Erik-Ernst Schwabach

Erik-Ernst Schwabach (born January 24, 1891 in Braşov , German: Kronstadt, Romania, † April 4, 1938 in London ) was a German publisher, author and patron in the period of Expressionism.

Life

As the grandson of Julius Leopold Schwabach and nephew of Paul von Schwabach ( S. Bleichröder Bank , Berlin), Schwabach belonged to one of the most influential banking families in the German Empire. Like his father Ernst, Erik-Ernst Schwabach did not see himself as a businessman. After attending the French grammar school in Berlin, he joined the group of authors and publishers in Leipzig at the end of 1912. He initially participated as a silent partner in the Kurt Wolff Verlag , which had just been founded, and at the same time built up his own “ White Books Publishing House ”. From 1913 he published "Die Weißen Blätter", which quickly became a success as the "magazine of the expressionists".

He has also appeared in many different ways as an author. After initial reviews in the "Aktion", Schwabach published plays, tense stories, erotic texts, texts on the history of morals and articles for the magazine for book lovers and the " Literary World ".

Erik-Ernst Schwabach, with his great fortune, which he inherited from his father after his untimely death in 1909, was considered by artists to be the “cipher for money” in the period before and during the First World War. As a patron, he supported many activities, but also artists themselves, such as B. the painter Theo von Brockhusen or the writer Max Herrmann . Schwabach also financed the Fontane Prize , which was awarded to young storytellers.

The financing and founding of the socialist newspaper “Die Republik” at the end of 1918 led to a falling out with his upper-class family. Above all, his relationship with his uncle Paul von Schwabach, who as head of the S. Bleichröder Bank was one of the most important German business representatives at the time, suffered lasting damage. The newspaper had often and vehemently polemicized against business elites, especially bankers of the time.

Both his Marchdorf Palace in Lower Silesia in what is now Poland and his palace in Berlin, where he lived with his wife Charlotte and his three children Ernst-Joachim, Brigitte and Dorian-Erik, were often the meeting point for fellow writers such as Alfred Kerr , Franz Blei , Otto Flake , Carl Hauptmann , Else Lasker-Schüler , Max Herrmann and many others. Friends and acquaintances gladly accepted invitations to the castle for soirees, opulent celebrations and themed masked balls. Heinrich Mann, for example, read from the as yet unpublished "Subject" on one of the evenings in Berlin. In his late London years, Alfred Kerr wistfully ("gone with the wind") remembered the sumptuous parties of the host Schwabach.

Erik-Ernst Schwabach then became impoverished in the twenties due to inflation: he did not invest his money in real estate or in robust foreign currencies, but in the rapidly and dramatically devalued Reichsmark. Schwabach tried to survive as a radio play author in the first "radio years" and as a collaborator in Willy Haas' Literary World as well as a freelance playwright - family blows such as the untimely death of his first son, who was only sixteen years old, stand alongside the economic problems for an unprecedented decline of the family. Outward signs of this difficult time at the end of the twenties are two auctions at which the passionate collector had his precious library and the entire furnishings of the Lower Silesian castle with its many art objects auctioned. The family gave up the castle, as did the luxury apartment in Berlin. The last pictures of Marchdorf Castle show it as a Nazi Reich labor service camp; it fell into disrepair at the end of the 1930s. The last address in Berlin was Knesebeckstrasse 48.

As the son of a converted Jew, Erik-Ernst was also banned from working in 1933. He could only work under a pseudonym, for example as the libretto author of the operetta “Fanny” in Berlin at the beginning of 1934. From 1936 onwards, Schwabach tried to establish himself as a writer, film and radio author in London, while his wife stayed in Berlin. He submitted a number of radio plays. a. at the BBC, but without sustainable success. He died, financially under considerable pressure, in 1938 in exile in London. His grave is in the Stahnsdorf cemetery in the south of Berlin.

Works

• Plays: Just One Love (1916); Earthly Comedy (1926)
• Stories: Peter van Pier (1914), short stories about the poor creature (1918), picture book of a night (published in Polish in 1938)
• Erotic texts: Cleander (1922/1923)
• Texts on the history of morals: The revolutionization of women (1928); Contributions to Alfred Adler's "International Journal for Individual Psychology" (1927 and 1929)
• Contributions to the "Journal for Book Friends" and the "Literary World"  

literature

• German biography: Schwabach, Erik-Ernst
• Peter Widlok: Erik-Ernst Schwabach (1891-1938). Publisher, author, patron of Expressionism. Böhlau-Verlag Cologne Weimar Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-412-50903-3
• Erik-Ernst Schwabach's estate in the Berlin State Library. Prussian cultural property, manuscript department (estate 160)

Web links

• Museum in Radziechów (Poland), formerly March village
• Literature by and about Erik-Ernst Schwabach in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Austrian Biographical Lexicon