Antonín Jaroslav Liehm

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Antonín Jaroslav Liehm (born March 2, 1924 in Prague ) is a Czech author , publicist , translator , film scholar and literary scholar who lives in Paris .

Antonin J. Liehm founded the European cultural magazine Lettre International in Paris in 1984 . A French edition has not existed since 1993, but (2009) an Italian (since 1984), Romanian, Spanish and Hungarian edition in addition to the German edition. Antonin Liehm continues to head the Paris editorial office of the magazine (2009) .

biography

Antonin J. Liehm studied political science at Charles University in Prague. He successfully completed his studies in 1949.

Kulturní politika and Stalinism

As early as 1945 at the age of 21, Liehm founded the weekly magazine Kulturní politika (cultural policy) in Prague together with Emil František Burian , a famous theater maker . The newspaper was pro-communist and was eventually published by the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. The former Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Vladimír Clementis also got him a job in the press department of the Foreign Ministry in 1948. His sponsor was hanged in 1952 in the Stalinist Slansky trial . He himself was subsequently fired and the magazine was discontinued. In 1956, Liehm was hired again, only to be released four years later.

Litérarní noviny and Prague Spring

After being kicked out in 1960, he was able to join the literary magazine Literární noviny . The originally strictly Stalinist magazine had been liberalized since the political thaw in 1956. In 1960/61, Liehm and a group of fellow campaigners succeeded in calling up the old editor-in-chief and taking over the editing. Liehm described this time as follows: We made politics through culture, through theater, literature and philosophy. We were read as a political newspaper in the medium of culture. A cultural-political magazine, in the tradition of those newspapers aimed at the intelligentsia of the 1920s. The circulation rose to 130,000 copies. At the Czechoslovak journalists' congress from 22. – 23. April 1963 z. B. demanded Antonin Liehm to make the speeches of western politicians known to all readers and only afterwards to polemicize them. The magazine was one of the pioneers of the Prague Spring 1968, in which leading Czechoslovak communists sought a reform of the political system. Liehm's allies during this time were in particular Ludvík Vaculík , Milan Kundera , Jan Procházka , Pavel Kohout and Ivan Klíma . Some time after the abolition of censorship in the spring of 1968, Liehm and a group of his colleagues were given a building for the editorial team of the Literární noviny. There the group with Liehm as editor-in-chief was supposed to develop the Litérarní noviny as a daily newspaper . The start of the work was scheduled for September 15, 1968, the restart of the newspaper on the national holiday on October 28, 1968.

The crackdown on the Prague Spring and emigration

However, the entry of the Red Army tanks into Prague on August 21, 1968 stopped the Prague Spring.

In 1969, Liehm first fled to Paris. Even back then, Liehm wanted to create a European forum for intellectual debates based on the literary noviny model.

University teacher in USA and France

But since he could neither find a permanent job nor raise enough money, he went to the USA , where he taught film and “European culture” as a lecturer.

Only thirteen years later did he get a job at the University of Paris VII and later at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales .

Summer lectures and 150,000 words

Together with friends, Antonin Liehm published an approx. 800 machine-page almanac every year for Czech and Slovak literature that was not published in Czechoslovakia , regardless of whether the works were published in Germany or abroad, and regardless of whether they were the authors Dissident acted or not. He called this almanac summer lectures.

In addition, Antonin Liehm published the magazine “150,000 words”. The title is reminiscent of Ludvík Vaculík's text 2000 words from 1968. The magazine contained a selection of what Liehm considered the most interesting journalistic and journalistic confrontational texts from around the world. The work, which appears three times a year later, was systematically smuggled over the Iron Curtain .

In 1977 Antonin Liehm organized the Biennale of Resistance Culture (Biennale del Disseno) in Venice .

L76 and other foundation attempts

Around 1977 the German writers Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll offered him to make an East-West magazine. That was too tight for Liehm, he wanted an international magazine. Initially an agreement was reached and Liehm put together an international advisory board. But then the publisher told Liehm that Grass was of the opinion that the whole thing was getting too international and not German enough and unloaded him again, paying 100 dollars. The title L76 proposed by Liehm was retained. The magazine was later received.

As a result, he made several attempts to found a company, including one in Austria together with Martin Pollack , who later became the Central European correspondent for Spiegel , which, according to Liehm, almost worked.

1984: Liehm founds Lettre International

In the end, Lettre International was founded in Paris, in collaboration with Liehm's friend Paul Noirot , who ran the money-free magazine Politique aujourd'hui in a one-room office with a kitchen .

French lettre never made enough money to pay royalties to the authors and artists. Liehm worked as a lecturer during the day and the magazine was currently employing a student as an editorial secretary. The money was mainly spent on good translations of the international articles. The French edition was followed by the Italian edition in 1984.

Liehm describes the concept as follows: If we had a good text, be it German, American, Russian, then we looked for an environment for it. Other texts circling him comment, although they were not written specifically for it. I don't want to deny that this was born out of necessity, because we couldn't order any texts. We had to rely on making a collage based on wonderful text. Once the articles of an issue were finished, we looked for poetry, went to museums to look for suitable images. Our goal was to create a play of mirrors around a text.

For more information, see the article Lettre International .

Works

Books

  • Louis Aragon, Antonín J. Liehm: Cestující z imperiálu: román. Spisy (Louis Aragon) . SNKLU, 1962
  • Conversation on the Vltava. The struggle for the freedom of Czechoslovakia , DEA. Molden, Munich 1968.
  • Talks on the Vltava. About humane socialism. With the essay by Jean-Paul Sartre "Socialism that came out of the cold" . Translated from the Czech by Erich Bertleff, Kindler, Munich 1970
  • Trois générations: entretiens sur le phénomène culturel tchécoslovaque , Volume 15 from Collection Témoins, Gallimard, 1970
  • Josef Škvorecký , Gallimard, 1970
  • Antonín J. Liehm, 飯 島 周: 三 つ の 世代, み す ず 書房, 1970
  • The politics of culture , Grove Press, 1971
  • Closely watched films: the Czechoslovak experience , International Arts and Sciences Press, 1974, ISBN 978-0-608-17067-1
  • Le Passé présent , JC Lattès, 1974
  • Antonín J. Liehm, Miloš Forman : The Miloš Forman stories , International Arts and Sciences Press, 1975, ISBN 978-0-87332-051-1
  • Antonín J. Liehm, Karel Kosík : Letteratura e dissenso nell'Europa dell'Est. Il dissenso culturale. La biennale di Venezia, 1977
  • Mira Liehm, Antonín J. Liehm: Il Cinema nell'Europa dell'Est, 1960–1977: il cinema di Stato ei suoi artisti. Il Dissenso culturale , La biennale di Venezia, 1977
  • Henry Gabay, Antonín J. Liehm: Serghiej Paradjanov: testimonianze e documenti su l'opera e la vita. Il dissenso culturale. La Biennale di Venezia, 1977
  • Nocne rozmowy z Josefem Smrkovskim. Nowa umowa społeczna , Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1978
  • Josef Smrkovský, Antonín J. Liehm, Jan Teren: Nocne rozmowy z Josefem Smrkovskim: Nowa umowa społeczna / AJ Liehm , Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1978
  • Peter Kussi, Antonín J. Liehm: The Writing on the wall: an anthology of contemporary Czech literature , Karz-Cohl Pub., 1983
  • Robert Buchar, Antonin J. Liehm: Czech New Wave Filmmakers in Interviews , Mcfarland & Co Inc 2003, ISBN 978-0-7864-1720-9
  • Antonín J. Liehm, Aleksandar S. Ilić: Miloš Forman: događaji. Volume 5 of Prilozi za istoriju filma. Institut za film, 1987
  • Generace , Index, 1988
  • Antonín J. Liehm, Carsten Jensen, Hans Andersen, Jesper Hoffmeyer: Lettre internationale: et nyt Europa ?: en ny moral ?: et nyt Demokratie ?. [Registration] , Aarhus Festuge , 1992, ISBN 978-87-7483-285-0
  • Ostře sledované filmy: Československá zkušenost, Volume 16 by Knihovna Iluminace, Národní Filmový Archive, 2001, ISBN 978-80-7004-100-0

Translations

Liehm translated literary works from English , French , German and Russian into Czech . He translated many works by Louis Aragon , Robert Merle and Jean-Paul Sartre .

Honors

literature

  • Roman Léandre Schmidt: Lettre internationale: History of a European magazine . Paderborn: Fink, 2017 ISBN 978-3-7705-6051-6

See also

  • Frank Berberich , founder and editor-in-chief of the German edition of Lettre International

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Liehm, Antonin: Encyclopedia of the International - Sens Public. In: sens-public.org. November 27, 2007, accessed January 12, 2015 (French).
  2. ^ Lettera Internazionale. In: letterainternazionale.it. Retrieved January 12, 2015 .
  3. ↑ CEEOL - Lettre International - Romanian Edition. In: ceeol.com. October 17, 2006, accessed January 12, 2015 .
  4. ↑ RC - Revistas - Crítica de la Cultura - Letra Internacional. In: revistasculturales.com. Retrieved January 12, 2015 (Spanish).
  5. ^ Magyar Lettre Internationale. In: lettre.c3.hu. Retrieved January 12, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Saber sro: Antonín Liehm. In: pwf.cz. May 9, 2008, accessed January 12, 2015 (cz).
  7. ^ Wolfgang Schwarz: Brotherly divided. R. Oldenbourg, 2004, ISBN 978-3-486-57585-9 , p. 79 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  8. ↑ A World to Win - Resources - The Prague Spring - beginning of the end for Stalinism. In: aworldtowin.net. January 19, 1969, accessed January 12, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Source for this section: LEIPZIG BOOK PRICE FOR EUROPEAN UNDERSTANDING 1997 RECOGNITION PRIZE FOR ANTONIN J. LIEHM ( Memento of November 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file)
  10. ↑ Main source for the whole section: Liehm, Antonin: Enzyklopädist des Internationale - Sens Public. In: sens-public.org. Retrieved January 12, 2015 (French).
  11. ^ Liehm Antonín Jaroslav ( Memento of December 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: obecprekladatelu.cz
  12. ^ Antonin J. Liehm - The Prize Winner 1997 - Acknowledgment Prize ( Memento from November 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: leipzig.de
personal data
SURNAME Liehm, Antonín Jaroslav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Liehm, Antonin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech author and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague