Essad Bey

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Memorial plaque on the house at Fasanenstrasse 72 in Berlin

Essad Bey (actually Lew Abramowitsch Nussimbaum , also Noussimbaum in Russian Лев Абрамович Нуссимбаум or Нусенбаум ; born October 20, 1905 in Baku , then Russian Empire ; † August 27, 1942 in Positano , Italy ) was a German-speaking writer of Russian descent. He also published his works under the pseudonyms Kurban Said , Mohammed Essad-Bey , Esad Bej and Qûrbân Saîd .

Life

Essad Bey was born in Baku in 1905 as the only child of the wealthy Georgian-Jewish oil industrialist Abraham Nussimbaum and Berta Slutsky, a Russian-Jewish leftist. His father's marriage possibly only came about because he had ransomed the imprisoned girl from Baku prison and persuaded her to marry the "class enemy". In 1911 the mother committed suicide; from then on a German nanny, Alice Schulte, looked after the child. Lev Nussimbaum attended Baku grammar school with interruptions until 1918 . In the course of the independence efforts of the Caucasian states and the resulting ethnic conflicts, uprisings and revolts broke out in Baku. With the outbreak of the October Revolution and the approach of the Bolsheviks , his father decided in 1918 to flee across the Caspian Sea . When the situation temporarily calmed down, the family returned home one last time. But with the Bolshevik conquest of Baku in 1920, 15-year-old Lev fled to the German colony of Helenendorf without his father . From there he moved on to Istanbul via Tbilisi and Batumi . After short stops in Paris and Rome , he reached Berlin that same year , where he also met his father again. The family settled in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . Lev passed his Abitur in 1921 at the Russian Gymnasium in Berlin.

In August 1922 Lev Nussimbaum converted to Islam, henceforth called himself Essad Bey, and began to become more involved in the Berlin Islamic community. With the winter semester of 1922 he enrolled at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in the subjects of Turkish , Arabic and Islamic history. Because of his interest in art and literature, he maintained close contacts to the Berlin literary and journalist scene, where he met Else Lasker-Schüler , Vladimir Nabokov and Boris Leonidowitsch Pasternak . He worked as a journalist for various German newspapers, e.g. As for the German Allgemeine Zeitung , but especially with Willy Haas ' The literary world with the subjects of the Orient and Islam . The Austrian political scientist Farid Hafez describes the pan-Islamic orientation of Essad Bey's thinking in an article . Essad Bey's first book was published in 1929, the autobiographical novel Oil and Blood in the Orient (new edition 2008). Bey's successful debut has been translated into six languages. This was followed by two more books on the Caucasus, the publication of which definitely made the author one of the most recognized experts on the Orient during the Weimar Republic .

"In a sense, fascism can be described as the Islam of the 20th century."

- Essad Bey. Preface to Maometto, Firenze 1935, page V.

At the same time, Essad Bey began to publish some works critical of the Soviet Union , including a biography of Stalin (whom he may have met in Baku when he was young) and a book about the Soviet secret service GPU . During this time he also gave some anti-communist lectures. In 1932 he married Erika Loewendahl, the daughter of a manufacturer of Jewish descent, and took her on an extensive trip to America. In the same year he published a biography of the Prophet Mohammed with Kiepenheuer in Berlin , which is still considered a standard work today. When the National Socialists came to power , Bey's Jewish roots remained unrecognized for the time being, his attitude critical of communism did another thing, so that Bey joined the Reich Literature Chamber around 1934 and was able to continue publishing in Berlin, with Hans Heinz Ewers and Wolfgang von Weisl , among others . In 1936 Bey left Germany for good and moved to Vienna with his wife . In 1935 she had already entered into a relationship with one of Bey's closest friends, the writer René Fülöp Miller . The marriage was divorced, the separation hit Bey very hard and he had to seek medical treatment. Friends persuaded him to take a flight over the Libyan desert .

Essad Bey was banned from publishing in Germany in 1936. In the same year in a Vienna publishing the novel was published Ali and Nino . The author of this love story between a Muslim Azeri and a Georgian Christian was called Kurban Said . Bey used this pseudonym with the help of the Austrian Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels von Bodmersdorf, wife of Rolf "Omar" Baron von Ehrenfels , who also converted to Islam , in order to be able to continue to publish his novels in Germany. Ali and Nino became a great success in Germany and Austria and is still Bey's best-known and most successful book today (new edition 2000 by Ullstein , 2002 by List ). The follow-up novel Das Mädchen vom Goldenen Horn was also sold in Germany in 1938 under a pseudonym. Because of a work assignment in Italy (possibly to write a Mussolini biography) Bey traveled via Switzerland to Rome , Milan , Venice and Florence in 1938 . Severe foot pain accompanied the trip. In Positano , southern Italy, a doctor finally diagnosed Raynaud's disease . The severe pain forced him to bed, he needed a lot of morphine . Under these circumstances, writing became increasingly difficult for him, only his former nanny Alice Schulte was with him and looked after him. Essad Bey's last work, the autobiographically tinged novel The Man Who Understood nothing of love , which he wrote with dwindling strength during the time of his illness, has not yet been published.

The American journalist Tom Reiss has researched the life of Lev Nussimbaum / Essad Bey / Kurban Said in detail and published the biography The Orientalist in New York and London in 2005 . It was published in 2008 in a translation by Jutta Bretthauer under the title The Orientalist in Germany.

Works

as Essad Bey

  • Six cities underground: new excavations in Palestine . In: Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , July 25, 1928
  • Oil and blood in the Orient . DVA, Stuttgart 1929.
  • Twelve secrets in the Caucasus . German-Swiss Publishing House, Berlin 1930.
  • The Caucasus. Its mountains, peoples and history . German book club, Berlin 1931.
  • Stalin . Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1931.
  • White Russia . Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1932.
  • Mohammed. A biography . Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1932.
  • GPU The conspiracy against the world . Etthofen, Berlin 1932.
  • Russia at a crossroads . Etthofen, Berlin 1933.
  • Liquid gold. A struggle for power . Etthofen, Berlin 1933.
  • Lenin . Treves, Milan 1935. (Italian translation by Emilio Castellani; there was no German edition)
  • Nikolaus II. Glanz u. Fall of the last tsar . Holle, Berlin 1935.
  • Reza Shah. General, emperor, reformer . Passer, Vienna 1936.
  • with Wolfgang von Weisl : Allah is great. Decline and rise of the Islamic world from Abdul Hamid to Ibn Saud . Passer, Leipzig 1936.

as Kurban Said

Envelope from Ali and Nino
  • Ali and Nino . EP Tal, Vienna 1937
  • The girl from the Golden Horn . Zinnen, Vienna 1938

Revisions

literature

Web links

Commons : Essad Bey  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Italian fascism is meant. The preface with this famous quote can only be found in the Italian edition (Bemporad publishing house). The quote is also passed down from Gino Cerbella, Fascismo e Islamismo , Tripolis 1938, p. 11, and it is sometimes erroneously ascribed to this functionary of fascism.
  2. ↑ Studies by Betty Blair and Könül Samedowa, which were published in 2011 in the US magazine Azerbaijan International (see bibliography), deny Essad Bey the authorship. You won't be the first to find the actual author in the Azerbaijani writer Yusif Vəzir Çəmənzəminli . Çəmənzəminli's authorship seems more than questionable today.
  3. ^ Authorship controversial, see above
  4. ↑ Review by Stefan Weidner: Adventures of a Chameleon, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 31, 2018
  5. ^ Authorship controversial, see above
personal data
SURNAME Bey, Essad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Noussimbaum, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Baku , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 1942
Place of death Positano , Italy