Erna field

Stumbling block for Erna Leonhard

Erna Feld , nee Erna Edna Hirschfeld , married Leonhard (born June 23, 1893 in Werl ; died probably March 13, 1943 in Auschwitz ) was a German reciter , radio writer and actress . It appeared under the artist name Erna Feld, from 1936 it is carried under the name Erna Leonhard , also Leonhard-Feld or Leonhard (field) . During the Weimar Republic she was involved in recitation evenings and listening sequences . Her name is best known today because of her poetry readings in the Jüdischer Kulturbund and other Jewish organizations that she held during the Nazi era , including poems by Gertrud Kolmar and Nelly Sachs , with whom she was also personally friends. As a Jew, Erna Feld was deported to Auschwitz and murdered. A stumbling block reminds of her today.

Life

Erna Edna Hirschfeld came from a Jewish family. Her father was the teacher and cantor of the Jewish community in Werl , Robert Hirschfeld (1871-1937), her mother's name was Henriette, née Gutfeld (1868-1944). She had a sister named Lucia (1895–1955) who was two years her junior and a brother 16 years her junior whose name was Hans Hermann (1909–1996). In 1897 Robert Hirschfeld was dismissed from the Jewish community because of a serious eye disease that led to almost complete blindness and the family moved to Berlin, where Hirschfeld, who had attended the teachers' seminar there , had old acquaintances and hoped for better opportunities for employment.

Erna Hirschfeld attended the Jewish girls' school in Berlin and then went to a business school , as her father had asked. There she learned typing and shorthand, among other things . However, her desire was to become an actress, and after graduating from business school, she was able to attend an acting school. She then had some engagements and took on the stage name Erna Feld for her acting and recitation activities .

In 1922 Erna Feld became pregnant and had a son on April 5, 1923 in Wernigerode , whom she named Leonor. According to her brother's memories, the child's father was a writer named Rudolf Leonhard, who she also married - according to Hans Hermann Hirschfeld, under strong pressure from her father - but they soon got divorced again. An identity with the author and editor Rudolf Leonhard is possible, but not yet guaranteed. This marriage is not mentioned in the sparse biographical writings on this writer, and the biographical lexicon of theatrical artists lists the first name and the identity of the spouse as unknown. In any case, Leonor had the family name of his father, so his name was Leonor Leonhard. According to her brother's recollections, the money that Erna Feld earned with acting, reciting and radio broadcasts was not enough to support herself, although she had moved back in with her parents. She therefore took on secretarial work on the basis of her commercial school education .

During the time of National Socialism, Feld worked as a secretary, initially for the self-help group of the Jewish blind in Germany , an organization that came into being after the expulsion of the Jews from the Reichsdeutscher Blindenverband , in which her father carried out management activities. Your last job was with the Reich Association of Jews in Germany . These activities also made it possible for her to rent a small apartment for herself and Leonor in Berlin-Westend , most recently in the Eichkamp housing estate, when her parents had to move into a smaller apartment in 1933.

Her father Robert Hirschfeld died in 1937. In September 1942 her mother Henriette Hirschfeld was deported to Theresienstadt ; she starved to death there in January 1944. On March 12, 1943, Erna Leonhard was taken to Auschwitz with most of the remaining employees of the Reich Association , together with her son Leonor. Probably as soon as they arrived on March 13, 1943, she and her son were murdered in the gas chamber. Gudrun Dähnert, a friend of Nelly Sachs, remembered: “When she was being taken away, she threw a card out of the window that reached us. It said: 'We're going, but the sun is shining'. "Hans Hermann Hirschfeld mentioned that Leonor was able to write a postcard to" Uncle Albert in Leipzig ", but then nothing more. Erna's sister Lucia had moved to Merano with her husband . She retired to Switzerland when the Wehrmacht occupied Italy and later emigrated to the USA. Her brother Hans Hermann was deported to Theresienstadt in 1943 and to Auschwitz in 1944, survived both camps and emigrated to the USA.

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  Stumbling block for Erna Feld's mother

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  Stumbling block for Erna Feld's son

Work and reception

In several entries in Kürschner's German Literature Calendar from 1930 to 1937/1938 under the name "Leonhard, Erna (pseudonym Erna Feld)", Feld's activities are summarized as "actress, reciter, teacher of acting and lecturing" and "radio author" ; In 1939 her name disappeared. These activities can be documented to some extent for the Weimar Republic; during the Nazi era only recitation is documented.

Empire and Weimar Republic

Little is known about Erna Feld's work as an actress in the Weimar Republic. The biographical lexicon of theater artists names an engagement in the Berlin Luisentheater during the First World War and one for 1931/1932 at the guest performance stage in the Berliner Volkstheater . Her brother remembers other engagements at theaters in Gliwice and Ratibor .

Her work as a reciter is much better documented. As early as 1922 she read poems by Henriette Hardenberg at a lecture evening . She was involved in the series “Young Poets in Front of the Front!” Founded by Franz Konrad Hoefert (from 1922), which was supposed to make unprinted works by living poets accessible to the public, for example with a “ Brecht evening” in 1924 on the subject of Hoefert and Feld had to change at short notice; they filled the evening with “works by other young poets”. Feld himself founded and directed the series of lectures "Oral book criticism". There, for example, in 1927 Arnold Zweig gave a lecture on Bertolt Brecht's house postil and Lion Feuchtwanger's Pep , Erna Feld recited scenes from Brecht's and Feuchtwanger's stage works, and Guido K. Brand presented new publications. At another event in the series in 1930, Hoefert, Feld and Leo Menter recited texts by Feuchtwanger, Ernest Hemingway , Heinrich Mann , Joseph Roth and Elizabeth Russell, among others . Guido K. Brand and Heinz Stroh spoke . In 1931, Feld read “The Poetry of Prisoners - Prose of the Prison System”, also announced in the Weltbühne . In addition, there were numerous appearances at events of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith , which can be proven in announcements and reports in the CV newspaper since 1925 , including at a “Women's Day” in January 1925.

Erna Feld also used the new medium of radio, both for recitations and for the new formats of audio sequences and radio plays . She edited George A. Goldschlag's poem City in the form of an audio sequence that was broadcast in 1929. In addition, for the year 1931, among other things, an audio series Medi-Cynisches Kabarett and a radio play Two Souls in Space created and spoken with Hoefert . She documents a mystery for the radio . In January 1933 she read Ruth Landshoff's prose under the title “Dicht der Lebenden” on the Berlin radio.

time of the nationalsocialism

From 1933 onwards Erna Feld could only appear within the framework of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden or later the Jüdischer Kulturbund or in a private setting. In these limited circumstances, Feld became the “most important reciter” of Jewish cultural life in Berlin. Among other things, she contributed to the Attention! Sample! Come on! the cabaret of the Jewish Culture Association in April 1935. Until 1940 she regularly recited texts by newer Jewish poets and especially female poets, in particular by Nelly Sachs and Gertrud Kolmar , as well as by Else Lasker-Schüler , Jacob Picard , Martha Wertheimer , Elise Haas and Karl Escher . Particularly noteworthy are the “Women's poetry” lecture evenings in the “Private Teaching Community Grunewald” from April 1936, a series of six lecture evenings organized jointly with Leo Menter for the Jewish community's artists' aid under the title “Unheard Voices” with poems by 30 people living in Germany Jewish poets (1937–1938) as well as a reading under the same title in the Jüdischer Kulturbund in September 1938. For Nelly Sachs and Gertrud Kolmar, these lecture evenings were the first major forum in which their works were recorded and accessible to literary criticism. Both poets were also personal friends with the reciter. Gertrud Kolmar wrote several letters to her sister about 'her' reciter and told her that she had also learned to cook from Erna Feld. About the last known recitation event of this kind in the series “Jüdisches Wort und Judenischer Ton” on May 4, 1940, she wrote to Hilde Wenzel: “Frau Feld made me really 'big'; the last two poems she spoke of me were also her best performance of the whole evening. "

In addition to poems by Nelly Sachs, Feld also performed the early prose sketch Chelion - A Childhood Story and the Puppet Fair of Dreams , in both cases the only known reception of these unpublished works.

The lecture evenings were regularly reviewed in the CV newspaper and in the Jüdischen Rundschau . The critics attested her proven and cultivated art of speaking, empathy and intimacy as well as an unpathetic , clear style of presentation. Her means of expression were also discussed there, including the change in volume, which, according to the critic, sometimes led to "exaggerated whispering", and the gestures with which she accompanied the readings. Hugo Lachmanski , the literary critic of the CV-Zeitung, also dedicated a paragraph to Erna Feld in an article about "Jewish performers" in the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt of February 3, 1939, in which he praised her as the "discoverer of new Jewish-poetic territory" and her main merit attributed to the discovery of Gertrud Kolmar's talent.

Nelly Sachs remembered after the war: "The years came in Berlin when we, a small group of writers, recited by Erna Feld-Leonhard, came together, each time in a new shiver of fear, who would now be hit." at Kurt Pinthus she wrote: "the memory of the little already moribund crowd that we accounted for once, when Erna Leonhard field holding her recitation evenings is still so clearly before my eyes and buried in my feeling forever [...] What was Probably from Erna Feld? ”Sachs dedicated a poem from her cycle of tombstones written in the air to Erna Leonhard, as she called herself since 1936 because of the National Socialist ban on stage names for Jews : The Actress (EL) . Karl Escher also remembered them in an article from 1947 about the victims of National Socialism in German-Jewish literature, in connection with the fate of Gertrud Kolmar (= Gertrud Chodziesner): “Your interpreter, Erna Leonard [sic!] (Erna Feld) who did not cease to recite Gertrud Chodziesner's poems to perfection, suffered the same end as the poet. "

In an essay for the communications of the Reichsverband der Jüdischen Kulturbünde in Germany (“Jüdische Wortkunst”), she herself reflected on her role as a mediator of a literature that was practically no longer printed: “The current situation of the Jewish book almost brings us back to that State in which the poetry must be disseminated orally. … And so poetry is dependent on reaching the listener again in the sound. That is why the poet's necessary complement is the speaker, the reciter. "

state of knowledge

Gudrun Jäger wrote in 1997: “Little was known about the identity of Erna Leonhard, née Hirschfeld.” Information about her curriculum vitae can now be found in an elaboration of the Stolperstein Initiative Eichkamp in Berlin, which in turn is largely based on the Life story of her brother Hans Hermann Hirschfeld supports. This has been published on the “Digital Collections” page of the Center for Jewish History ; Entries in the memorial book of the Federal Archives and the Yad Vashem database confirm the information on deportation and death. A short entry in the Biographical Handbook of Theater Artists provides some key data on Feld's activities as an actress. Biographical publications on Nelly Sachs and Gertrud Kolmar contain information on their activities in the Jewish Cultural Association, which can also be based on the edited collections of letters by these authors. So far there have been no publications on her work as a reciter in the Weimar Republic, but contemporary magazines and newspapers offer some insights.

Fonts

• Erna Leonhard: Jewish word art. In: Communications of the Reich Association of Jewish Cultural Associations in Germany. Issue 13, August 1938.

literature

• Field, Erna . In: Frithjof Trapp , Werner Mittenzwei , Hansjörg Schneider , Henning Rischbieter (eds.): Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933–1945. Volume 2: Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists. Part 1: A – K. Saur, Munich 1997, p. 239.

Web links

• Stumbling stone initiative Eichkamp: Erna Leonhard, Leonor Leonhard
• Entries at Yad Vashem: https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=4114056&ind=2 , https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=11572796&ind=1
• Entry in the memorial book of the Federal Archives
• Hans Hermann Hirschfeld: My Life Story . 1996. On the “Digital Collections” page of the Center for Jewish History

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Second first name according to the memorial book of the Federal Archives: Victims of the persecution of Jews under the National Socialist tyranny in Germany 1933-1945 , online .
2. ↑ This statement by Hans Hermann Hirschfeld can be confirmed by Rudolf Preising: Zur Geschichte der Juden in Werl . News from the Werler city archive, issue 1. Dietrich-Coelde-Verlag, Werl 1971, p. 48. Online .
3. ^ Hans Hermann Hirschfeld: My Life Story . 1996. Available online on the Center for Jewish History's Digital Collections page , p. 3.
4. ^ Hans Hermann Hirschfeld: My Life Story , pp. 12-13.
5. ↑ Assumed on the site of the Stolperstein Initiative Eichkamp: Erna Leonhard, Leonor Leonhard . This information is supported by the computer genealogical database GEDBAS , cf. the entries on Rudolf Leonhard and Erna Hirschfeld ; it says that they married on July 23, 1923 and divorced on November 3, 1927. However, no evidence is given.
6. ↑ Wolfgang Emmerich mentions in the article Leonhard, Rudolf der Neue Deutsche Biographie , online , a certain and a presumed marriage, but both at different times and with different women.
7. ↑ Feld, Erna . In: Frithjof Trapp , Werner Mittenzwei , Hansjörg Schneider , Henning Rischbieter (eds.): Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933-1945 . Volume 2: Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists. Part 1: A – K. Saur, Munich 1997, p. 239.
8. ^ Hans Hermann Hirschfeld: My Life Story , pp. 13-14.
9. ^ Stumbling block initiative Eichkamp: Erna Leonhard, Leonor Leonhard . Online .
10. ↑ Hans Hermann Hirschfeld: My Life Story , p. 14, p. 48–49, p. 70.
11. ^ Stumbling block initiative Eichkamp: Erna Leonhard, Leonor Leonhard . Online . The day of arrival can be determined according to the entry by Yad Vashem : Transport 36 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 12/03/1943 .
12. ^ Gudrun Dähnert: How Nelly Sachs escaped from Germany in 1940. With a letter to Ruth Mövius . In: Sinn und Form , Vol. 61 (2009), Heft 2, pp. 226-257, here: p. 237.
13. ^ Hans Hermann Hirschfeld: My Life Story , p. 78.
14. ^ Hans Hermann Hirschfeld: My Life Story , pp. 63-64 (the sister in Meran); P. 68 (death of father); P. 76 (deportation of the mother); P. 78 (Deportation of Erna); P. 80 (brother's deportation to Theresienstadt); P. 95 (death of mother); P. 98 (brother's deportation to Auschwitz); P. 140 (brother's emigration); P. 155 (Emigration and death of the sister).
15. ↑ See Vol. 45 (1930), Col. 723; Vol. 46, col. 820; Vol. 47 (1934), col. 485; Volume 48 (1937/1938). The designation as "radio author" can only be found in vol. 48.
16. ↑ Feld, Erna . In: Frithjof Trapp , Werner Mittenzwei , Hansjörg Schneider , Henning Rischbieter (eds.): Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933-1945 . Volume 2: Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists. Part 1: A – K. Saur, Munich 1997, p. 239; Hans Hermann Hirschfeld: My Life Story , p. 13.
17. ↑ Henriette Hardenberg: Dichtungen , ed. by Hartmut Vollmer. Arche, Zurich 1988, pp. 158 and 176 (editor's comment).
18. ↑ For this series see Kürschner's German Literature Calendar , vol. 45 (1930), Literary Associations and Foundations, Sp. * 250.
19. ^ Vossische Zeitung , December 15, 1924, p. 2, online ; Werner Hecht: Brecht Chronicle . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1997, p. 179.
20. ↑ Kürschner's German Literature Calendar, vol. 45 (1930), col. 723 and the following years.
21. ↑ -ei-: Oral book review . In: Vossische Zeitung of November 18, 1927, supplement “Das Unterhaltungsblatt”. Online .
22. ↑ Announcement in Die Weltbühne , 26th vol. (1930), No. 50 (9th December), p. 886, online .
23. ↑ Die Weltbühne , Vol. 27 (1931), No. 9 (March 3), p. 335. Online .
24. ↑ Ein Tag der Frauen , CV newspaper of January 23, 1925, p. 64. The CV newspaper is completely digitized and can be accessed and searched in the Judaica collection of the University of Frankfurt.
25. ↑ Listed in Friedrich Ernst Schulz: Bühnenwerke 1929–1932 . Muth, Stuttgart 1931, p. 25.
26. ↑ Detectable for example in: Radio Expres , No. 24, June 12, 1931, p. VI, online .
27. ↑ Recorded in the database of the German Broadcasting Archive "Writers on the radio - authors appearances on the radio during the Weimar Republic 1924–1932", online .
28. ↑ Proven in Walter Fähnders: News on the work of Ruth Landshoff-Yorck in the Weimar Republic . In: Journal for German Studies , New Series, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 473–474, here: p. 474.
29. ↑ Gertrud Kolmar: Letters . Edited and commented by Johanna Woltmann. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014. Commentary on Letter No. 16 of August 3, 1938, p. 235.
30. ↑ List of performances . In: Akademie der Künste (Ed.): Closed presentation. The Jewish Cultural Association in Germany 1933–1941 . Berlin 1992, pp. 357-425, here: p. 387.
31. ↑ Based on a compilation in Gudrun Jäger: Gertrud Kolmar and Nelly Sachs in the context of the German-Jewish cultural ghetto (1936–1940) . In: exile. Research, Findings, Results , Volume 17 (1997), Issue 1, pp. 5–17, here: p. 15. See also Gabriele Fritsch-Vivié: Nelly Sachs . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, pp. 70 and 149.
32. ^ Gudrun Jäger: Gertrud Kolmar and Nelly Sachs in the context of the German-Jewish cultural ghetto (1936–1940) . In: exile. Research, Findings, Results , Volume 17 (1997), Issue 1, pp. 5–17, here: pp. 8 and 12.
33. ↑ For example: Letters of August 3 and October 16, 1938 to Hilde Wenzel, in: Gertrud Kolmar: Briefe . Edited by Johanna Woltmann. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, pp. 21 and 26.
34. ^ Letter to Hilde Wenzel dated May 15, 1940, in: Gertrud Kolmar: Briefe . Edited by Johanna Woltmann. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, pp. 76–77. Also quoted by Johanna Woltmann: Gertrud Kolmar. Life and work . Wallstein, Göttingen 1995, p. 242.
35. ↑ Ruth Dinesen: "And life always tasted like goodbye." Early poems and prose by Nelly Sachs. Heinz Akademischer Verlag, Stuttgart 1987, pp. 97–98.
36. ↑ About: - us: women's poetry . In: CV-Zeitung , April 23, 1936, online .
37. ↑ Example: t .: Unheard voices . In: Jüdische Rundschau , September 16, 1938, online .
38. ^ Jewish lecturers . In: Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt , February 3, 1939, p. 5. Also quoted by Gudrun Jäger: Gertrud Kolmar and Nelly Sachs in the context of the German-Jewish cultural ghetto (1936–1940) . In: exile. Research, Findings, Results , Volume 17 (1997), Issue 1, pp. 5–17, here: p. 8.
39. ^ Letter from Nelly Sachs to Manfred George and Mary Graf, January 27, 1946, in: Ruth Dinesen, Helmuth Müssener (Ed.): Briefe der Nelly Sachs . Frankfurt 1984, p. 44.
40. ^ Letter from Nelly Sachs to Kurt Pinthus, November 12, 1946, in: Ruth Dinesen, Helmuth Müssener (Ed.): Briefe der Nelly Sachs . Frankfurt 1984, p. 71.
41. ↑ See for example: Aris Fioretos: Escape and Metamorphosis. Nelly Sachs, writer, Berlin / Stockholm. Exhibition texts . Ed .: Museum Strauhof, City of Zurich. 2011. Text for no. 108. online .
42. ↑ Too early and far from home… . Radio manuscript from 1946 or 1947. Printed in: Neela Richter: “Give what is today to today.” Karl Escher, journalist and writer (1885–1972). One life. Weidler, Berlin 2008, pp. 148–154, here: p. 152. Under the title Allzu frueh und fern der Heimat… also printed in English in: AJR Information (edited by the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain), Volume 2, No. 7 (July 1947), p. 51, online .
43. ↑ Erna Leonhard: Jewish word art . In: Communications of the Reich Association of Jewish Cultural Associations in Germany , issue 13, August 1938, quoted here from Barbara Müller-Wesemann: Theater as spiritual resistance: The Jewish cultural association in Hamburg 1934–1941. M & P Verlag for Science and Research, Stuttgart 1997, p. 278.
44. ^ Gudrun Jäger: Gertrud Kolmar and Nelly Sachs in the context of the German-Jewish cultural ghetto (1936–1940) . In: exile. Research, Findings, Results , Volume 17 (1997), Issue 1, pp. 5–17, here: p. 15.