Doiwber Lewin

Doiwber Lewin ( Russian Дойвбер Левин ), born as Boris Mikhailovich Lewin ( Russian Борис Михайлович Левин * 11 ^{. Jul} / 24. October  1904 ^greg. In Mogilev , Russian Empire ; † 17th December 1941 in Leningrad , Soviet Union ), was a Russian writer and member of the OBERIU artist group, where he exerted a strong influence on Daniil Charms .

Life

He came from a Hasidic family from the predominantly Jewish-Orthodox town of Mahiljou in what is now Belarus . As a child he only spoke Yiddish and the Belarusian language. He taught himself Russian in the early 1920s when he came to Petrograd to study in 1921 . He took theater studies at the Institute for Art History, which he graduated in 1928. From 1926 to 1928 he was a member of the literary group OBERIU, which also included Daniil Charms and Alexander Vwedensky . Lewin was the only "pure" novelist among the fellow campaigners. The acronym OBERIU can be dissolved as "Union of Real Art". This stood for an expanded poetic concept of Russian Futurism , whereby the ideas of the absurd and the abstract were to be classified centrally and in the vicinity of the artist Kazimir Malevich .

From the late 1920s, Lewin followed Samuil Marschak's advice and began writing for young people. His first publication as Boris Lewin caused a problem: there was already a well-known writer by that name. He needed a pseudonym and used his own Jewish nickname Doiwber . All of Lewin's important books and the film Fedka were now published under Doiwber Lewin . Lewin's books were illustrated by Anatoli Kaplan , Solomon Judowin and Eduard Budogoskii , the best Jewish graphic artists of his time.

In the 1930s Lewin began to publish books for children and young people ("Flug des Herr Dumkopfa"). The book "Ten Cars", published in 1931, is about the Leningrad Jewish orphanage and was a collection of short stories. In most of the stories Lewin dealt with Jewish themes. In 1936 he wrote the screenplay for the film "Fedka", which is dedicated to a little hero of the civil war . Fedka later appeared as a novel (1939).

Lewin fought in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939/1940. He was killed on December 17, 1941 on the Leningrad Front.

While the works of Sabolotski , Charms and Vvedensky are well-known classics of the twentieth century for Russian literature, Levin's books have largely been forgotten. In part, this is because his archives were burned during the Leningrad blockade . While Charms' manuscripts have been reprinted since the 1990s, many of Lewin's unpublished stories have not survived. Lewin's only surviving work is his children's books. These were very popular before the war. Because of their Jewish subject matter, they proved unsuitable for a new edition in the years after the war; the Stalinist zeitgeist was secularized and was under the sign of the realization of the proletarian consciousness.

Work

Edition of a children's book from 1930

• Flight Mr. Dumkopfa. A book for children 1930. (The protagonists are also called Herr Dumkopfa, Herr Donner and Doktor Wunderkind in Russian)
• Ten cars in 1931
• Street cobbler 1932
• Soil states Slavich 1932
• Likhov 1934
• Fedka. Screenplay in 1936, as a novel in 1939
• Amur. Piece 1939

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://imhaben.de/pdf/levin_volnye_shtaty_slavichi_2013.pdf ??
2. ↑ Анатоли Львович Каплан: Анатолий Каплан, 1902-1980 . Российская национальная библиотека, 1994 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
3. ↑ http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Levin_Doyvber
4. ↑ http://narodknigi.ru/en/journals/53/
5. ↑ Daniil Charms: You see me in the window. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2011, ISBN 978-3-462-30474-9 ( limited preview in Google book search).
6. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeS6yLFNw7U