Doctor Erich Kästner's Lyric Medicine Cabinet

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Doctor Erich Kästner's Lyrische Hausapotheke is a collection of poems by Erich Kästner that was first published in Switzerland in 1936. It combined numerous previously published and newly published poems by the author in one volume.

The peculiarity of the tape is the use recommended in the preface in the manner of a pharmacy. The reader finds his own physical or mental state under 36 listed ailments and inconveniences from “A to Z” (Kästner calls these the labels of a medicine bottle, his poems themselves medicine). Behind it, information is given as to which pages he can open to alleviate his respective condition.

Release history

The anthology was published three years after the National Socialists came to power . Due to the National Socialist censorship (in 1933 his books were burned and he was banned from publishing in Germany and later annexed Austria), Kästner's works were published by the Basler Atrium Verlag in Switzerland, founded by Kurt Machler . Numerous other publications followed, including in Germany. The reprint of the copy that Teofila Langnas gave to Marcel Reich-Ranicki, her boyfriend and future husband, on his 21st birthday in 1941, brought the collection further attention.

Publishers

In the period after 1936, Erich Kästner's work was published by a large number of publishers, although the title has always remained the same. There was at least one issue from the following publishers:

content

A detailed foreword by the author describes the addressees of the poems and the intended use: the "therapy of private life". The concept of the work goes back to Kästner's idea, expressed as early as the 1920s, of the "emotional usability" of certain poetry. In contrast to earlier volumes of Kästner's poetry, the selection is “completely apolitical,” according to Klaus Doderer in his Kästner biography. Kästner's skepticism still prevails, but the aggressiveness (especially against the new rulers) has dwindled. The collection opens with the poem The Railway Parable .

Trivia

Marcel Reich-Ranicki reports in his autobiography that the book "Doctor Erich Kästner's Lyrische Hausapotheke" helped him through difficult times in the Warsaw ghetto . He couldn't buy it himself and so his wife Teofila illustrated this volume and gave it to Marcel for his 21st birthday. It reminds Marcel of the time (spirit and climate) of the Weimar Republic and thus of his childhood.

expenditure

  • Erich Kästner: Dr. Erich Kästner's Lyrische Hausapotheke , new edition, Atrium, Zurich 2009 (first edition: Basel 1936), ISBN 978-3-85535-370-5 (paperback edition: 5th edition, dtv, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-423-11001-3 , according to the edition: Atrium, Zurich 1988)
  • An unusual edition is the volume published by the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt (DVA) Dr. Erich Kästner's Lyrische Hausapotheke - 56 poems in the Warsaw Ghetto written down and illustrated by Teofila Reich-Ranicki , 1st edition February 2000, ISBN 3-421-05373-1 (With a contribution from “Mein Leben” by Marcel Reich-Ranicki and an afterword by Salomon Korn ).
  • A well-known reading by the medicine cabinet was also available as an audio book with Gert Fröbe : Gert Fröbe reads from Doctor Erich Kästner's lyrical medicine cabinet . 1 CD, no and no, Zurich / Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 978-3-0369-1137-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. Home pharmacy guide ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hausapotheke-ratgeber.de