Daniel Spitzer

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Daniel Spitzer

Daniel Spitzer (born July 3, 1835 in Vienna , Austrian Empire ; died January 11, 1893 in Meran , Austria-Hungary ) was an Austrian author , initially a civil servant lawyer and later a journalist , from whose publications in all literary areas ( novellas , poetry , essay , feuilleton -Kolumnen) his humorous satires and aphorisms are best known today.

Life

The son of a factory owner of Jewish faith grew up in the inner city of Vienna, completed the eight-year academic high school and then studied law, political science, historical and philosophical subjects in Vienna. He made the academic degree in 1860 in the law . He then became a civil servant in the Lower Austrian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for a total of eight years, where he carried out social and national economic studies and pamphlets, for example. B. against the high freight rates for coal transport by rail. He then resigned from the hierarchical authority environment that he did not like and since then has lived as a freelance writer and journalist from his popular columns and satires, which he published in German-language feature articles and magazines at home and abroad.

Even as a high school student and student he had sporadically placed small humorous contributions in the Munich " Fliegende Blätter " and the Berlin " Kladderadatsch ". Daniel Spitzer was a regular employee of the liberal, humorous Wiener Wochenblatt " Figaro " (1857-1919), which was newly founded in 1857 . He invented several own type -Figuren that he had to express his critical and intimate thoughts at the time. Example: be Räsoneur Itzig Kneipeles from Mikulov wrote letters to an imaginary friend in Tarnow , a column which was continuously knitted 1862-1870. In a further column called "Viennese Walk" Spitzer's causeries were first published for six years in the local gazette and then in the feature section of the press . The first of these appeared on June 25, 1865 and continuously became a Viennese social event for over 27 years that one had to read on Sundays in order to have a say in liberal circles. At the end of 1871 he switched to the Deutsche Zeitung and, from November 1873 to April 1892, to the Neue Freie Presse . While the first editions offered more or less a literary-satirical newsreel, they very soon became more pointed thematically and stylistically and maintained a high level, in which Spitzer put a lot of work.

As an old liberal humanist , Daniel Spitzer often shot verbal broadsides against political and social grievances. The national conservatives among his contemporaries loathed him for this. His critics from the left missed a social criticism aimed at tangible changes in the power and property relations. In doing so, he did not propagate morality, but, as a true satirist, prompted the reader to new approaches and awareness. Karl Kraus saw in him a shining example among the Austrian scribes of high standing. Literally he said of him that he knew

"According to Nestroy , in the field of linguistic satire and lyrical prose, no major and stronger ones should be ranked"

and saw in him "next to Kürnberger and Speidel the most important writer in the Viennese daily press" (quoted from Walter Obermaier's text on the Vienna exhibition). It was Spitzer, "who gave the transience perspective and increased the individual case through the humor of the distance to the type".

In addition to his main essayistic activity, he occasionally wrote and published poetry; his "Lieder eines Wiener Flaneurs " were written in 1864/65. His novellas "Das Herrenrecht" from 1877 and "Verliebte Wagnerianer" 1880 were popular and found several reprints. His walks in Vienna gradually appeared in book form and were translated into several foreign languages. He published some essays, which thematically did not suit him for the "Neue Freie Presse", among others in the Berlin magazine Gegenwart .

In February 1891, the then 55-year-old Daniel Spitzer, who had initially suffered from winter flu, fell ill with a facial tumor. After a slight improvement, he moved to Meran for the cure in October of that year. But his strength decreased steadily as the cancer progressed , so that he closed his apartment in Vienna and succumbed to his illness in January 1893. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Merano "under a memorial stone made of white marble from Lasa ". In the course of the National Socialist rule, the cemetery was largely destroyed in 1942 and the peace of the dead was only restored later under a community memorial stone. The literary estate is in the Vienna City and State Library, whose academic librarian Walter Obermaier took care of new editions (1986) and exhibitions (1993) on Daniel Spitzer's work and memory.

In 1925, Spitzergasse in Vienna- Währing (18th district) was named after him.

Frou-Frou Wagner . Caricature in the Viennese magazine “Der Floh” in 1877 on the publication of Wagner's letters to a cleaning woman, on the right the editor of the letters Daniel Spitzer. The caricature was reprinted by: Ernst Kreowski , Eduard Fuchs (ed.). Richard Wagner in the caricature . Behr, Berlin 1907. page 85

Works (selection)

literature

See also

  • Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869), forerunner of a literary-political-satirical demanding weekly feature section
  • Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849), an Austrian forerunner as an essayist and aphorist
  • Heinz Knobloch (1926–2003), a descendant of his kind as a columnist and flaneur in Berlin from the 1960s to the 1990s
  • Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), his successor as a leading columnist of the Vienna "Neue Freie Presse"

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Spitzer, Daniel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, satirist and columnist, lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1893
Place of death Meran , South Tyrol