Egon Friedell

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Edith Barakovich : Egon Friedell

Egon Friedell (birth name Egon Friedmann , born January 21, 1878 in Vienna ; † March 16, 1938 there ; legally changed name) was an Austrian journalist and writer who stood out as a playwright , theater critic and cultural philosopher . He also worked as an actor , cabaret artist and emcee .

Life

Origin and school time

Friedell was the third child of the Jewish silk scarf manufacturer Moriz Friedmann and his wife Karoline, née Eisenberger. The mother left the family when Friedell was one year old and left the three children with her husband. The parents divorced in 1887. (On Friedell's 50th birthday, the mother turned up at the now wealthy and renowned son and demanded alimony payments , which were then enforced by court ruling.)

After his father's death in 1891, Egon lived with an aunt in Frankfurt am Main . He went to school there, but was excluded from classes after two years for improper behavior. Even in Frankfurt Friedell was considered a troublemaker and lateral thinker. Various schools in Austria and Germany followed. In 1897 he converted to the Evangelical Lutheran faith. In September 1899 he passed the Abitur for the fourth time at the grammar school in Bad Hersfeld led by Konrad Duden .

Education

As early as 1897, he had enrolled as a guest student at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin for German studies , natural sciences and philosophy . After graduating from high school, he moved to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg to study with the Hegelian and philosophy historian Kuno Fischer .

In 1899, after legal disputes with his relatives, he was awarded his father's inheritance, so that he could now devote himself financially to his interests in Vienna, which extended to all areas of knowledge. He moved into an apartment in Vienna 18, Gentzgasse 7, which he lived in until his death.

From 1900 Friedell studied philosophy in Vienna for nine semesters. During this time he joined the literary group at Café Central and soon became one of Peter Altenberg's closest friends . Friedell wrote essays for newspapers and magazines like the Schaubühne or März . In 1904 he received his doctorate as a philosopher with a dissertation on the subject of Novalis , which he published under the name "Friedell". He had borrowed the name ending from the name of his college friend, Bruno Graf zu Castell-Rüdenhausen.

In his 1905 article Prejudice , published in the magazine “ Die Fackel ”, it says: “The worst prejudice we take with us from our youth is the idea of ​​the seriousness of life. The children have the right instinct: they know that life is not serious and treat it as a game […]. ”Later he summed up his education in the words:“ Born on January 21, 1878 in Vienna, twice in Austria and graduated twice in Prussia, passed brilliantly the fourth time. In a relatively short time I did my doctorate in philosophy in Vienna, which gave me the necessary training to conduct the 'Fledermaus' cabaret. "

Professional Activities

From 1906 he appeared as a cabaret artist and conférencier in the cabarets Nachtlicht and " Hölle " as well as in the Cabaret Fledermaus , of which he was artistic director from 1908 to 1910. Felix Salten remarked: "There was now Egon Friedell, doctor of philosophy, court jester of the public and, like most court jesters, far superior to the master."

Together with Alfred Polgar , Friedell published parodistic works from 1908 such as the “model operetta” Der Petroleumkönig or Donauwalzer , the “censorship-fair military piece” (“into which every officer's daughter can lead her father without hesitation”) Soldiers' Life in Peace and the successful satire on Goethe's school operations in the exam , in which he embodied the role of Goethe in numerous performances and which made him known throughout the German-speaking world. In 1910 the publisher Samuel Fischer commissioned him to write a biography about Peter Altenberg. However , Fischer, who had expected light fare, was extremely dissatisfied with the book on culture analysis and criticism, which appeared in 1912 under the title Ecce poeta . As a result, it was no longer advertised and was unsuccessful; but it marked the beginning of Friedell's interest in cultural history .

Friedell first appeared as an actor in 1905 in the private performance of Frank Wedekind's Pandora's Box , organized by Karl Kraus . In 1910 he founded the “Intime Theater” in Praterstrasse with the journalist Felix Fischer . Here works by August Strindberg , Frank Wedekind and Maurice Maeterlinck were brought to the stage for the first time in Vienna, but the inadequacies in the performances prevented the success of this theater; Friedell was director, editor, lighting technician and actor at the same time. In 1912 the writer made a guest appearance in Berlin ; In 1913 he worked briefly as an actor for Max Reinhardt .

From 1914 onwards, increasing alcohol and weight problems became noticeable, so that he had to go to a sanatorium near Munich for rehab. Friedell was just as enthusiastic about the beginning of the First World War as most of his contemporaries. He published chauvinistic writings against the war opponents and volunteered for the war, but was rejected as unfit. In 1916 he had his family name "Friedmann" officially changed to "Friedell" after he had already used the stage name "Friedländer" several times. In 1916 he wrote the Juda tragedy .

After the First World War, Friedell's inherited fortune fell victim to inflation . From 1919 to 1924 he worked as a journalist and theater critic for various magazines and newspapers, including the Neue Wiener Journal . In 1922 Steinbruch - Mixed Opinions and Sayings appeared .

In addition, he accepted an offer from Max Reinhardt and worked as a dramaturge , director and actor at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin until 1927 and in the ensemble of the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna from 1924 to 1929 , where he performed in the Vienna premiere of Hofmannsthal's Der Schwierige in 1924 participated.

From 1927 he did not take on permanent positions because of health problems; Instead, he worked in Vienna as an essayist, freelance writer and translator, mainly on the cultural history of the modern age , the three volumes of which were published from 1925 to 1931.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis in Germany in 1933 the publication of works Friedell was rejected by all German and Austrian publishers. In 1935 he wrote about the Hitler regime : “The Empire of the Antichrist. Every movement of nobility, piety, education, reason is pursued by a gang of depraved house servants in the most hateful and vulgar manner. ”At the end of 1937 Friedell's works were confiscated by the National Socialist regime on the grounds that they did not fit the NSDAP's view of history . In February 1938, Friedell's cultural history was finally banned in Germany.

death

Memorial plaque on House Gentzgasse 7 in Vienna 18
Memorial plaque (detail)
Grave of Egon Friedell in the Vienna Central Cemetery

On March 11, 1938, one day before Austria was annexed to the German Reich , Friedell wrote to Ödön von Horváth : “In any case, I am always ready to travel in every sense”. Friends advised him to leave the country in vain; Friedell was so desperate that he kneeled to ask her for poison or a gun.

On March 16, 1938, at around 10 p.m., two SA men appeared in front of Friedell's apartment and asked for "Jud Friedell". According to some sources, Friedell was not yet to be arrested during this "visit" by the SA. Friedell, however, was awaiting arrest. While they talked to his housekeeper, he took his own life by a window located on the 3rd floor apartment jumped . It is documented that he did not neglect to carefully warn passers-by with the exclamation “Stand aside!”.

Friedell was buried in Vienna's central cemetery , evangelical section, gate 3. On the occasion of the anniversary of his death in 2005, it became an honorary grave .

Hilde Spiel said of Friedell: "In him the intoxicating fiction of the universal man arose once again." In 1954, Egon-Friedell-Gasse in Vienna- Floridsdorf (21st district) was named after him. In 1978 a postage stamp with his portrait was issued on the occasion of his centenary.

Works

The cultural history work

From the late 1920s Friedell worked in a precisely regulated daily routine on his life's work, the three-volume work Cultural History of the Modern Age , in which the development from the late Middle Ages to imperialism is described in an original, astute and sometimes anecdotal representation. Friedell lets the modern age begin with the great plague of 1348 and describes its course as a disease story that culminates in a "gigantic Oedipus complex".

In 1925 the first volume was published by Ullstein-Verlag ; Its partner Hermann Ullstein , however, was the history-writing actor Friedell suspicious. After five more rejections, the Munich publisher Heinrich Beck published the entire work from 1927. It was a great success and has been translated into seven languages ​​to date. Friedell was subsequently able to work as a freelance writer; his works on cultural history are published today by the scientific publishing house CH Beck .

In 1936 the first part of the cultural history of antiquity ( cultural history of Egypt and the ancient Orient ) was published by the Swiss Helikon publishing house . Posthumously after the Second World War, the no longer complete cultural history of Greece , the second part of the ancient cultural history, was published. Further volumes on the Roman and early Christian times were planned.

Appeared during his lifetime

  • Novalis as a philosopher . Bruckmann, Munich 1904.
  • The petroleum king . 1908.
  • Goethe. A scene (with Alfred Polgar). CW Stern, Vienna 1908.
  • Ecce poeta . S. Fischer, Berlin 1912.
  • From Dante to d'Annunzio . Rosner & Stern, Vienna 1915.
  • The Juda tragedy. In four sets and an epilogue . Strache, Vienna 1920.
  • The Jesus problem . With a foreword by Hermann Bahr , Rikola, Vienna 1921. Read online
  • Quarry. Mixed opinions and sayings . Publishing house of the Wiener Graphische Werkstätte, Vienna 1922.
  • "That's classic!" Nestroy words . Edited by Egon Friedell. With eight role models, Wiener-Drucke, Vienna 1922.
  • Cultural history of the modern age. The crisis of the European soul from the black plague to the world war . 3 vols. Beck, Munich 1927–31. archive.org
  • Little philosophy. Mixed opinions and sayings . Phaidon, Vienna 1930.
  • Cultural history of antiquity. Life and legend of the pre-Christian soul. First part: Egypt and the ancient Orient . Helikon, Zurich 1936.

From the estate

  • The journey with the time machine . Fantastic novel . Piper, Munich 1946.
  • Friedell Breviary. Selected from writings and papers by Walther Schneider . Erwin Müller, Vienna 1947.
  • Cultural history of Greece. Life and legend of the pre-Christian soul . Preliminary remark by W. Schneider. Beck, Munich 1949.
  • Antiquity was not ancient and other remarks . Ed. V. W. Schneider. Georg Prachner, Vienna 1950.
  • Small portrait gallery. Five essays (Novalis, Carlyle, Lord Macaulay, Emerson, Peter Altenberg). Beck, Munich 1953.
  • Aphorisms on history. From the estate . Ed. V. W. Schneider. Prachner, Vienna 1950.
  • Letters . Only edition authorized by the heirs, selected u. ed. v. W. Schneider. Georg Prachner, Vienna 1959.
  • Is the earth inhabited? . Introduced and selected by W. Schneider. Stiasny, Graz / Vienna 1961.
  • Emerson. His character from his works . Edited and translated by Egon Friedell. Lutz, Stuttgart undated (1906).
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson : Representatives of Humanity. Seven essays . Afterword by Egon Friedell, Diogenes (detebe 21696), Zurich 1989, ISBN 978-3-257-21696-7 .
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson: On the Beauty of Good. Contemplations and observations . Selected, transferred and with a preface by Egon Friedell. With an afterward from Wolfgang Lorenz. Diogenes (detebe 22440), Zurich 1992, ISBN 3-257-22440-0 .
  • Abolition of genius. Essays by 1918 . Ed. V. Heribert Illig. Löcker, Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-85409-042-0 .
  • Self-disclosure. Essays from 1918 . Ed. V. H. Illig, Löcker, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85409-051-X .
  • My double soul. Tactless remarks on the theater . Ed. V. H. Illig. Löcker, Vienna 1985. ISBN 3-85409-087-0 .
  • Culture is a wealth of problems. Extract of a life drawn and prepared by Heribert Illig . Haffmans, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-251-00159-0 .
  • "About the Heroic in History" by Thomas Carlyle . Ed. V. W. Lorenz. Sabon, St. Gallen 2001, ISBN 978-3-907928-31-8 .
  • The writer. Autobiographical writings . Löcker, Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-85409-368-8 .
  • The shadow of antiquity. The so far missing final chapter of the "Cultural History of Antiquity" . Ed. V. H. Illig. Mantis, Graefelfing 2020, ISBN 978-3-928852-55-5 .

Filmography

  • 1922: Yves, the juggler

New editions

Movie

  • 1978: Egon Friedell. Crazy, amateur and genius. A production by Saarland Radio / Television 1978 (60 minutes). Script and direction: Klaus Peter Dencker
  • 2003: I mock, even if I have to bleed for it. The two sides of the genius of cultural history Egon Friedell , [audio-visual media], conversation with Heribert Illig . Düsseldorf: dctp in: ( German Literature Archive , Marbach), 1 video cassette (VHS, 25 min.) Color.

literature

  • Gertraud Heid:  Friedell, Egon. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 446 ( digitized version ).
  • Peter Haage: The party animal who only ate books. Egon Friedell and his group . Claassen, Hamburg 1971.
  • Klaus Peter Dencker: The young Friedell. Documents of the training to become a brilliant amateur . Beck, Munich 1977.
  • Heribert Illig : writer - showman. The artistic activities of Egon Friedell . Dissertation. Löcker, Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-85409-105-2 .
  • Roland Innerhofer: Cultural history between the two world wars. Egon Friedell . Böhlau, Vienna 1990.
  • Heribert Illig: A career is a lack of ideas. In terms of Innerhofer. Mantis Verlag, Graefelfing 1993, ISBN 3-928852-04-3
    (documents Innerhofer's plagiarism of Illig's Friedell book).
  • Wolfgang Lorenz: Egon Friedell. Moments in the life of an unusual person. A biography . Ed. Raetia, Bozen 1994, ISBN 88-7283-054-0 .
  • Franz Rottensteiner : Friedell, Egon. In: Lexicon of Science Fiction Literature since 1900. With a look at Eastern Europe , edited by Christoph F. Lorenz, Peter Lang, Frankfurt / Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-63167-236-5 , pp. 281–286
  • Bernhard Viel: Egon Friedell: The ingenious dilettante. CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-63850-3 .
  • Hans Veigl : With Goethe in the night cabaret. Egon Friedell between cabaret and cultural history . Austrian Cabaret Archive , Graz 2013, ISBN 978-3-9501427-3-0 .
  • Sociable loner . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1971 ( online ).

Fiction portraits

Web links

Commons : Egon Friedell  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Egon Friedell  - Quotes
Wikisource: Egon Friedell  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Haage: The party animal who only ate books. Egon Friedell and his group. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1977, p. 20.
  2. ↑ Egon Friedell on his 60th birthday. In: "Neues Wiener Journal" from January 14, 1938.
  3. ↑ Lisa Fischer: Lina Loos or when the muse kisses himself . Böhlau, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-205-77611-6 , pp. 154 ( Google preview ).
  4. ↑ Dedication to the grave of honor for the writer Egon Friedell, town hall correspondence of March 16, 2005 (accessed on June 10, 2010)
  5. ↑ austria-lexikon.at
personal data
SURNAME Friedell, Egon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friedmann, Egon; Friedländer, Egon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, cultural historian and cabaret artist
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1938
Place of death Vienna