Alexander Bessmertny

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Alexander Bessmertny (born March 20, 1888 in St. Petersburg , Russian Empire ; died August 22, 1943 in Berlin-Moabit ; executed) was a German writer .

biography

Alexander Bessmertny was born in Russia as the son of the German writer Marie Bessmertny . He studied law at the Universities of Freiburg, Munich and Kiel. After graduating as Dr. jur. Bessmertny worked as a critic and journalist.

After the First World War he lived as a freelance writer in Berlin . In 1933 he had to emigrate as a Jew. He moved to France and later to Prague, where he was denounced in 1939 and arrested by the Gestapo .

The "Ten Sonnets"

Bessmertny is considered to be the author of the (pornographic) "Ten Sonnets", which have been attributed to the romantic poet Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) since they were first printed (1912?). The only witness for the attribution to Bessmertny is the German literary scholar Paul Englisch, who made this in five places (in three publications) in 1929 and 1931 with different, sometimes deviating formulations. First in the 2nd volume of "Bildlexions der Erotik" (1929) twice, namely under the keywords "Name abuse" and "Franz Blei"; then in the 2nd volume of his history of erotic literature "Maze of eroticism"; and finally, cited by himself as the source in the last-mentioned volume, in volume IX (= supplementary volume, published 1929, published by Paul Englisch) of the so-called Hayn / Gotendorf (there p. 530).

If one summarizes the statements of P. Englisch, they essentially contain three assertions: 1. The first editor of the "Ten Sonnets" is Franz Blei; he made a "cute mystification" by ascribing the sonnets to Friedrich Schlegel. 2. The "Ten Sonnets" in the "Vomit Seal" collection were printed for the first time in 1912. 3. The real author is Alexander Bessmertny. As far as English’s statements can be verified, they only apply in part. The mentioned collection from 1912 actually contains the "Ten Sonnets", and it also contains (there p. 35) the attribution to Schlegel. But the language of the "Ten Sonnets" is more that of the time around 1900 than that of the time around 1800, as any connoisseur will soon notice. In this respect, linguistic plausibility speaks more for 1912 than for a time before 1829. Numerous later editions of the text can be proven (e.g. from 1926 and 1930), but no earlier.

Ultimately, however, the authorship of the sonnets must still be considered unclear. The "Vomit Seal" collection was by no means published by Franz Blei, but is widely regarded as the work of the well-known bibliophile and literary historian Carl Georg von Maassen (1880–1940). The Schlegel attribution is likely to come from this - and ultimately perhaps also the "Ten Sonnets" itself. Maassen himself published grotesque satirical poems in "Simplizissimus" around 1910 (cf. NDB) and founded it (together with Franz Blei, among others !) the Society of Munich Bibliophiles (1907–1913) - both would fit sonnets and attribution. It is possible that Maassen tried out this fictional historical vignette in "Vomit Siegel", which he continued a little later (in his "Grundgescheuten Antiquarius", 1920–1923) with real romantic authors.

It also remains unclear why HL Arnold, who also prints the ten sonnets in his collection "Dein Leib ist mein Gedicht" (Bern et al. 1970), gives as a source: "From ten sonnets, o. O. o. J. (1880) "(P. 208). When asked by phone (January 2011) Arnold insists that this information was NOT a new mystification on his part, but that this was the information about a corresponding private print of the time. The details are no longer remembered. If the year 1880 is correct, Bessmertny, who was only born in 1888, CANNOT be the author of the ten sonnets, and of course not Maassen either. The latter, however, was born in 1880 - perhaps this led to a mix-up.- Incidentally, Arnold writes in the preliminary remark of his above-mentioned collection from 1970 (p. 7) that "others" (he does not give concrete evidence) wrote the sonnets to the writer Otto Julius Bierbaum (1865-1910) too. If Arnold really had a print of the sonnets from 1880 before him, then it must have been clear to him that at least this attribution could hardly have been correct, since Bierbaum was only 15 years old at the time. Apart from that, however, an attribution to Bierbaum would have a lot of plausibility for itself, because he left behind. a. a broad lyrical and narrative oeuvre that is largely determined by references to older models and is known for its occasional "slippery".

Whoever ultimately was the author of the "Ten Sonnets" - Friedrich Schlegel was almost certainly not. Whether Franz Blei, Alexander Bessmertny, Carl Georg von Maassen, Otto Julius Bierbaum or perhaps someone else from the broad "private printing scene" after 1900 - what Arnold writes in the preface mentioned above is always true: "the philological meticulousness of the later publication" "an ironic and humorous parody of the positivist text editions of the later 19th century." (P. 7)

Works

  • "Ten Sonnets" (1912), authorship unclear!
  • "At the end" / "Accident" (In: Die Aktion, 1913, Sp. 392 and 825; see: Hartmut Geerken (Hrsg.): I call you sweet pig the plague of Schmargendorf. Erotic poems of Expressionism. Munich: btb 2006)
  • "Gottfried Christoph Beireis". In: Yearbook of the Kippenberg Collection 9 (1931), pp. 96–178. Facsimile at the Goethezeitportal, s. link
  • The Atlantis riddle . Leipzig: Voigtländer, 1932.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maze of Eroticism , Leipzig 1931; P. 190)
personal data
SURNAME Bessmertny, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH August 22, 1943
Place of death Berlin-Moabit