Balder Olden

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

Balder Olden (born March 26, 1882 in Zwickau , † October 24, 1949 in Montevideo , Uruguay ) was a German writer and journalist.

Life

Olden was the son of the writer Johann Oppenheim, who took the name Hans Olden in 1891 , and his wife, the actress Rosa Stein. The economist Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim was, like the painter Moritz Daniel Oppenheim , distantly related to him. The lawyer and journalist Rudolf Olden was his younger brother.

Olden completed his school days in Darmstadt , Regensburg and Wiesbaden and then began to study history, literature and philosophy at the University of Freiburg . At the same time, Olden tried to prepare for the profession of actor by taking private lessons. In a fought duel because of an insult to his Jewish faith, he suffered an injury to his face, which left him with permanent paralysis.

As a result, the theater was closed to him and Balder chose the profession of journalist. After a traineeship at the Oberschlesische Grenzzeitung in Beuthen and at Ullstein Verlag ( Berlin ), Olden got a job with a Hamburg newspaper, where he was in charge of the features section for some time . In the editorial office in Bytom, Olden became a colleague of the later very successful writer Norbert Jacques .

Olden later moved to Cologne for the Kölnische Zeitung , for which he traveled around the world as a "traveling reporter". At the beginning of the First World War , Olden was working in German East Africa ( Tanzania ) and immediately volunteered for the colonial troops. He spent the war from 1916 to 1920 in British captivity.

Released from captivity, Olden returned to Germany and settled in Berlin. He is said to have been married here for a few years in 1922. Olden worked as a journalist again for the next few years, but his travels became less. From these years he also made a name for himself as a critic.

Immediately after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Olden went to Prague and was expelled from there two years later. On November 3, 1934, the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger published the third expatriation list of the German Reich through which he was expatriated . Olden went to France and settled in Paris . After his emigration he worked as a literary critic for the German-language exile press (including for Neue Deutsche Blätter and Neues Tage-Buch ) and in 1936 was one of the signatories of the appeal for the German Popular Front . He was arrested in Paris in the summer of 1940 and interned in the Audierne camp. With the help of friends, he managed to flee in the winter of 1940/41 and to go to Marseille . From there he was able to escape to Argentina on a ship in the spring of 1941 .

After living in the capital Buenos Aires for almost two years , he settled in the capital of Uruguay , Montevideo , in 1943 . There Olden married Margarete Kershaw in 1944 . Olden spent the last years of his life back in his job as a journalist. In both countries, Olden stood up for the interests of German exiles and played a key role in their organization.

In mid-1948 and early 1949 Olden suffered severe strokes from which he was unable to fully recover. With this fate in mind, Olden chose to commit suicide . He died at the age of 67 on October 24, 1949 in Montevideo, Uruguay. The German literature archive in Marbach manages his literary estate . Olden was a member of the Protection Association of German Writers and the PEN.He developed from a bourgeois writer with anti-militarist stories and colportage-like social novels about processing his own experiences as a soldier to portraying the colonialism of the empire, for example in his novel Kilimanjaro , which was first published in 1922 anti-fascist writer. According to his own statements, "it was fascism that made him a revolutionary".

Works

Balder Olden has published well over 100 publications and was involved in over 100 more publications.

  • Dawn of Darkness. Novel of a Nazi. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1981.
  • The heart nourished with a dream. Universitas-Vertlag, Berlin 1929.
  • I'm me. The novel Carl Peters. Universitas-Verlag, Berlin 1927.
  • Kilimanjaro. A novel from German East Africa . Universitas-Verlag, Berlin 1928.
  • Heaven of the devil. The life of Sir Roger Casement. Universitas-Verlag, Berlin 1933.
  • Shadow. A film novel. Carl Duncker, Berlin 1914.

Translations from English

literature

  • Thomas Diecks:  Olden, Balder. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 505 ( digitized version ).
  • Ruth Greuner (ed.): Paradises of the devil. Biographical and autobiographical; Writings and letters from exile. Rütten and Loening, Berlin 1977.
  • Wolfgang Kießling: Exile in Latin America (= art and literature in anti-fascist exile 1933–1945. Volume 4). Röderberg, Frankfurt / M. 1981, ISBN 3-87682-474-5 .
  • Rolf Tauscher: Literary satire of exile against National Socialism and Hitler Germany. From FG Alexan to Paul Westheim. Publishing house Dr. Kovač, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-86064-062-3 (also habilitation paper, University of Halle 1991). Pp. 43–46 (on the onset of darkness and Candide: or still the best of all worlds ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Hepp (ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933–45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order . De Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 5 (first edition: 1985, reprint).
  2. ↑ a b Thomas Diecks:  Olden, Balder. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 505 ( digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Olden, Balder
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Zwickau
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1949
Place of death Montevideo , Uruguay