Arnolt Bronnen

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Arnolt Bronnen (born August 19, 1895 in Vienna as Arnold Bronner ; † October 12, 1959 in East Berlin ), with the pseudonym AH Schelle-Noetzel , was an Austrian writer, playwright and director.

Life

1895-1919

Arnolt Bronnen's grave in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin

Arnold Bronner was born as the son of Martha Bronner, b. Schelle, and Ferdinand Bronner , writers and high school teacher, where he later denied the descent from his legal father. He grew up in Jägerndorf and Vienna. In 1913 he took his high school diploma there and then enrolled at the University of Vienna , where he studied law and philosophy for four semesters. From 1915 he served in the First World War, first in an infantry regiment, then with the 3rd Tyrolean Kaiserjäger . In 1916 he was seriously wounded on the Italian front and was taken prisoner of war, from which he was released in 1919.

1920-1932

In 1920 Bronnen moved to Berlin, where he initially worked as an employee, including in the Kaufhaus des Westens . In the same year his play parricide appeared , which made him famous and for which he received a price. In 1921 Bronnen was employed by the entrepreneur Ludwig Rabow, where he typed the September novella on the office typewriter, allegedly in an Art écriture automatique , which is set in Salzburg around 1920. By writing it, Bronnen apparently wanted to free himself from his homosexual feelings, which, in his own words, had poisoned him. Parricide. was premiered in Frankfurt in 1922 and was a shock for the audience, because the stage featured: an authoritarian, tyrannical head of the family; his homosexual son; the wife who secretly desires her son and lets herself be seduced to murder her husband; the son who experiences the murder of his father as an orgasm.

On most of the German theaters that followed the Frankfurt premiere, the performances ended in chaos, and it was not uncommon for fistfights that were ended in Ulm and Bremen by police violence. The scandals surrounding his play made Bronnen well known. As a result, Bronnen became friends with Bertolt Brecht , with whom he worked repeatedly until 1926, including on the screenplay for the film SOS Island of Tears (1923). Also in 1923 he staged Hans Henny Jahnn's play Pastor Ephraim Magnus together with Brecht and made the acquaintance of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau . In 1924, Bronnen's play Catalaunian Battle was premiered, which subsequently led to protests by the National Association of German Officers . From 1926 he worked for the radio; from 1928 to 1933 he was dramaturge at Funk-Hour Berlin . From 1927 at the latest, Bronnen approached more ethnic , right-wing circles and also came into contact with Ernst Jünger . In 1929 his novel OS about the defense of Upper Silesia by Freikorps led to violent reactions in the press; Brecht distanced himself from him. From 1930 onwards, Bronnen associated with Otto Strasser and Goebbels . On October 17, 1930, together with the brothers Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger and about thirty SA members , he disrupted a lecture event in the Berlin Beethoven Hall , during which Thomas Mann warned of the dangers of the emerging National Socialism ( German speech ). In the same year he married his wife Olga geb. Forester Prowe. The young beautiful actress was a lover of Goebbels and was listed under the code name Agent A229 from 1929 to 1935 by the NKVD . A triangular relationship developed between Olga, Goebbels and Bronnen.

1933-1944

After the takeover of the Nazi regime Bronnen was first program director of the literary department of radio-hour instead of his superiors dismissed Edlef Koppen . In October 1933 he and numerous other writers signed the " Vow of Most Faithful Allegiance " for Hitler . From 1934 he worked for the first television station Paul Nipkow ; from 1936 to 1940 he was program director, most recently under chief dramaturge Hannes Küpper dramaturge and director of the station. In the period that followed, Bronnen's position was not without risk, despite his ideological closeness to National Socialism, which had manifested itself since 1927, as he was accused of his earlier "left-wing activities". In addition, Bronnen was considered a “ half-Jew ” within the meaning of the Nuremberg Laws , even if he had his mother affirmed his “Aryan descent” in lieu of an oath (in connection with a paternity suit he had first considered in 1930). On April 11, 1935, his wife Olga committed suicide. In 1936 he married his second wife Hildegard, née von Lossow . In 1938 daughter Barbara Bronnen was born, in 1940 daughter Franziska Bronnen . Years later - around 1944 - while in exile in the US, Carl Zuckmayer wrote that Bronnen had “had no luck with the Nazis”: “In the past, when there was still a market for it, he had written too much heat. Too much maternal sleep - too much excess. The Nazis could not expect a man with such a degenerate [sic!] Past from their bourgeois audience ... as an author he is forgotten. "

In 1937 Bronnen was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer - a decision against which he appealed, but which was confirmed by Goebbels in 1939. After he had succeeded in 1941 to put his “Aryan” descent on record on the basis of a hereditary biological investigation into the absence of “Jewish racial characteristics”, he was again admitted to the Reich Chamber of Literature. As a result, however, he had difficulties to publish, and the planned performance of his play Gloriana in Munich was prohibited in 1943; in the same year he was finally banned from publishing and was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer. In that year he moved to Bad Goisern in Austria and got in touch with the resistance group Willy-Fred around Sepp Plieseis through the community secretary Franz Sams . Bronnen took over messenger services for the resistance group, which also took him to Aussee to see Karl Feldheimer , who had set up a communist resistance group there. In August 1944, despite his age and injury from World War I, Bronnen was drafted to a replacement battalion in Steyr , where he was soon denounced as a " military force decomposer ", imprisoned and charged with high treason in Vienna . His court record in Vienna was destroyed by a bomb hit and the proceedings were subsequently discontinued. He was released and sent back to his unit in Steyr, which was relocated to Znojmo in December 1944 . There, too, he quickly came into contact with the local resistance group and deserted a little later. He finally reached the Salzkammergut via the Wachau and Vienna in April 1945 and was active again in the local resistance in the last days of the war until the arrival of the Americans advancing from Salzburg.

1945-1959

Despite his many years of support for the National Socialists, Bronnen was proposed by the partisans to the Americans as mayor of Goisern , a municipality in the Salzkammergut , because of his services in the resistance, but also because of his knowledge of English . From May 7 to July 7, 1945, Bronnen was the first post-war mayor there. During his tenure, he organized the rationing of food, the construction of a provisional electricity network and levied a one-off special tax of 10 percent of their assets from former National Socialist party officials, which brought in around 80,000 RM for the municipal treasury. Released prisoners of the Ebensee concentration camp were cared for at his instigation in Goisern at community expense. After the chaos of the post-war days had subsided, he withdrew from politics and handed over the mayor's office to Martin Langeder from the KPÖ .

In 1946, Bronnen's works OS (1929) and Roßbach (1930) were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone .

In 1947 Bronnen published a justification for his political past and subsequently worked in Austria at the theater and for film. Through his contacts from the resistance period, he also began to write for the communist newspaper “Neue Zeit” in Linz as a cultural editor. In 1950 Bronnen and his wife Hildegard divorced. In 1951 he became a dramaturge at the New Theater in Scala Vienna . In 1952 he married the 27 years younger actress Renate Kleinschmidt, née Bertalotti († 2010).

In 1953 his work Kampf im Aether oder die Invisbaren (1935 ) was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In 1954 his autobiography was published under the title arnolt bronnen gives zu protocol . In 1957 his son Andreas was born.

During this time he was increasingly hostile by the bourgeoisie because of his KPÖ membership, but also from leftists because of his closeness to Joseph Goebbels. This made a further career in the Austrian art business increasingly difficult. In 1955, Bronnen therefore decided to move to East Berlin with his wife Renate ; He had previously discussed the possibilities of such a move to the GDR with Johannes R. Becher , whom he knew from the 1920s. In East Berlin, Bronnen worked for the Berliner Ensemble and as a critic for the Berliner Zeitung . However, Bronnen could no longer really gain a foothold in the GDR, as his past caught up with him there too and he was accused of being close to the National Socialists. With Brecht's death in 1956, he lost one of his most important advocates, and he barely succeeded in publishing new texts or getting pieces to be performed.

In 1959 Arnolt Bronnen died of heart disease in East Berlin. His grave is in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin.

Works

  • Right to youth. 1913.
  • Parricide. 1920.
  • The birth of youth. 1922.
  • The September novella. Rowohlt Published by Berlin 1923
  • The excesses. 1923.
  • Anarchy in Sillian. 1924.
  • Catalaunian battle. 1924.
  • Napoleon's fall. 1924.
  • The blue anchor. 1925.
  • Rhenish rebels. 1925.
  • East Pole Train. 1926.
  • Reparations. 1926.
  • Film and life. Barbara La Marr. 1927.
  • Michael Kohlhaas. (Arrangement for radio and stage after Heinrich von Kleist), 1929.
  • OS 1929.
  • Rossbach. 1930 (via Gerhard Roßbach )
  • The way to freedom . (Adaptation of a radio play by Fred von Hoerschelmann from 1928), 1932
  • Memory of a love. 1933.
  • Sonnenberg. (Radio play), 1934.
  • The fight in the ether or the invisible ones. 1935.
  • Facts from files. 1947.
  • N. 1948.
  • The Kolin chain. 1950.
  • Gloriana. 1951.
  • Last night. 1952.
  • arnolt bronnen gives the record. 1954.
  • Germany - not a winter fairy tale. 1956.
  • Aisopus. 7 reports from Hellas. 1956.
  • Team of four. 1958. (contains: "Gloriana", "N", "The Kolin Chain", "The Last Night")
  • Days with Bertolt Brecht. The story of an unfinished friendship. Published posthumously in 1960
  • Encounters with actors. Published posthumously in 1967

literature

  • Bronnen, Arnolt. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 4: Brech-Carle. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-22684-5 , pp. 146-164.
  • Harald Kaas: The Fascist Piccolo: AB In: Karl Corino (Ed.): Intellectuals under the spell of National Socialism (= books on the matter ). Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-455-01020-2 , pp. 136-149.
  • Joachim Campe: Afterword. In: Septembernovelle. New edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-608-95652-2 , pp. 55-65.
  • Wilhelm Pellert : The Cascadeur . A monodrama. Director: Jürgen Wönne. Saarbrücken: Studio-Theater, 1992 (play about Arnolt Bronnen).
  • Friedbert Aspetsberger: Arnolt Bronnen. Biography (= literature in history, history in literature. Volume 34). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 1995, ISBN 3-205-98367-X .
  • Martin Lindner: Life in the Crisis: Zeitromane der neue Sachlichkeit and the intellectual mentality of classical modernism, with an exemplary analysis of the novels by Arnolt Bronnen, Ernst Glaeser, Ernst von Salomon and Ernst Erich Noth. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1994, ISBN 3 -476-00996-3 . (Dissertation University of Munich 1995)
  • Günter Helmes : "The new Robinsonade, a technical one; the new wilderness, a destroyed city." Bertolt Brechts and Arnolt Bronnens film fable "Robinsonade on Assuncion". In: Ada Bieber , Stefan Greif , Günter Helmes: Angeschwemmt - Updated. Robinsonades in the arts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8260-3261-5 , pp. 9-35.
  • Barbara Bronnen: My fathers . Novel. Insel, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-458-17534-6 .
  • Marlen Mertens: Father Search and Parricide. The father-son conflict using the example of Walter Hasenclever's “The Son” and Arnolt Bronnen's “Patricide” . Phil. Diss. Hanover 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Apparently he did not receive the Kleist Prize , as is claimed. See award winner index
  2. ↑ Feelings which, according to his autobiography, he had developed towards a cousin, a tall, blond and daring Freikorps man . Compare: Joachim Campe: Afterword. In: Septembernovelle. New edition. Stuttgart 1989, p. 55f.
  3. ^ Frank Dietrich Wagner: Appeal to reason. Thomas Mann's German speech and Arnolt Bronnen's national attack in the crisis year 1930. In: Thomas Mann Yearbook. 13/2000, p. 53.
  4. ↑ Виктор Кузнецов: НКВД против Гестапо. Москва 2008, ISBN 978-5-699-31250-4 .
  5. ^ Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1940. Volume 51, p. 658.
  6. ^ Friedbert Aspetsberger: Arnolt Bronnen: Biography. P. 582 (online)
  7. ↑ Quoted from: FAZ, January 26, 2002.
  8. ^ Friedbert Aspetsberger: Arnolt Bronnen: Biography. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-205-98367-X , p. 25 f.
  9. ↑ polunbi.de
  10. ↑ Farewell to the soul commuter between Berlin and Pregarten on nachrichten.at, accessed on September 30, 2016.
  11. ↑ polunbi.de
personal data
SURNAME Bronnen, Arnolt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bronner, Arnold (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1959
Place of death East Berlin