Ernst Schönwiese

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Ernst Schönwiese, 1954

Ernst Schönwiese (born January 6, 1905 in Vienna ; † April 4, 1991 ibid) Austrian writer, poet, program director for literature, radio plays and science at Austrian Broadcasting .

Life

Ernst Schönwiese began early to deal with literature and also to write himself. In 1935 he published an anthology of twelve Austrian poets entitled Patmos (including texts by Robert Musil , Hermann Broch , Ernst Waldinger , Erika Mitterer and Heinz Politzer ), which also contained Schönwiese's own texts. Schönwiese joined the skepticism of rationalism that had been practiced in the bourgeois camp since the beginning of the 20th century and the thesis of the decline of the occidental cultural tradition. Until the " Anschluss of Austria " in 1938, Schönwiese was studying law and German at the University of Vienna. a. active as a publicist and from 1929 as a lecturer at the Volkshochschule Wien-Leopoldstadt. At the beginning of the thirties Schönwiese belonged to the circle around Franz Blei in the Viennese Café Herrenhof . He invited Musil, Gütersloh, Brod, Csokor and Liegler to readings; Theodor Kramer, Erika Mitterer, Ernst Waldinger and Heinz Politzer were guests of the younger authors. These events formed the preliminary stage of the silver boat , on which most of the authors mentioned later contributed.

Schönwiese spent the period from 1938 to 1945 as a correspondent for a press agency in Hungary. During this time he began to study German and Far Eastern mysticism, which was to become decisive for his further work. In 1945 he fled from the Soviet troops to Salzburg and in 1945 became head of the literature department of the station Rot-Weiß-Rot , after which he was program director for literature, radio plays and science at the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) in Vienna from 1954 to 1971 . Between 1947 and 1957 most of his own volumes of poetry were published.

As a writer, Schönwiese was primarily an essayist and poet. Influenced by Hermann Broch's cultural philosophy and mysticism (both in Europe and in the Far East), he also worked as a translator of numerous works in this direction. As editor of the literary magazine das silberboot (1935/36, 1946–1952), he campaigned for writers in exile in addition to the authors of “classical modernism”.

He exchanged extensive letters with Otto F. Beer , Franz Blei , Felix Braun , Hermann Broch, Max Brod , Elias Canetti , Franz Theodor Csokor , Ludwig von Ficker , Erich Fried , Albert Paris Gütersloh , Michael Guttenbrunner , Hermann Hesse , Klara Köttner- Benigni , Theodor Kramer , Alexander Lernet-Holenia , Ernst Lothar , Manès Sperber , Friedrich Torberg , Johannes Urzidil , Hans Weigel and others. a.

From 1971 Schönwiese was a student of Prof. Garma CC Chang , an eminent Chinese Buddhist scholar and meditation teacher who taught Buddhist philosophy at Pennsylvania State University . In the following years Schönwiese translated and published some important works by Prof. Chang: Mahamudra -Fibel (1979), The Practice of Zen (1982), The Buddhist Doctrine of the Wholeness of Being (1989).

His final resting place is in the Vienna Central Cemetery in the Ehrenhain (group 40, number 165).

Awards and memberships

Grave of Ernst Schönwiese

Works

  • The ferry 1946. An almanac. Weismann, Munich 1946.
  • Silberboot Almanach for the year 1946. Das Silberboot, Salzburg 1946.
  • Exit and return. Poems. Müller, Vienna 1947.
  • The seven-colored bow. Poems. Weismann, Munich 1947.
  • The lasting. Poems. The exit, Thal 1950.
  • Night and promise. Poems. Gurlitt, Vienna, Linz, Munich 1950.
  • The never lost paradise. Seals of humility, death and eternity to nine stone drawings by Ernst Barlach. Gurlitt, Vienna, Linz, Munich 1951.
  • Stages of the heart. New poems. With illustrations by Oskar Kokoschka . Gurlitt, Vienna, Linz, Munich 1956.
  • Dream and transformation. Introduced and selected by Joseph P. Strelka . Stiasny, Graz 1961.
  • Tree and tear. Poems. Limes, Wiesbaden 1962.
  • Mysterious ball game. Poems. Limes, Wiesbaden 1964.
  • Odysseus and the Alchemist. Poems. Limes, Wiesbaden 1968. (Limes Nova 23).
  • Literature in Vienna between 1930–1980. Amalthea, Vienna 1980.
  • Answers in bird language. Limes, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 3-89086-644-1 .
  • The old and the young Chronos. Selected poems.

Translations

  • Garma CC Chang: Mahamudra primer. Octopus Verlag, Vienna, 1979.
  • Garma CC Chang: The Practice of Zen. Aurum Verlag, Braunschweig 1982.
  • Garma CC Chang: The Buddhist doctrine of the wholeness of being. OW Barth Verlag, Munich 1989.
  • Douglas Harding: The Mountain Path and On Having No Head.
  • Tu Shun: Dharmadhata Meditation and Treatise on the Golden Lion.
  • Hannya Shingyo: Essence of the Sutra.

Publication of anthologies

  • Austrian poetry after 1945.
  • The timeless word. Anthology of German Poems.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Literary life in Vienna in the thirties. Memories of the lead music table in the Café Herrenhof in: Ernst Schönwiese, Literature in Vienna between 1930 - 1980, Almathea-Verlag Vienna, Munich 1980, pp. 71–90. ISBN 3-85 002-116-5


personal data
SURNAME Schönwiese, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 4, 1991
Place of death Vienna