Franz Pfemfert

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Franz Pfemfert (born November 20, 1879 in Lötzen , East Prussia (today: Giżycko , Poland), † May 26, 1954 in Mexico City ) was a German publicist, editor of the magazine Die Aktion , literary critic, politician and portrait photographer.

Pfemfert occasionally wrote under the pseudonym U. Gaday (derived from Russian угадай ugadai " guess what ").

Life

1879-1900

Franz Pfemfert was born in 1879 in the East Prussian town of Lötzen. Soon after his birth, his parents moved to Berlin, where Pfemfert attended the Joachimsthal Gymnasium . After his father's death in 1892, his mother signed him out of school because she wanted him to help out in her poultry and fish shop in Berlin-Charlottenburg . Pfemfert, however, resisted, went to his grandfather in Lötzen for some time and joined a traveling circus for about a year. Around 1900 he probably worked as a messenger for some time and probably also completed an apprenticeship as a printer. His first contact with literary and anarchist circles was around 1900.

1900-1918

Memorial plaque on the house at Nassauische Strasse 17 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

In 1903 he made the acquaintance of his future wife Alexandra Ramm through the anarchist Senna Hoy ; the two married in 1912. Pfemfert's first poems appeared in 1904 in Senna Hoy's magazine Kampf and in another anarchist magazine, The Poor Devil . From 1909 to 1910 Pfemfert worked for the magazine Das Blaubuch , and in 1910 he became editor of the radical democratic magazine Der Demokratie . After a dispute with the publisher Georg Zepler, who had removed a text by Kurt Hiller from the magazine without consulting Pfemfert, Pfemfert left the magazine and founded his own magazine Die Aktion .

The first issue of Action was published on 20 February 1911. The magazine quickly became not only a leading political body for all those left of the SPD stood, but by Pfemfert skill as an editor and a forum for leading artists and writers of Expressionism .

In the April 17, 1911 edition, he took a radical stand against the Wilhelmine school system. The motivation was the suicides of three students from Berlin.

The magazine's reputation was supported by so-called “action evenings” - readings with the magazine's authors, as well as by the “action balls” organized by Pfemfert's wife. From 1911 to 1933 Pfemfert lived in the Berlin district of Wilmersdorf at Nassauische Strasse 17 .

Pfemfert had sharply criticized the SPD's nationalist policy long before the beginning of World War I. He remained true to this line even after the outbreak of war. The only two members of the SPD who had voted against the war credits in the Reichstag , Karl Liebknecht and Otto Rühle , became friends and political allies of Franz Pfemfert. During the war, containing action to bypass censorship, direct political statements. Pfemfert managed, however, by printing war poems (for example by Oskar Kanehl ), by assembling war-glorifying reports from other newspapers and by special issues devoted to the culture of an "enemy country", to maintain his course.

In 1913/14, he published the monthly journal Der Anfang , edited by Georges Barbizon (d. I. Georg Gretor ) and Siegfried Bernfeld and responsible for press law by Gustav Wyneken , which met with widespread response in German-speaking countries and was the most important journal of the youth culture movement of those years. Among the authors of the beginning was u. a. also Walter Benjamin .

As early as 1915, together with other war opponents, he founded the Anti-National Socialist Party , which worked illegally. In 1917 his wife opened the “Aktion Buch- und Kunsthandlung” in Berlin-Wilmersdorf at Kaiserallee 222 (today Bundesallee ), where from 1917 to 1918 exhibitions were held with works by, among others, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Egon Schiele .

Also during the war, Die Aktion published several series of publications, namely the Political Action Library (from 1916, with works by Alexander Herzen , Ludwig Rubiner , Lenin , Karl Marx, etc.), the Action Library of the Aeternists (from 1916, with works by Carl Einstein , Franz Jung , Gottfried Benn and others), the action poetry (from 1916, with works by Gottfried Benn, Oskar Kanehl, Wilhelm Klemm and others) and the library Der Rote Hahn (1917–1925, with works by Victor Hugo , Leo Tolstoy) , Hedwig Dohm , Karl Otten , Franz Mehring , Carl Sternheim , Jakob van Hoddis , Max Herrmann-Neiße and others).

1918-1933

After the end of the war, Pfemfert supported the Spartacus League . From this time on, he turned Die Aktion into an undogmatic, left-wing political magazine - mostly beyond all parties. He subsequently fell out with many of the writers he had previously promoted - most of whom he had discovered and brought out first - because he accused them of selling out. When the KPD was founded, Pfemfert quickly broke with the emerging party bureaucracy and instead became involved with the KAPD , of which he was a member for a short time. From 1921 he was active with Otto Rühle in the General Workers Union Organization (AAUE), and in 1926 in the second Spartakusbund . He maintained critical solidarity contact with Rudolf Rocker and the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD) (anarcho-syndicalists).

In 1927, after having been interested in photography for a long time, he opened a “workshop for portrait photography”, with which he also earned a living for himself and his wife. Well-known and still often printed portraits of artists, publicists and politicians such as Gottfried Benn , Karl Kraus , André Gide and Frans Masereel were created here or in Pfemfert's later studios.

From 1927 Pfemfert was repeatedly seriously ill. In 1927, 1930 and again in 1932 he spent a long time in hospitals and for cures. This, as well as the deteriorating political situation, suffered from Die Aktion - the magazines only appeared irregularly.

From 1929 Alexandra Ramm-Pfemfert was the literary agent and translator of Leon Trotsky . As a result, a lively correspondence developed, not only between Pfemfert's wife and Trotsky, but also between Pfemfert and Trotsky, who was living in exile in Turkey (Pfemfert's wife and Trotsky corresponded in Russian, Pfemfert and Trotsky in German, which was not a problem. since Trotsky spoke German very well).

1933-1954

After the National Socialists came to power , the Pfemferts fled Berlin hastily in early March 1933 and went via Dresden to Karlsbad , where Franz Pfemfert again opened a photo studio. The existence of the Pfemferts in Czechoslovakia was, however, constantly in jeopardy, not only because they relied on financial support from friends, but also because they were politically and socially isolated: the mostly German-nationally-minded Sudeten Germans were just as suspicious of the left-wing couple as the Czech and German Communists loyal to the line who lived there in exile. So in October 1936 they went to Paris .

In exile in Paris, the Pfemferts were less isolated, as not only a few relatives of Alexandra Ramm-Pfemfert lived there, but also acquaintances from the time in Berlin such as Thea Sternheim , Franz Jung , his brother-in-law Carl Einstein and Lew Lwowitsch Sedow . Franz Pfemfert also opened a photo studio here again. Politically, the two were only little active at that time - and then only in secret - because on the one hand the French government suppressed political statements by emigrants and on the other hand agents of the Soviet secret service GPU made such an engagement dangerous to life (her friend Kurt Landau was in murdered by Soviet agents at that time and Trotsky's son Lev L. Sedov died under mysterious circumstances).

After the outbreak of the Second World War , the Pfemferts were first interned in Paris as “enemy foreigners”, then separated from one another and deported to camps in southern France. Franz Pfemfert was presumably interned in the Bassens camp near Bordeaux , from which he soon managed to escape in an unknown manner. In the summer of 1940 Pfemfert finally met his wife again in Perpignan , who had also fled the camp. From there they both went to Marseille , from where, after a long struggle for correct papers, they finally emigrated via Lisbon to New York and from there to Mexico. They arrived in Mexico City in the spring of 1941 .

In Mexico, the Pfemferts were almost completely isolated. At the age of 57 and 62, respectively, they were in an unknown country, neither spoke Spanish, had no money and hardly any acquaintances. Only Natalia Ivanovna Sedova , Trotsky's widow, supported the two and was in constant contact with them. The attempt to travel further to the USA failed because of the restrictive entry policy of the USA - even though Albert Einstein vouched in writing for the good repute of the Pfemferts and an American industrialist was found who was willing to take responsibility for them financially.

Franz Pfemfert also reopened a photo studio in Mexico City, but he and his wife could not live on the income. Most of them were dependent on donations from third parties and the funds of the International Rescue Committee . In 1952 Franz Pfemfert was diagnosed with liver cancer, of which he died in 1954.

plant

Franz Pfemfert is known today almost exclusively as the founder and editor of the avant-garde magazine Die Aktion - although here, too, mostly only the early editions from 1911 to 1918 are perceived as a forum for expressionist art and literature. Alongside Maximilian Harden, Pfemfert was one of the main promoters and discoverers of Expressionist and other modern artists and authors. "At the height of his time, sometimes preceded, Franz Pfemfert made the action the nucleus of the German political, artistic and literary avant-garde of the early 20th century."

Attempts to make his other journalistic and political works known again from the 1980s onwards went largely unnoticed outside of specialist circles.

Pfemfert's early estate, including in particular the extensive archive of “Aktion”, was confiscated in the spring of 1933 and is considered lost. When his later "estate, which contains a photo collection, is to be brought back to Berlin in 1955, everything is lost in a shipwreck."

Works

  • Thomas Rietzschel (ed.): The action: 1911–1918; Weekly for politics, literature and art, a selection. DuMont, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-7701-2137-6 .
  • Wolfgang Haug (Ed.): Franz Pfemfert. I put this magazine against this time. Social-political and literary-critical texts. Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1985, ISBN 3-472-61559-1 .
  • The action . Reprint of volumes 9 (1919) - 22 (1932). Kraus Reprint, Nendeln 1976.
  • The action. Reprint of volumes 1 (1911) - 8 (1918). Introduced and commented by Paul Raabe. Kösel, Stuttgart 1961-1967.
  • The complete reprint campaign (without pure advertising pages): Years 1 (1911) - 22 (1932), in 15 volumes with an introduction and commentary by Paul Raabe . Kraus Reprint, Millwood, NY 1983.
  • Pfemfert. Reminders and settlements. Texts and letters. Edited by Lisbeth Exner and Herbert Kapfer . Belleville, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-933510-18-X (see reviews at Perlentaucher.de )

literature

  • Gleb Albert: One man, one sheet. Franz Pfemfert and “Die Aktion” 1911–1932. In: versa. Journal of Politics and Art. 2007, 7, pp. 48-62. ISSN  1614-8711
  • Ursula Walburga Baumeister: The action: 1911–1932. Journalistic opposition and literary activism of the magazine in a restrictive context. Erlanger Studies, Erlangen and Jena 1996, ISBN 3-7896-0807-6 .
  • Marcel Bois: Communists against Hitler and Stalin. The left opposition of the KPD in the Weimar Republic. Klartext, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8375-1282-3
  • Marcel Bois: A transnational friendship in an age of extremes. Leon Trotsky and the Pfemferts , in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , 14th vol., 2015, no. 3, pp. 98–116.
  • Marcel Bois: A Transnational Friendship in the Age of Extremes: Leon Trotsky and the Pfemferts , in: Twentieth Century Communism. A Journal of International History 10, 2016, pp. 9-29.
  • Marcel Bois: Beyond Expressionism. The action as a journal of communist dissidence during the Weimar Republic , in: Expressionismus 5, 2017, pp. 98–116.
  • Marcel Bois: “The other Germany embodied Pfemfert.” The magazine Die Aktion und der First World War , in: Frank Jacob and Riccardo Altieri (eds.): War and Peace in the Mirror of Socialism 1914–1918 , Berlin 2018, pp. 190– 202.
  • Karin Bruns:  Pfemfert, Franz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 330 ( digitized version ).
  • Michael Enderlein: Against the holy German indolence. Franz Pfemfert and his “action” in the expressionist decade. In: Musil Forum. Berlin 2003, 28, pp. 242-269. ISSN  1016-1333
  • Lisbeth Exner : Forgotten Myths. Franz Pfemfert and “Die Aktion” . In: Lisbeth Exner / Herbert Kapfer (ed.): Pfemfert. Reminders and settlements. Texts and letters. Belleville, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-923646-35-6 .
  • Wolfgang Haug : The "phenomenon" Franz Pfemfert. In: Wolfgang Haug (Ed.): Franz Pfemfert. I put this magazine against this time. Social-political and literary-critical essays. Luchterhand, Darmstadt-Neuwied 1985, pp. 7–68, ISBN 3-472-61559-1 .
  • Pfemfert, Franz . In: Andreas Herbst , Hermann Weber  : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. 2., revised. and strong exp. Edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Paul Raabe : “I cut out time.” Expressionism and politics in Franz Pfemfert's “Aktion”. dtv, Munich 1964.
  • Herbert Kapfer : Persecution and Paranoia. Franz Pfemfert after the "action". In: Lisbeth Exner, Herbert Kapfer (Ed.): Pfemfert. Reminders and settlements. Texts and letters. Belleville, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-923646-35-6 .
  • Julijana Ranc: Alexandra Ramm-Pfemfert. A counter-life. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-89401-446-6 .
  • Lutz Schulenburg : Franz Pfemfert. In memory of a revolutionary intellectual. In: The Action. 2004, 209, pp. 9-98. ISSN  0516-334X
  • Birgit Schmidt : The one-man party. To the councilor communist Franz Pfemfert on the 50th anniversary of his death In: Jungle World No. 23, May 26, 2004, http://jungle-world.com/artikel/2004/22/13011.html

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The beginning: Journal of the youth. In: Compact Memory. Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, accessed on September 26, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Josef Smolen: The Red Rooster. A bibliography . Berlin-Charlottenburg, Rotes Antiquariat 2019.
  3. ^ Peter Kamber: Fritz and Alfred Rotter. A life between theatrical splendor and death in exile . Henschel Verlag in EA Seemann Henschel, Leipzig 2020, p. 141.
personal data
SURNAME Pfemfert, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES U. Gaday (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publicist, editor, literary critic and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Lötzen , East Prussia (today: Giżycko, Poland)
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1954
Place of death Mexico City , Mexico