Alfred Kantorowicz

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Alfred Kantorowicz (born August 12, 1899 in Berlin ; † March 27, 1979 in Hamburg ) was a German lawyer , writer , journalist and literary scholar of Jewish origin. He also published under the pseudonym Helmuth Campe .

Signature, 1967

Kantorowicz was editor of the Vossische Zeitung before 1933 , was active in journalism against the emerging National Socialism, joined the KPD in 1931 and had to flee to France from the Nazis in 1933. He continued to fight against National Socialism, published articles in magazines, worked on the Braunbuch in 1933, and became General Secretary of the new " Protection Association of German Writers Abroad". He founded the " German Freedom Library " and fought against the Franco regime in the Spanish Civil War . In 1941 Kantorowicz was able to flee from the Nazis to the USA. In 1946 he returned to Germany and founded the journal Ost und West in Berlin . Contributions to cultural and political questions of the time . After they were hired, he joined the SED in the GDR and became a professor of new German literature at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Here he made a name for himself as a researcher of exile literature and editor of the works of Heinrich Mann (12 vols., 1951–56). In 1957 he fled to the Federal Republic of Germany from the threat of arrest. In 1971 he published his book “Exil in Frankreich. Oddities and Memories ”.

Life

Career and youth

Kantorowicz grew up in Berlin in an areligious Jewish merchant family. Immediately after graduating from secondary school in Berlin-Lichterfelde at the age of 17, he volunteered for service in the First World War . After the end of the war he returned home wounded and received the Iron Cross for his services .

He began his law studies in Berlin and then went first to Freiburg, then to Erlangen. During this time he got to know people to whom he remained connected for part of his (or their) whole life, including Lion Feuchtwanger and Ernst Bloch . In 1923 Kantorowicz wrote his legal doctoral thesis on aspects of Zionism under international law , because he wanted to fly the flag in times of increasingly rabid anti- Semitism . The years from 1924 to 1929 were the time that he later looked back on as "the good old days" of his generation - when the new republic had consolidated and people indulged in the new zeitgeist with enthusiasm.

Memorial plaque for Alfred Kantorowicz at the house at Kreuznacher Strasse 48 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

After completing his studies, he became a journalist and wrote for various left-wing to liberal papers in Berlin. From 1928 to 1929 he was a cultural correspondent for the Vossische Zeitung and for the Ullstein press in Paris. Kurt Tucholsky had already held his position there and Kantorowicz was followed by Arthur Koestler . Kantorowicz was actually an individualist, he saw himself as a writer and was quite inclined to certain bourgeois-elitist tendencies. Nevertheless, under the impression of the trial of Carl von Ossietzky, he joined the KPD in 1931 , because he was convinced that this party was the only one that was really uncompromising and true to principles against the ever-increasing National Socialism .

In the years to come he lived and worked in the legendary “artist's block ” on Laubenheimer Platz (today's Ludwig-Barnay-Platz) in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . He later called this period "an honorable chapter in the resistance of free, independent spirits against violent dictatorship - with a twofold tragic outcome: after 1933 and after 1945". The artists' block fought against the National Socialists with all means, including violent means.

Time in exile

Resistance and the Spanish Civil War

In 1933 Kantorowicz left Berlin and Germany immediately after Hitler came to power - until the end of his life he was proud to have been one of the first hundred expatriates by the National Socialists. The first stop was Paris, where Frieda Ebenhoech (1905–1969) followed him in March 1933. She was an actress and worked in exile as an interpreter and journalist. They married in 1940.

The German émigrés kept in close contact with one another and tried to agree on a common strategy according to which one wanted to proceed against the Hitler regime, as far as this was possible from exile. Kantorowicz was involved as a co-founder of the Association for Protection of German Writers in Exile and published the titles In our camp is Germany and Germany, occupied by the enemy (1936).

German Liberty Library

Memorial plaque for the German and Austrian refugees in Sanary-sur-Mer , among them Alfred Kantorowicz

On the first anniversary of the book burning in Germany in 1933 , May 10, 1934, Kantorowicz founded a "library of burned books" ( German Freedom Library ) in Paris , which was opened by Alfred Kerr and Egon Erwin Kisch . Heinrich Mann held the keynote speech . B. Maximilian Scheer , Rudolf Leonhard and Hellmuth von Gerlach . What was forbidden and burned in Germany was collected all over the world, and on the opening day the Liberty Library already had over 11,000 volumes. Kantorowicz wrote in the foreword to the anthology "Verboten und burnt" (1947) on the burning of books:

“It was not a 'spontaneous act' by an unreasonable crowd, but a well-considered and carefully organized event of National Socialist state reason. Just as the Reichstag arson foundation on February 28, 1933 the beacon of terror against all anti-fascists, the boycott of the Jews on April 1, 1933 the start of the pogroms, the dissolution and robbery of the unions on May 2, 1933 the proclamation of social oppression, so they were Autodafés of May 10th the visible beginning of the officially decreed and terrorist means of de-spiritualisation and barbarization of Germany. "

The German Freedom Library was destroyed after the German troops marched into Paris.

Even the very first period of this exile in Paris was marked by friction with the KPD leadership, and Kantorowicz was not the only one who thought of jumping off at this time. He was friends with Heinrich Mann and was therefore commissioned by the party to win him over to head a government in exile as president. He circulated Mann's comment on Walter Ulbricht : “You see, I cannot sit down at a table with a man who suddenly claims that the table we are sitting at is not a table but a duck pond and who wants to force me to to agree. "

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , however, made all “internal” contradictions seem unimportant, and Kantorowicz joined the International Brigades , along with about five thousand Germans and twenty thousand other volunteers from the rest of Europe and the USA . There he worked as a member of the Chapayev battalion , also as editor of the newspaper Le Volontaire de la Liberté of the Interbrigades. He described his experiences in this war in the Spanish war diary . The Soviet Union and Mexico were the only foreign powers that gave concrete support to the Spanish republicans against Franco and his allies Hitler and Mussolini.

Kantorowicz first returned to Paris in 1938. His wife Friedel provided part of the livelihood for the two of them by working as a typist while he hoped to get back to writing. Like other exiles, Kantorowicz was supported by the United States' Association of Writers through the mediation of Thomas Mann . Moreover, showed Ernest Hemingway extremely generous. Kantorowicz and his wife saw the beginning of the Second World War in the south of France. Like other exiled Germans in France, they were interned after the outbreak of war, including in Les Milles , but were able to flee to Marseille in June 1940. From there he managed to escape to the USA in 1941 on board the ship Capitaine Paul Lemerle hired by the Emergency Rescue Committee .

Alfred Kantorowicz stayed in New York and found a job with the broadcaster CBS . His job was to monitor and evaluate the so-called enemy transmitters .

In the DDR

At the end of the war, he and his wife returned to Germany at the end of 1946 - to the supposedly better half, the Soviet occupation zone , where the couple separated but continued to work together. In 1947 he also joined the SED .

East and West

As early as July 1947, the first issue of Ost und West appeared , a literary magazine that Kantorowicz edited with Friedel's editorial assistance and in which he tried to mediate the two camps. Authors from all camps appear in the tables of contents. In addition to mediating between the post-war camps, he also wanted to introduce the Germans to worlds of thought that had remained closed to them during the twelve years of the dictatorship. This idealistic project lasted for 30 numbers, then it was discontinued in December 1949 under pressure from party leaders. 1950 Kantorowicz received the chair for modern German literature at the Humboldt University . He later became director of the German Institute, where Hermann Kant was temporarily his assistant, and head of the department for German studies and head of the Heinrich Mann Archive at the German Academy of the Arts .

He married Seka von Achenbach, but it did not last long.

For a time he lived in a kind of "internal emigration" in the GDR, but on June 17, 1953 the pressure to conform began to increase, a development that increased when Soviet troops marched into Hungary in November 1956. In addition, there had been show trials in many Warsaw Pact states , and there were many indications that the SED was planning something similar in East Germany, preferably against emigrants who had spent the war years in the West. Kantorowicz received information that he, too, had been chosen as a victim and fled to West Berlin in August 1957.

Kantorowicz's library contained around 3,500 volumes, including 44 books from his summer home in Bansin . They were expropriated in 1957 and handed over to the German State Library . Until 2010 the stock was stored unprocessed in 62 boxes. Finally, it was cataloged by the Historical Prints Department of the Berlin State Library and made publicly accessible.

Life in the west

Once in the West, his problems did not end. He was able to publish and was interviewed, and acclamations were not required. However, he had to go to the Federal Administrative Court in a nine-year process in order to be awarded a refugee ID and the associated pension entitlements. He was accused of having been privileged in the GDR and still being close to communism. Until the end of his life, Kantorowicz strictly refused to part with the left.

Grave of Alfred Kantorowicz , Ohlsdorf cemetery

During the 1960s, reviewers of his books often repeated the question “why the penny fell so late in his case”, a question that Ludwig Marcuse first asked in his 1959 review of the German Diary . Kantorowicz recognized the GDR regime early on, but he could never bring himself to express something that looked remotely like treason - neither in a thing nor in a person. It was also very important to him never to express himself by name about those involved if they were still living in the GDR, for example, in order not to harm them.

In 1965 Kantorowicz married the professor for fashion design Ingrid Kantorowicz , b. Cutter.

In 1969, the year of his 70th birthday, Kantorowicz received the Thomas Dehler Prize from the Federal Ministry for all-German issues . This award ceremony marked the beginning of a late rehabilitation. Kantorowicz published numerous books until his death. In 1999 he was honored with an exhibition by the Hamburg State and University Library on the occasion of his 100th birthday. His literary estate is also stored there.

Alfred Kantorowicz's grave is located in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, grid square H 8 (north of Bergstrasse ).

Works

  • 1951: Play: The Allies UA. Deutsches Theater Berlin - Kammerspiele (Director: Wolfgang Heinz )
  • with Richard Drews: Forbidden and Burned. German literature suppressed for 12 years . Ullstein / Kindler, Berlin / Munich 1947, p. 143 (New edition as paperback by Kindler 1983, ISBN 3-463-00860-2 , with a foreword by Helmut Kindler and an afterword by Walter Jens ).
  • Portraits. German fates . Chronos-Verlag GmbH, Berlin 1947.
  • Seeking youth. Correspondence with young people, initiated by a letter from Thomas Mann . Alfred Kantorowicz Verlag, Berlin 1949.
  • Politics and literature in exile. German-speaking writers in the fight against National Socialism . Christians, Hamburg 1978, ISBN 3-7672-0546-7 .
  • Ursula Büttner , Angelika Voss (ed.): Night books. Records in French exile. 1935 to 1939. Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-7672-1247-1 .
  • Spanish War Diary . With a new foreword by the author and an appendix to previously unpublished documents and letters. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-25175-3 (library of burned books as "Fischer pocket book number 5175", licensed edition of Konkret-Literaturverlag , Hamburg).
  • Chapayev , the battalion of the 21 [twenty-one] nations. Imprenta Colectiva Torrent, Madrid 1938.
  • Barbara Baerns (Ed.): East and West . Contributions to cultural and political questions of the time. Athenaeum, Bodenheim 1985, ISBN 3-7610-9400-0 (reprint in five volumes).
  • German diary . Part 1 and 2, 1959 and 1961. Kindler Verlag, Munich (Reprint ed. Andreas W. Mytze: Verlag Klaus Guhl, Berlin 1978/1979 and Verlag Europäische Ideen, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-921572-51-7 , ISBN 3- 921572-56-8 ).

literature

  • Heinz-Joachim Heydorn (Ed.): Guard in no man's land. For Alfred Kantorowicz's 70th birthday. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1969.
  • Ursula Schurig: Alfred Kantorowicz. Inlet Jürgen Rühle . Edited by the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg . With a bibliography by Alfred Kantorowicz, a review by A. K and a b / w portrait, 70 pages, Hans Christians, Hamburg 1969 (Hamburger Bibliographien , 4) ISBN 3937038426 .
  • Wolfgang Abendroth Ed .: In memoriam Alfred Kantorowicz. European Ideas, Berlin 1979 (European Ideas, 44)
  • Ralph Giordano : In memoriam Alfred Kantorowicz. Funeral speech given on April 4, 1979 in the Hamburg crematorium. In: I'm nailed to this land. Speeches and essays about the German past and present. Knaur-TB 80024, Droemer Knaur, Munich 1994 ISBN 3-426-80024-1 pp. 54-63.
  • Klaus Täubert (Ed.): Alfred Kantorowicz 100. Texts, certificates, documents, letters, poems. Zimmermann, Berlin 1999 (European Ideas, 116)
  • Wolfgang Gruner: “A fate that I shared with a great many others”. Alfred Kantorowicz - his life and time from 1899 to 1935. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2006 ISBN 3-89958-209-8 ( full text )
  • Michael Klein: The Alfred Kantorowicz Verlag. A forgotten post-war publishing house. Marginalia, 226. Quartus-Verlag, Bucha 2017 ISSN  0025-2948 pp. 49-68
  • Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Kantorowicz, Alfred . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2, 1. Saur, Munich 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 p. 593

Web links

Commons : Alfred Kantorowicz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Internationales Germanistenlexikon: 1800–1950. Volume 3: R-Z. de Gruyter, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-11-015485-4 , p. 885 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz: German diary. First part. Berlin 1978, p. 20.
  3. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz: German diary. First part. Berlin 1978, p. 31.
  4. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz: Exile in France. Bremen 1971, p. 9.
  5. ↑ Biographical information from the Handbook of the German Communists: [1]
  6. ↑ Scheer, Paris, p. 90.
  7. ↑ Scheer, Paris, p. 18. (so no references)
  8. ^ New edition Hamburg 1979.
  9. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz: Exile in France. Pp. 19f, 148.
  10. ^ Jobst Knigge: Hemingway and the Germans. Hamburg 2009, pp. 34–42.
  11. ^ Jobst Knigge: Hemingway and the Germans. Hamburg 2009, p. 235.
  12. ↑ Exile plan. A Franco-German remembrance project by Passage & Co. , 2013, p. 28
  13. ↑ Biographical information from the Handbook of the German Communists [2]
  14. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz: Why I broke with the Ulbricht regime. In: Der Tagesspiegel . August 23, 1957, p. 3.
  15. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz Provenienzwiki, accessed on October 20, 2018.
  16. ↑ Ludwig Marcuse: A Don Quixote, not a Cervantes. In: The time . April 10, 1959.
  17. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz: The outlaws of the republic. Berlin 1977, passim.
  18. ↑ Celebrity Graves
  19. ↑ Neue Zeit from June 5, 1951; P. 4.
  20. ↑ Available as a reprint in the 2019 edition
  21. ↑ Contribution. Hans Dietrich Sander , Ralph Giordano , Fritz J. Raddatz , Helmut Schmidt , Karola Bloch
personal data
SURNAME Kantorowicz, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Campe, Helmuth (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, journalist and literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1979
Place of death Hamburg