Alfred Polgar

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Alfred Polgar (born October 17, 1873 in Vienna , † April 24, 1955 in Zurich ; officially Alfred Polak until 1914 ; pseudonym Archibald Douglas , LA Terne ) was an Austrian writer , aphorist , critic and translator. He is one of the most famous authors of Viennese modernism .

life and work

Alfred Polgar was born in the 2nd district of Vienna, Leopoldstadt , as the youngest of three children of assimilated Jews. The parents, Josef and Henriette Polak, geb. Steiner, ran a piano school. After high school and business school, Polgar became an editor at the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung in 1895 , where he initially worked as a court reporter and parliamentary reporter . He later worked there as an editor in the features section .

From 1905 Polgar wrote regularly for Siegfried Jacobsohn's magazine Die Schaubühne . He also worked as a writer for cabaret . For the Cabaret Fledermaus he wrote the successful humorous piece Goethe together with Egon Friedell . A grotesque in two pictures (1908), in which literary lessons in schools are parodied by the fact that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe appears for a literary exam about Goethe's life and work - and fails. In 1908, Polgar's first book The Source of Evil was published . The place where Polgar frequented at that time was Café Central , where he could be found in the company of Peter Altenberg , Anton Kuh , Adolf Loos and Egon Friedell and where he found plenty of material for his astute observations and analyzes.

Polgar also worked as an editor and translator of plays , for example by Nestroy , and in 1913 translated Ferenc Molnár's play Liliom from Hungarian into German. He moved the plot to the Vienna Prater and added a prologue , which paved the way for the hitherto unsuccessful play with a triumphant premiere on February 28, 1913 in the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna.

On September 23, 1914, he officially changed his name from Polak to Polgar ( Hungarian polgár = German citizen ).

During the First World War , Polgar worked in the war archive, but continued to write for newspapers, including the German-language Hungarian newspaper Pester Lloyd .

After the end of the war he became head of the feature pages of the newspaper Der Neue Tag . He also worked on Stefan Großmann's Das Tage-Buch . From 1921 he wrote the Böse Buben Journal together with Egon Friedell . In the 1920s, Polgar lived mostly in Berlin. Many of his articles appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt and the Prager Tagblatt during this time . In October 1929 he married Elise Loewy, born in Vienna. Müller.

After the seizure of power by the Nazi regime was responsible for the "Austrian Jews and left-liberal anti-fascists Polgar in Nazi Germany no place". At the beginning of March 1933 he fled to Prague. On May 10, 1933, his books were burned . Later he went to Vienna. In 1937/38 he wrote about Marlene Dietrich ; Ulrich Weinzierl found the text in New York in 1984, and it appeared in print in 2015. When the “ Anschluss ” in March 1938, Polgar and his wife were in Zurich. Because he could not get a work permit there, they fled to Paris. There he joined the League for Spiritual Austria ( Ligue de l'Autriche Vivante ), which also included Fritz Brügel , Gina Kaus , EA Rheinhardt , Joseph Roth and Franz Werfel .

After the Germans invaded France in June 1940, he fled to Marseille , from where in October 1940, with the help of the Emergency Rescue Committee, he managed to escape via the Pyrenees to Spain and via Lisbon to emigrate to the USA (other notable passengers on this voyage : see Erna Sailer ).

In Hollywood he worked as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . From 1943 he lived in New York, where he and his wife received American citizenship . He wrote for newspapers in exile such as Aufbau , and American magazines such as Time and Panorama in Buenos Aires .

In 1949 they returned to Europe and settled in Zurich, and Polgar also published again for German-language newspapers. He was buried in the Sihlfeld cemetery in Zurich.

Alfred Polgar's grave, Sihlfeld cemetery , Zurich

Awards

  • 1951: Prize of the City of Vienna for Journalism
  • In 1965, Polgarstrasse in the 22nd district of Vienna, Donaustadt , was named after him.
  • The school located in this street (Bundesgymnasium, Bundesrealgymnasium, Bundesoberstufenrealgymnasium) was named Polgargymnasium .

Works (selection)

  • The Source of Evil and Other Stories . Publishing house for literature and art, Munich 1908.
  • Movement is everything. Novellas and sketches . Literary establishment Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt am Main 1909.
  • Job. A volume of short stories . Albert Langen, Munich 1912.
  • Franz Molnar : Liliom. Suburban legend in 7 pictures and a scenic prologue . Translation from Hungarian and arrangement of the piece. German-Austrian Vlg., Vienna / Leipzig 1912.
  • Little time . Fritz Gurlitt, Berlin 1919.
  • Max Pallenberg . Erich Reiss Verlag, Berlin 1921.
  • Yesterday and today . R. Kaemmerer, Dresden 1922.
  • Orchestra from above . E. Rowohlt, Berlin 1926: This volume of new sketches has been increased by a few pieces taken from older books by the author.
  • Written in the margin . E. Rowohlt, Berlin 1926.
  • Yes and No (four volumes). E. Rowohlt, Berlin 1926/27.
  • I am a witness . E. Rowohlt, Berlin 1927.
  • Black on white . E. Rowohlt, Berlin 1929.
  • Hinterland . E. Rowohlt; Berlin 1929.
  • On this occasion . E. Rowohlt, Berlin 1930.
  • Views . Rowohlt, Berlin 1933.
  • In the meantime . Allert de Lange, Amsterdam 1935.
  • Second hand . Humanitas-Verlag, Zurich 1937.
  • Critic's Handbook . Oprecht, Zurich 1938.
  • Stories with no morals . Oprecht, Zurich 1943.
  • On the other hand . Querido, Amsterdam 1948.
  • Encounter in the twilight . Blanvalet, Berlin 1951.
  • Viewpoints . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1953.
  • Window seat . Rowohlt, Berlin 1959.
  • In passing . Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main 1960.
  • Viewed in the light . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1970; compiled by Bernt Richter.
  • The mission of the balloon. Sketches and considerations . People and World, Berlin 1975.
  • Pocket mirror . With an afterword by Ulrich Weinzierl under the title Alfred Polgar in Exile. Löcker, Vienna 1979, ISBN 978-3-85409-006-9 .
  • Locking seat . Löcker, Vienna 1980.
  • Dear friend! Signs of life from abroad . Zsolnay, Vienna, Hamburg 1981.
  • Small fonts . Edited by Marcel Reich-Ranicki and Ulrich Weinzierl, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1982–1986.
    • Licensed edition, Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt a. M., 1983 to 1988. List of the six individually published volumes: Musterung , Kreis , Irrlicht , Literatur , Theater I , Theater II .
  • Harry Rowohlt (Ed.): Alfred Polgar. The big reader . Kein & Aber, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-0369-5116-4 .
  • Marlene - picture of a famous contemporary . Zsolnay, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-552-05721-0 (essay written 1937/1938, discovered in 1984 in the estate, published posthumously in 2015).

literature

  • Andreas Nentwich: Alfred Polgar. Life in Pictures . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-422-07154-4 .
  • Eva Philippoff: Alfred Polgar. A moral chronicler of his time . Minerva, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-597-10250-6 .
  • Ulrich Weinzierl : Alfred Polgar. A biography . Löcker, Vienna 1985. Various new editions, 2005 again Löcker Vienna, ISBN 3-85409-423-X . (replaced Weinzierl's work He was a witness. Alfred Polgar. A life between journalism and literature, Löcker & Wögenstein, Vienna 1978, ISBN 3-85392-018-7 )
  • Evelyne Polt-Heinzl, Sigurd Paul Scheichl (ed.): The understatement par excellence. Studies on Alfred Polgar . Löcker, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-85409-451-7 .
  • Marcel Reich-Ranicki : Alfred Polgar - The quiet master. In: The Lawyers of Literature. DVA, Stuttgart 1994. Als Tb dtv, Munich 1996, pp. 167-185.

Lexica entries

Web links

Wikiquote: Alfred Polgar  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harry Rowohlt : Alfred Polgar: Lots of good reviews. Review by Helmut Sturm , June 20, 2006. Accessed July 29, 2018.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart : The hungry war. Injured souls , with e. Zsfss. in engl. Language, in: Heidelberg University: Ruperto Carola, 4 (2014) pp. 76–83, online resource
  3. ↑ a b Ulrich Weinzierl:  Polgar, Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 598-600 ( digitized version ).
  4. ↑ Karin Ploog (2015): ... When the notes learned to run ... Volume 1. 2 , p. 309 ( online )
  5. ^ Review by Günter Kaindlstorfer in Deutschlandradio Kultur on January 25, 2015: Homage from the 30s .
personal data
SURNAME Polgar, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Polak, Alfred (real name); Douglas, Archibald (pseudonym); Terne, LA (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1955
Place of death Zurich