Alfred Graf (Author)

Alfred Graf (born April 30, 1883 in Partenstein , † November 24, 1960 in Washington DC ) was a German writer , journalist and radio editor.

Life

Alfred Graf was born on April 30, 1883 in the Spessart village of Partenstein, not far from Lohr am Main , as the tenth child of the Protestant pastor couple August and Henriette Graf and baptized in the name of Alfred Georg Friedrich. His father, born on June 9, 1842, had been pastor in Partenstein and dean of the Waizenbach district since July 1, 1872 . At the end of February 1889 he and his family left Partenstein and on March 1, 1889, he was appointed pastor of St. Leonhard in Nuremberg . He justified the move with the better educational opportunities in a big city for his children. In his later work, Alfred Graf reports on a happy childhood and youth that he was able to spend with his siblings in the small Spessart village.

Graf attended grammar school in Nuremberg, then studied in Tübingen , Munich and Erlangen , and obtained his doctorate in Dr. phil in history. He undertook extensive trips to the classic destinations of the educated middle class at the time, such as Italy , Greece , Egypt and Palestine . At the First World War , he participated as a brigadier writer claims to be.

Graf married Johanna Zierlein on April 2, 1912. On March 16, 1913, the couple had their only child, Heinz. Until 1937 the family lived mostly in Nuremberg.

Graf worked as a freelance writer and became a member of the Pegnese Flower Order on October 18, 1912 . He was director of the Nuremberg Public Library and worked as a theater critic and features editor at the "Fränkischer Kurier". Graf managed the Nuremberg broadcasting station of Bayerischer Rundfunk , founded in 1924, until he was given a compulsory leave of absence in 1933. He owed this de facto professional ban to his persistent refusal to become a member of the NSDAP . Since the political situation in Germany did not change, but rather developed more and more radically, Graf decided to emigrate to Norway in 1937 together with his now married son Heinz, who was studying in Denmark . Both families ran a farm there near Oslo . Graf's grandson Erlend was born here on October 21, 1939. With the occupation of Norway by the Wehrmacht on April 9, 1940 (" Enterprise Weser Exercise "), the Grafs left their court and went to Sweden . In Stockholm efforts were made in vain to obtain a residence permit for the USA or Canada . After months of waiting, Graf finally received a travel visa for Panama so that the families could leave Stockholm in September 1940. This was followed by a trip halfway around the world via Leningrad , Moscow , Vladivostok , Korea and Japan before finally reaching the destination. Due to the temporary visa for Panama, the Grafs could only stay in Panama City from October 1940 to September 1941 . After receiving an unlimited visa for Ecuador , the move to Quito took place in September 1941.

In Quito, Graf was for several years the head of the cultural department of the Movimiento Alemán Pro Democracia y Libertad ( Movimiento for short ), founded in 1942 , the emigrant organization with the largest number of members, especially for people “who did not feel religiously or culturally connected to Judaism. [..] As in other countries, battles of direction took place in Ecuador based on the two most important associations of Latin American exile, the movement 'Free Germany' (Mexico) and The Other Germany (Buenos Aires). The disputes about the non-partisan nature of the association led in 1944 to the proponents of the affiliation to the Mexico direction setting up their own organization, the 'Free Germany' committee. "

After the end of the Second World War , both Graf families were able to immigrate to their actual destination, the USA, in June 1946. Via New York City and Yonkers , where the families lived until 1947, they moved to New Rochelle , which they lived in until 1954. One last move was to Takoma Park, Maryland .

Alfred Graf only returned to Germany once to settle personal matters. He died of a stroke in Washington DC on November 24, 1960. His wife died in Sarasota / Florida in 1976 . A few months later, his son also died. A small street on the outskirts of Nuremberg was named "Alfred-Graf-Weg".

Works

• The social and economic situation of the peasants in the Nuremberg area at the time of the Peasants' War, in the 56th yearbook of the "Historisches Verein für Mittelfranken", Nuremberg 1909
• School years. Experiences and judgments of well-known contemporaries (ed.), Berlin 1912
• Sancte Laurenti! The story of a Frankish village in the French era, 1916
• Lot from Philologism, 1921
• The Prophet (drama), 1921
• Poems, Nuremberg 1922
• Muh, the story of a cow, Nuremberg 1922
• From the love of overload. The heavenly and earthly love of the nun Christina Ebnerin von Engelthal, Nuremberg 1922
• King Frog, 1924
• Life player, 1924
• What Bubi wants to be (with Hans Dorner), 1925
• Rumtumtibum, the great Windsheimer Weibersturm, 1925
• The Twelve Rough Nights, Nuremberg 1955
• The house in the gate, Nuremberg 1963

literature

• Maria-Luise Kreuter: Where is Ecuador located? Exile in an unknown country 1938 to the end of the 1950s , Metropol, Berlin, 1975, ISBN 3-926893-27-3 .
• Maria-Luise Kreuter: Ecuador , in: Claus-Dieter Krohn, Patrik von zur Mühlen, Gerhard Paul, Lutz Winkler (eds.): Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration 1933–1945 . Special edition, 2nd, unchanged edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-21999-5 , pp. 208-212.

Web links

• History workshop Partenstein ( Memento from October 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Literature by and about Alfred Graf in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Graf (Alfred), "curriculum vitae", in Graf (Alfred), The social and economic situation of the peasants in the Nuremberg area at the time of the Peasant War , Nuremberg: Stich, 1908, p. 42
2. ↑ Maria-Luise Kreuter: Where is Ecuador located? , P. 231
3. ^ Maria-Luise Kreuter: Ecuador , p. 211