 in Dortmund-Hörde ; † March 14, 1986 in Bern ) was a German art historian , author , translator and journalist ; u. a. From 1943 to 1946 he was co-editor of the exile magazine t Deutsche Blätter , in 1958 co-founder of the cultural magazine Humboldt and from 1963 to 1982 editor-in-chief of the magazine Fikrun wa Fann (= thoughts and art ), which he was responsible for together with the orientalist Annemarie Schimmel .

Life

Origin, education and first professional experience

Albert Theile was the son of a brass caster and already in his youth undertook trips abroad, including to Egypt , in order to escape his strictly patriarchal parental home and because the Orient attracted him. After finishing school, Theile worked as a miner and beekeeper , but then caught up with his Abitur and studied newspaper science in Munich and Berlin . From 1926 to 1927 he gained his first journalistic experience as a freelance editor in Paris .

The magazine "Die Böttcherstraße"

In 1928 Albert Theile took over the editorial management of the international magazine Die Böttcherstraße as co-founder , whose topics were mainly culture, literature, art, music and international politics. The magazine was given the title after the street of the same name in Bremen's old town , which was threatened with decay in the 1920s and was repaired and redesigned by the art patron and founder of Kaffee HAG , Ludwig Roselius . Roselius had commissioned Bernhard Hoetger , a sculptor and architect also from Dortmund-Hörde, with the work . Albert Theile had met Roselius through Hoetger, and together they realized the idea of ​​the magazine. The Böttcherstraße was published between May 1928 and July 1930 in 14 editions and a circulation of 10,000 each.

Emigration and world tour

As an opponent of National Socialism , Albert Theile left Germany in 1933 and traveled to Paris . In the same year he set out from France on a two-year trip around the world, which took him by ship first to India and then to the Republic of China , Japan and the USA . A letter of recommendation from the French writer Romain Rolland made it easier for him to get in touch with writers and artistic circles. During the trip Albert Theile acquired in-depth knowledge of, among other things, Asian culture, as his 3-volume work, "The Art of Non-European Peoples", published in 1955, shows. He dedicated the second volume of this publication to the Japanese translators and writers Toshihiko Katayama (1898–1961) and Takeyama Michio (1903–1984), whom he had met on his travels.

In 1936, after returning from his world tour, Albert Theile emigrated to Norway . There he lived in Oslo until April 1940 . Forced to flee again by the invasion of German troops , Theile escaped to Sweden . He then fled via Russia , China and Japan to Santiago de Chile , where he arrived by ship in the Christmas days of 1940.

Journalistic work in exile: "Die Deutsche Blätter"

In 1942, Albert Theile founded the exile magazine “Deutsche Blätter - für ein Europäische Deutschland , gegen ein Germanes Europa” in neutral Chile together with Udo Rukser , a German lawyer and art collector who had fled Germany a year before him . The Deutsche Blätter developed into a mouthpiece for the non-partisan opposition to Hitler. The authors that Theile and Rukser were able to win for the magazine included prominent exiled writers and intellectuals such as B. Thomas Mann , Carl Zuckmayer , Albert Schweitzer and CG Jung . In addition to politics, literature was a focus of the magazine's content, especially the promotion of Latin American authors and their translation into German. The Deutsche Blätter also published texts by authors such as: B. Gabriela Mistral , Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges .

Return to Europe, work as an art historian, translator and journalist

In 1952 Albert Theile returned to Europe from exile and moved with his family to Unterägeri, Switzerland . For professional reasons, however, he continued to travel a lot and stayed abroad for long periods of time, e. B. in Rome, Mallorca and Chile. In the following years Theile emerged as a journalist, translator and editor of South American literature and poetry. Fascinated by the art of the world, he also wrote a series of books that dealt with the traditional cultures of the various continents. Albert Theiles was particularly successful in publishing. B. the volume "Art in Africa" ​​(1955), which has been translated into several languages.

The magazines "Humboldt" and "Fikrun wa Fann"

In addition to his freelance work for radio , for which he wrote articles for the Echo der Zeit show , Albert Theiles' particular goal was to conceive and design magazines. A symposium in Berlin, which was supposed to promote cultural exchange between Spanish and German-speaking writers, kicked off the founding of the magazine "Humboldt - Revista para el mundo ibérico" in 1960, which was published in German, Portuguese and Spanish. As with the publications for which Theile had previously worked, the main focus was on cultural and scientific topics. A particular aim of the magazine was the cultural dialogue between the Latin American and European world.

In 1963, just a few years after Humboldt was founded , another magazine was created with the help of Albert Theile, this time with the aim of building cultural bridges between German-speaking and Islamic countries. Her name was Fikrun wa Fann (= thoughts and art ). Albert Theile was its first editor-in-chief and in this position, together with the orientalist Annemarie Schimmel, significantly shaped the content and conceptual orientation of the publication until 1982.

Honored with the Friedrich Rückert Prize. Last years of life in Bern

In 1971 Albert Theile received the Friedrich Rückert Prize in recognition of his numerous translations and anthologies by writers from various cultures. In addition to Latin American and Japanese poets, he had also translated works by Scandinavian epic poets, gaucho literature and poetry by the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Peru . In 1974 Albert Theile moved to Bern . Until recently he worked as an author for magazines, which besides traveling were a particularly important part of his life.

When Albert Theile died in 1986, he was not only an experienced journalist and translator, but also “a man with wide-ranging interests, an imaginative and fascinating storyteller, a person capable of enthusiasm to the end, who came up with his ideas in ever new attempts at cross-border cultural studies I was looking for ”, wrote Annemarie Schimmel in her obituary.

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • The Böttcherstrasse. Idea and design. Angelsachsen-Verlag, Bremen 1930.
  • The art of the non-European peoples. 1. Volume: The art of primitive peoples. The art of America. 2nd volume: The art of America, India and of Islam. Volume 3: The Art of the Far East . Standard-Verlag, Hamburg 1955.
  • Swan in the Shadow - Latin American Poetry of Today. (Transmission and introduction) German house library; Hamburg / Berlin 1955.
  • Under the Southern Cross. Stories from Central and South America. Manesse Verlag, Zurich 1956. (New edition: 1988, ISBN 3-7175-1412-1 )
  • Gabriela Mistral: Poems. Editor and translator, with the assistance of Heinz Müller and Gisela Pape. Luchterhand Verlag, 1958.
  • Spanish storytellers from the 14th to 17th centuries: - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, Tiro de Molina, Alonso de Castillo Solorzano. Manesse Verlag, Zurich 1958.
  • Quaking heart of the pampas. Gaucho seal. Publishing house Die Arche, Zurich 1959.
  • Bernhard Hoetger. Monographs on Rhenish-Westphalian contemporary art. Volume 17. Bongers Verlag, Recklinghausen 1960.
  • Art in africa. Chr.Belser Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-7630-1802-6 .
  • The earth meets. Indian poetry from southern America . Publishing house Die Arche, Zurich 1962.
  • Latin America told. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Hamburg 1962.

Secondary literature

  • Martin Schumacher: "As Germans, we didn't want to stand aside" - the editors of the "Deutsche Blätter" in Santiago de Chile, Udo Rukser (1892–1971) and Albert Theile (1904–1986). In: Bastian Hein, Manfred Kittel, Horst Möller (eds.): Faces of Democracy. Portraits of contemporary German history. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71512-5 , pp. 98-108.
  • Annemarie Schimmel: In memory of Albert Theile, a great literary mediator. In: Yearbook of the Rückert Society. 10, 1996, pp. 185-194.
  • Albert Theile: Acceptance speech on the occasion of the Friedrich Rückert Prize 1971 in Schweinfurt. In: Yearbook of the Rückert Society. 10, 1996, pp. 170-184.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Acceptance speech by Albert Theile on the occasion of the award of the Friedrich Rückert Prize 1971 in Schweinfurt, yearbook of the Rückert Society EV, Ergon Verlag, 1996, p. 172.
  2. ↑ Daniel Schreiber: Die Böttcherstraße - nationalistic educational trail and “international magazine”. In: HKMB-news, 1/2006 (Journal of the Working Group of Art and Museum Libraries, Volume 12), pp. 10–13. Web link: archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de .
  3. ↑ Albert Theile: The international magazine "Die Böttcherstraße": memories. In: Börsenblatt for the German book trade. Frankfurt am Main, 14.1958, pp. 817-821.
  4. ↑ Cf .: Hubert Sontheim: Udo Rukser which Oberbühlhof and the "German music". (PDF, 515 kB) Lecture given by Hubert Sontheim at the Oberbühlhof on August 4, 2017 on the estate of the von Magnis in rails. In: forum-allmende.de. August 4, 2017, p. 38ff , accessed on October 6, 2018 .
  5. ^ Klaus Goebel: Thomas Mann's correspondence with the German papers in Santiago de Chile. (PDF, 20 kB) In: exil-archiv.de. February 14, 2013, accessed October 6, 2018 .
  6. ^ Albert Theile: Art in Africa . Chr.Belser Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-7630-1802-6 .
  7. ↑ See: About Fikrun wa Fann. In: goethe.de. Goethe-Institut, accessed on October 6, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Theile, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian, author, translator and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund-Hörde
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1986
Place of death Bern