Friedrich Koffka

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Friedrich Koffka (born April 22, 1888 in Berlin , † November 5, 1951 in London ) was a German lawyer and writer .

Life

Koffka was born in Berlin to Jewish parents. His father was a lawyer, his older brother was the psychologist Kurt Koffka . He studied in Berlin law . After the first state examination in 1910 and the legal clerkship, he passed the second state examination in March 1915 .

Koffka found access to the theater early on. The 19-year-old's first theater review of a Hamlet performance was published in the Schaubühne as early as 1907 . An essay follows a year later on the emperor's twenty-year service anniversary. He becomes a member of the New Club founded by Kurt Hiller , which fights against the decadence of the Wilhelminian era and is close to literary expressionism.

During the First World War he was initially a volunteer nurse, then a soldier ( Iron Cross II. Class and Red Cross Medal II. Class). After the end of the war, Koffka initially joined the Prussian Ministry of Justice in September 1919. From 1921 he was a district court advisor at the AG Charlottenburg , from 1927 an assistant judge at the local court of justice (= OLG) and from 1930 a senior judge.

In addition to studying and serving as a judge, Koffka wrote dramas, his first work David und Absalom appears again in the Schaubühne in 1913, and was among other things an employee of the, the Blätter des Deutschen Theater and the magazine Das Tage-Buch , where he - as well as in the Schaubühne - a Published essay on Expressionism . About his stories published in the Tages-Buch in 1924, he himself expresses that the absurdity of human fate in these works can only be explained by the fact that the devil himself must be the author of world history.

During his time in court in Charlottenburg, he met the poet Paula Ludwig in 1925 , with whom he entered into a relationship that lasted until 1930. Ludwig dedicated her volume of poetry "Himmlische Spiegel", published in 1927, to him. Whether the separation - despite previously forged marriage plans - was more due to the fact that the illegitimate mother Ludwig was considered inappropriate for Koffka's family, or because of Koffka's reluctance himself is controversial. He later married another woman and divorced in 1936.

As a Jew, he was given a forced leave of absence due to Kerrl's decree at the beginning of April 1933, but was initially able to return to the judicial service after the enactment of the law to restore the professional civil service as a combatant in the First World War in June 1933. It was not until March 1, 1937 that he had to finally resign from the judicial service. Koffka emigrated to England in 1938. After the outbreak of World War II he was interned as a German for a while. Like many emigrants, he first had to make do with ancillary activities. Not until 1942 did he get a job with the British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation . He also wrote radio plays and articles under the pseudonym Florin ("Letters to Elinor Gardens") for Die Zeitung, which appeared from 1943 to 1945 (in German and funded by the British Ministry of Information). After the end of the war, he finally worked as an announcer and editor for the BBC , for whose German-language programs he also edited numerous works by William Shakespeare , Jane Austen , Charles Dickens and others.

Unlike other emigrants, Koffka decided to stay in Great Britain after the war. He turned away from Germany because of his experiences: “But where is Germany now? (...) The country that was once our home has lost its reality for us. "

Works (selection)

  • David and Absalom. Fragment of a 1913 play
  • Cain. Drama 1917
  • Mr. Oluf . Drama 1919
  • Letters to Elinor Gardens. Radio play 1943
  • Goethe in England. Radio play 1949
  • Uncle Toby. Radio play 1950
  • Wellington. Radio play 1951

literature

  • Harro Kieser:  Koffka, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 417 ( digitized version ).
  • Walther Killy (Ed.): Literatur-Lexikon 1990, Vol. 6
  • Lovis Maxim Wambach, Die Dichterjuristen des Expressionismus, 2002, p. 326 f
  • Hans Bergemann / Simone Ladwig-Winters, Jewish judges at the Supreme Court after 1933. A documentation, 2004, pp. 59, 105
  • Barbara Hartlage-Laufenberg, Two lawyers, two writers, two Jews - Friedrich Koffka and Kurt Messow, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW) 2013, pp. 748–752

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Barbara Hartlage-Laufenberg, Two lawyers, two writers, two Jews - Friedrich Koffka and Kurt Messow . In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift , issue 11/2013, pp. 748–752.
  2. ↑ Barbara Hartlage-Laufenberg, two lawyers, two writers, two Jews - Friedrich Koffka and Kurt Messow . In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift , issue 11/2013, page 749.
  3. ^ Quoted from Barbara Hartlage-Laufenberg, two lawyers, two writers, two Jews - Friedrich Koffka and Kurt Messow . In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift , issue 11/2013, page 750.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Koffka, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Florin (pseudonym); Sincerus (pseudonym); Sincerus, Florin (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 1951
Place of death London