Curt Thesing

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Curt Thesing (born April 21, 1879 in Danzig ; † May 25, 1956 in Bad Tölz ) was a German biologist, author and translator of popular scientific literature.

Life

Curt Thesing was the son of a Prussian mayor. He studied natural sciences, medicine and philosophy in Marburg and Munich and graduated in 1902 as Dr. phil. from, after which he was temporarily assistant at the Zoological Institute of the Berlin University. Thesing married the doctor Rose Lanyi (1881-1959) on April 30, 1909, and their daughter Elisabeth came from this marriage. After her divorce from Thesing in 1923, Rose married the social democratic politician Rudolf Hilferding . Thesing was then married to the translator Marguerite Thesing-Austin (1891-1931), who translated herself and participated in many translations of Thesings. Thesing lived in Bichl in Upper Bavaria since 1922 . There his stepson Horst Brasch, who was born in Berlin in 1922, attended elementary and secondary schools as well as the Benedictine high school in Ettal . Because Brasch was of Jewish origin, he had to flee to Great Britain on a Kindertransport in 1939 . He returned in 1946 and was a politician and minister in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR .

Thesing was an editor for the popular science magazine Kosmos and was so well known in 1907 that he was able to appear as one of Wasmann's critics in a public dispute with the Jesuit Erich Wasmann in the great hall of the Zoological Garden in Berlin in front of two thousand listeners. Thesing also took a public position in 1913 in the controversy surrounding the thinking horse, Kluger Hans .

In 1911, Raoul Heinrich recruited Francé Thesing from the Society of Friends of Nature and appointed him for the "German Natural Science Society" as editor of the "natural history magazine" Natur . Thesing was responsible for the mathematical, scientific and medical part of the collective work Kultur der Gegenwart at Teubner-Verlag . In 1913 he was one of the founders of the journal Die Naturwissenschaften and in 1914 of the "Biologists Calendar". He was a member of the board of directors of the Urania publishing company .

In 1912 he became a partner of Otto von Halem in the publishing management at Veit and Comp. one that merged with the Walter de Gruyter publishing house in 1919 . Thesing left de Gruyter in 1920 for health reasons.

In 1919 Thesing published the text Klassenkampf gegen Völkerkampf! Marxist reflections on the world war by Max Adler . He founded the pacifist-oriented publishing house for cultural policy in Berlin , which he moved to Munich and headed until 1923. He was a member of the German Peace Society and the German League for Human Rights . During the Weimar Republic , he continued his successful editorial work and made bestsellers.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Thesing was briefly arrested and then observed. His book The School of Biology was banned in 1934, Thesing was excluded from the Reichsschrifttumskammer . The race theory Thesings differed from the Alfred Rosenberg that he looked at racial mixtures may be conducive to human development - hence the ban. Otherwise Thesing recommended, like the National Socialists , “racial hygiene and eugenics” and claimed that nonsense was widespread in society.

After the end of the Second World War, he briefly became mayor of his home town of Bichl in 1946. He and Erich Kästner participated in the reorganization of the PEN Center Germany from Munich .

Henry Ford's anti-Semitism

In 1922 the Hammer-Verlag of the anti-Semitic publisher Theodor Fritsch published a collection of articles under the title Der Internationale Jude in German translation, which had first been published in 1920 in the Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper published by the automobile manufacturer Henry Ford . Ford himself was named as an author, even if he was "only" the newspaper's editor and publisher.

During this time, Marguerite and Curt Thesing translated Ford's memoirs, which appeared in November 1923 under the title Henry Ford. My Life and Work and quickly reached an edition of "several hundred thousand copies" and in 1926 a shortened popular edition was printed.

In the foreword, Thesing responded to the “accusation of his alleged anti-Semitism”: It “would be wrong to describe Ford as an anti-Semite in the common sense”, he did not turn against individuals or against race, but “only against certain social and political phenomena”, against control by "any political clique". Thesing was playing down the obvious anti-Semitism at Ford.

Fonts

Translation from English Curt Thesing together with Marguerite Thesing
Translation from English Curt Thesing together with Marguerite Thesing

Own works (selection)

  • Biological Forays: A Communicable Introduction to General Biology . IF Schreiber, Esslingen 1908.
  • Regeneration, Transplant and Allied Areas . Volume 2 of Experimental Biology . Leipzig 1911.
  • Tribal history of love , Brehm, Berlin 1932.
  • School of biology . Munich 1934.
  • Miracles of Reproduction: An Introduction to the Essence of Life for Everyone . Berlin 1936.
  • The basics of life functions: life and life phenomena . Berlin 1936.
  • Oddities of life: journey of discovery into a puzzling wonder world . Berlin 1936.

Translations (selection)

  • Henry Ford together with Samuel Crowther: My life and work . Translation from English together with Marguerite Thesing. Leipzig: Paul List Verlag 1923.
  • Caruso. Only authorized biography ., Arr. by Pierre v. R. Key. Munich 1924.
  • Henry Ford together with Samuel Crowther: The great today. The bigger tomorrow . Translation from English together with Marguerite Thesing. List, Leipzig 1926.
  • Warwick Deeping : Captain Sorrell and His Son: Roman . Schünemann, Bremen 1927.
  • William T. Foster, Waddill Catchings: The Road to Abundance: Basics for All Wealth . Paul List Verlag, Leipzig 1929.
  • HR Knickerbocker : The red trade is looming! The Progress of the Soviet Five-Year Plan . Rowohlt, Berlin 1931.
  • Paul Henry de Kruif : Conqueror of Hunger . Holle & Co. Verlag, Berlin 1934.
  • Warwick Deeping: Mrs. Buck and Her Daughters. Novel . Schünemann, Bremen 1937.
  • Warwick Deeping: Outsider to Society. Novel . Scherz, Berlin 1950.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d German Biographical Encyclopedia , 2nd edition 2008, Volume 9, p. 914.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach - Post-War Literature in Berlin 1945–1949. Schmidt, Berlin 1996, short biography on p. 557.
  3. ↑ He is possibly related to the doctor Ernst Thesing (* 1874 in Wickerau near Barten (East Prussia) , † in Magdeburg ), the son of the district judge Robert Thesing and Martha Bredschneider. See: Ernst Thesing. at the University of Magdeburg. Robert Thesing was mayor of Tilsit from 1894 .
  4. ↑ Rose Thesing ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , at FU Berlin  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / web.fu-berlin.de
  5. ^ Rose Hilferding , at Archive of Social Democracy
  6. ↑ Marguerite Thesing's life data , at DNB
  7. ^ Horst Brasch , at the Federal Foundation for Work-Up
  8. ^ Andreas Daum: Science popularization in the 19th century. 1998, p. 228.
  9. ^ Andreas Daum: Science popularization in the 19th century. 1998, p. 434.
  10. ^ Andreas Daum: Science popularization in the 19th century. 1998, pp. 188, 341 ff.
  11. ^ Anne-Katrin Ziesak [ed.], Hans-Robert Cram [arr.]: The publisher Walter de Gruyter: 1749–1999 ; [Accompanying volume for the exhibition Der Verlag Walter de Gruyter , 1749–1999 in the Berlin State Library, Unter den Linden House, September 30 - November 20, 1999]. Berlin, Berlin State Library, Walter de Gruyter and Co., Berlin 1999.
  12. ↑ a b Carsten Wurm: Project and upheaval. In: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach - Post-War Literature in Berlin 1945–1949. Schmidt, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-503-03736-5 , p. 169 f.
  13. ^ The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem. A Reprint of a Series of Articles Appearing in the Dearborn Independent from May 22 to October 2, 1920 . Dearborn, Michigan: The Dearborn Publishing Co.
  14. ^ Curt Thesing: Editor's Foreword to Henry Ford: The Great Today. The bigger tomorrow . List, Leipzig 1926, p. VI
  15. ^ Curt Thesing: Foreword by the editor to Henry Ford: My life and work . List, Leipzig 1923, p. VII
  16. ↑ Egbert Klautke: Infinite Opportunities "Americanization" in France and Germany , Steiner, Wiesbaden 2003, p 195
personal data
SURNAME Thesing, Curt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biologist, author and translator of popular scientific literature
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig , Prussia
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1956
Place of death Bad Tölz