Armin Kesser

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Armin Artur Kesser (born September 21, 1906 in Zurich ; † August 30, 1965 there ) was a German-Swiss writer and publicist . He had a close, but not always carefree connection with the Mann family .

Life

Armin Kesser was born on September 21, 1906 as the son of the expressionist writer Hermann Kesser in Zurich. From 1921 to 1924 he attended the Odenwald School , where he made friends with his classmate Klaus Mann . Both were from the Swiss Critics luminary Edward Korrodi felt for literary talent. Kesser had already been able to submit a poetry sample in the Luzerner Tagblatt as a 16-year-old . What impressed Korrodi about Kesser was an article about Søren Kierkegaard in the Berlin magazine Der Neue Merkur. Monthly magazine for spiritual life . This was based on studies of the Danish philosopher that he had employed in Copenhagen between 1923 and 1924 . After changing school due to neglect of duty and then passing the Abitur in Konstanz , Kesser studied literature and philosophy in Frankfurt am Main in 1925 .

He wrote essays and reviews from 1927 to 1932 in the Frankfurter Zeitung , furthermore for the Weltbühne and the Linkenkurve ; from 1929 to 1932 also for Die Welt am Abend and from 1930 to 1933 for the Berliner Börsen-Courier . He worked for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung for many years from 1927 to 1965.

From 1927 Kesser worked as a journalist in Berlin , where he made the acquaintance of the publisher Ernst Rowohlt , the playwright Bertolt Brecht and his fellow critic Herbert Ihering . The latter was his almost fatherly colleague at the Börsen-Courier between 1930 and 1933, but years later he turned down Brecht from participating in his exile magazine Das Wort . From 1930 he also worked for the radio. After the National Socialists came to power at the beginning of March 1933, Kesser's Berlin apartment was searched by an SS command at night because he had made the new ruler suspicious of his articles in left-wing press organs. Kesser then moved to Switzerland, where he continued both his studies at the University of Zurich and his career as a journalist. His great role model was the French writer Denis Diderot .

The former classmate Klaus Mann, who also lived in exile , introduced Kesser to his father Thomas Mann , who had lived in Switzerland since 1933. This relationship broke up because of a review by Armin Kesser, which - only marked with "SS" - was published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of November 24, 1935 and had given Heinrich Mann's exile novel The Youth of King Henri Quatre negative. This journalistic criticism was interpreted not only by the Mann family, but also by other fellow writers, such as Joseph Roth , as an insult to German-language exile literature . Klaus Mann then broke off contact with Kesser.

Not only once did Armin Kesser distance himself from Expressionism and thus also from his father's style; rather, he preferred the New Objectivity and the language experiments of James Joyce , in whose novel Ulysses , according to Kesser's interpretation, the archetypal shines through. In 1941 he published a detailed obituary for Joyce. In the 1940s, Kesser and Robert Musil and his wife Martha, who also lived in exile in Switzerland, were friends for a long time . Martha Musil, who showed a great deal of understanding for Kesser, who was considered difficult, consulted him as a collaborator on the edition of the estate and a complete edition of her husband, who died in 1942. The works of Kafka , Musil, Joyce and André Gide had a formative effect on the aesthetics of the writer Armin Kesser.

In the mid-1930s, Kesser had dealt with behaviorism and started a related dissertation , which, however, was not completed. From 1942 to 1945 he held a position as an employee at the Institute for Applied Psychology at the ZAHW , where, among other things, he trained directors for emigrant camps set up in Switzerland. In the spring of 1943, Kesser then took on Swiss citizenship . He immediately fulfilled the so-called "federal obligations", that is, military service. He married in 1947, had a son in 1948 and a daughter in 1951. Towards the end of the 1950s he produced programs for Swiss television and from 1962 to 1964 he was the senior art editor at Swiss radio. In addition to his numerous feuilleton reviews, Kesser's poetry and prose works only appeared in newspapers and magazines, a large part of which, like his diaries from 1930 to 1964, remained unpublished.

The Akademie der Künste in Berlin received Armin Kesser's archive as a donation in March 2006 and presented it to the public on the occasion of his 100th birthday.

From the eulogy

“[He was] someone on whom opinions differed: scandal and yardstick. And so educator. It was the center of life for many individuals, it gave them faith in the value of life. And those who were able to withstand him gave him love. "

- Paul Nizon : eulogy

Works

Journalism

Kesser published numerous reviews and essays in the field of literature and art in newspapers and journals. For example, on May 19, 1951, he reviewed Thomas Mann's novel The Chosen One in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and paid tribute to the latter on his 60th birthday in the Luzerner Tagblatt . The more extensive work can be found in the monthly booklet of Merkur . In addition, he devoted himself to philosophical, social and psychological topics (here especially CG Jung ) and illuminated his profession, art criticism, in itself ( The abolished art criticism ).

Epic

  • The escape. Narrative in 6 sequels. In: Luzerner Tagblatt , 7. – 12. December 1924.
  • The arrival. Novella . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , 11./12. December 1927.
  • Little stories: the right to be hypocritical. The sick giant. Beliefs. Sequence of short prose texts. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , May 31, 1950.

Issues of letters and diary entries

  • Martha Musil: Correspondence with Armin Kesser and Philippe Jaccottet . 2 volumes. 1997.
  • Diary entries about Brecht 1930–1963. In: Sinn und Form , 6/2004, pp. 738–759.

Afterwords and accompanying texts

  • Walter Dräyer: Etruscan sculpture. 1960.
  • Walter Dräyer: Indian sculpture. 1960.
  • Ben Nicholson . Exhibition catalog 1962.
  • Walter Dräyer: Autun. Last Judgment and Resurrection. 1964.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Armin Kesser Archive is presented in the Academy of Arts. Event for the 100th birthday of Armin Kesser on September 15th. In: adk.de. Akademie der Künste, September 13, 2006, accessed April 5, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Armin Kesser Archive. Short biography / history of the institution. In: adk.de. Retrieved April 5, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Klaus Harpprecht : Thomas Mann. A biography . 1st edition. Rowohlt Verlag , Reinbek bei Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-498-02873-1 , 56th chapter. Misunderstandings, p. 867 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Martha Musil: Correspondence with Armin Kesser and Philippe Jaccottet . Ed .: Marie-Louise Roth, Annette Daigger, Martine von Walter (=  Musiliana . Volume 3 ). Peter Lang Verlag , Bern / Berlin / Frankfurt am Main / New York / Paris / Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-906759-37-7 , Armin Kesser. Biography, p. 377-382 .
  5. ↑ a b Erdmut Wizisla : Preliminary remark . In: Akademie der Künste (Ed.): Sense and Form . Contributions to the literature. 2004/6. Issue, November / December, November 2004, ISSN  0037-5756 , p. 738–741 (on Armin Kesser: diary entries about Brecht 1930–1963 ).
  6. ↑ a b c d e Beatrice von Matt : Between two fatherlands. For the 100th birthday of the essayist and critic Armin Kesser. In: nzz.ch. September 21, 2006, accessed April 5, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Peter de Mendelssohn (ed.): Thomas Mann. Diaries 1935–1936 . S. Fischer Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-10-048190-9 , p. 207 .
  8. ↑ Klaus Mann: "Dear and honored Uncle Heinrich" . Ed .: Inge Jens , Uwe Naumann . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-498-03237-1 , p. 124 .
  9. ↑ Madeleine Rietra, Rainer Joachim Siegel (ed.): "Every friendship with me is perishable". Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig. Correspondence 1927–1938 . Wallstein Verlag , Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0842-8 , pp. 285 .
  10. ↑ Klaus Mann: Letters and Answers. 1937-1949 . Ed .: Martin Gregor-Dellin (=  Klaus Mann: Letters and Answers . Volume 2 ). Edition Spangenberg in Ellermann Verlag , Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7707-0197-6 , p. 43 .
  11. ^ Martha Musil: Correspondence with Armin Kesser and Philippe Jaccottet . Ed .: Marie-Louise Roth, Annette Daigger, Martine von Walter (=  Musiliana . Volume 3 ). Peter Lang Verlag, Bern / Berlin / Frankfurt am Main / New York / Paris / Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-906759-37-7 , foreword to the correspondence between Martha Musil and Armin Kesser, p. 35–43 , here p. 39 .
  12. ↑ a b c Kesser, Armin. In: sinn-und-form.de. Academy of the Arts, accessed April 5, 2017 .
  13. ^ Paul Nizon : Paul Nizon's funeral speech for Armin Kesser. September 3, 1965 . In: Marie-Louise Roth, Annette Daigger, Martine von Walter (eds.): Correspondence with Armin Kesser and Philippe Jaccottet (=  Musiliana ). tape 3 . Peter Lang Verlag, Bern / Berlin / Frankfurt am Main / New York / Paris / Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-906759-37-7 , p. 383-384 , here p. 384 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kesser, Armin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Armin Artur Kesser (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss writer and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1965
Place of death Zurich