Egon Dietrichstein

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Egon Dietrichstein (born June 13, 1889 in Vienna ; † August 18, 1937 there ) was a Viennese journalist and writer.

Egon Dietrichstein (center) with his coffee house and tarot friends Franz Elbogen and Hugo Sperber , Vienna around 1912.

Life

Egon was the son of Isidor and Irene Dietrichstein (nee Spitzer), he had an older sister Ella (* 1886). During the First World War , Dietrichstein was drafted as a one-year volunteer Landsturmjäger from December 6, 1916 to December 20, 1917. During this time he worked with authors such as Stefan Zweig , Alfred Polgar and Rainer Maria Rilke for the war archive . In this "literary group" , war propaganda was to be made parallel to the Austro-Hungarian war press headquarters .

Before, during and afterwards Dietrichstein worked as an editor and columnist in numerous daily and weekly newspapers, for example for the daily newspaper Neues Wiener Journal . For example, on November 15, 1918, he portrayed the commander of the Red Guard , Egon Erwin Kisch . On December 3, 1919, he conducted an extensive interview with Thomas Mann .

Dietrichstein was a regular at the Café Museum and Café Central , important centers of intellectual life in Vienna. He is portrayed as a talented journalist and “city-famous Schnorrer ”, notorious for his unkempt clothes. Leo Perutz , also a member of the coffee house tarot group, described a smelly fruit in Palestine in 1945 as “the Dietrichstein among the fruit varieties”. Once he was even given notice of his apartment as a result.

Friedrich Torberg judged Dietrichstein:

“Before the First World War he had some journalistic and literary successes, which admittedly did not change anything about his already incurable scrounger existence. Later he went downhill, his talent withered, nobody printed him. "

Dietrichstein later tried to keep himself afloat financially by lending money at excessive interest rates and therefore had to be defended in court by his friend, the lawyer Hugo Sperber . According to Torberg, in order to illustrate his client's lack of means, he is said to have argued: "Your Tribunal, I am certainly not an arbiter elegantiarum - Egon Dietrichstein wears a suit that I discarded on Sunday."

An obituary on August 19, 1937 in Der Wiener Tag says:

“It wasn't so much his literary abilities - although Dietrichstein was certainly an above-average talented writer - no, it was a completely different peculiarity that stamped the deceased into a well-known Viennese original. That he was a bohemian of the purest kind, who turned the nights into day, who lived, worked and slept in the Viennese literary cafes, all of that might have been original, but Egon Dietrichstein had enough competitors. What really made him a city-name figure was his clothes. Not that, as a kind of Prince of Wales, he set the tone for Viennese men's fashion, on the contrary. Dietrichstein wore his clothes, sometimes they were just fragments of clothes, in a way that, with a lot of benevolence, could be described as casual. "

Bruno Kreisky told about Dietrichsteinplatz the anecdote: In his pattern , he was the sergeant asked, "Prince or Jud" (There was an important noble family Dietrichstein .) If you answer "Jud" replied the sergeant: "You can not do anything. "

Works

  • The famous. Viennese Literary Institute, Vienna / Berlin 1920.
  • Leapfrog of life. Europaverlag, Vienna / Leipzig 1936.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Peball : Literary Publications of the War Archives in World War 1914 to 1918. In: Mitteilungen des Österreichisches Staatsarchivs 14 (1961), pp. 240–260, here: p. 258.
  2. ↑ Hannes Gruber: "The Word Makers of War". On the role of Austrian writers in the war press headquarters of the Army High Command 1914–1918. Diploma thesis, University of Graz 2012, pp. 66 and 90 (PDF).
  3. ↑ Hans-Harald Müller: Leo Perutz. Biography. Zsolnay, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-552-05416-5 , p. 381.
  4. ^ Egon Dietrichstein: A conversation with Thomas Mann. Neues Wiener Journal , December 4, 1919. Also printed in: Volkmar Hansen, Gert Heine (Ed.): Question and Answer. Interviews with Thomas Mann 1909–1955. Knaus, Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-8135-0707-6 , p. 44ff.
  5. ↑ Hans-Harald Müller: Leo Perutz. Biography. Zsolnay, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-552-05416-5 , p. 44ff. and 65f.
  6. ↑ Ulrike Siebauer: Leo Perutz - “I know everything. Everything, just not me. ”A biography. Bleicher, Gerlingen 2000, ISBN 3-88350-666-4 , p. 328.
  7. ^ Friedrich Torberg: The heirs of Aunt Jolesch. Dtv, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7844-1693-4 .
  8. ↑ Robert Sedlaczek : Aunt Jolesch and her time. A research. In collaboration with Melita Sedlaczek and Wolfgang Mayr. Haymon-Verlag, Innsbruck / Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7099-7069-0 , p. 141.
  9. ↑ Hans-Harald Müller: Leo Perutz. Biography. Zsolnay, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-552-05416-5 , p. 64.
  10. ^ Roman Roček: The nine lives of Alexander Lernet-Holenia . A biography. Böhlau, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-205-98713-6 , p. 363.
personal data
SURNAME Dietrichstein, Egon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Viennese journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1937
Place of death Vienna