Gina Kaus

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Gina Kaus (born as Regina Wiener October 21, 1893 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died December 23, 1985 in Los Angeles ) was an Austrian writer , translator and screenwriter .

Life

Tomorrow at nine o'clock , the book-burning memorial on Bonn's market square

Regina Wiener was the daughter of Max Wiener, a money broker from Pressburg , and attended a secondary school for girls . Her half-sister was Stephanie Richter , who later achieved dubious fame . Even before the outbreak of World War I, she married the musician Josef Zirner in 1913, who died as a soldier in 1915. Gina then lived with her in-laws, the Zirners, who ran a jewelry store. There she met a relative of the family, Joseph Kranz. The bank director, cartel president and supplier to the army was a well-known figure among the upper Jewish bourgeoisie in Vienna. She became his lover and was eventually adopted by him for financial security. During this time she had the surname Zirner-Kranz . She began to write, and in 1917 her comedy Diebe im Haus was premiered in the Vienna Burgtheater . At Café Herrenhof, Gina was part of the literary circle around Franz Blei . There she met the writer and psychologist Otto Kaus , whom she married in 1920. Her two sons Otto and Peter came from this marriage.

In the meantime she wrote for the BZ am Mittag , the Vossische Zeitung , Die Dame and the Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung . In the twenties that followed , after the publication of her first novella Der Aufstieg , for which she also received the Fontane Prize (1921), Gina Kaus participated intensively in the life of the literary intellectual circles in Berlin and Vienna. A friendship with Karl Kraus and a relationship with Otto Soyka , about which she wrote in her later autobiography From Vienna to Hollywood : "I had a lover whom I did not love," were witnesses of this bond. Other friends from the circle around Franz Blei were Franz Werfel , Hermann Broch , Milena Jesenská and Robert Musil . She also attended the private seminars of her psychologist friend, Alfred Adler .

In 1924 Otto and Gina Kaus moved to Berlin, where they founded a women's advice center and the magazine Die Mutter . In 1926 the marriage with Otto Kaus was divorced. In 1928 Gina Kaus published her first novel Die Verliebten bei Ullstein in Berlin. In 1933, her books fell victim to the book destruction of the National Socialists. Her novel Die Schwestern Kleh was published by Allert de Lange in Amsterdam in 1933 . The biographical novel Catherine the Great was published in 1935 and became a bestseller in the United States. In the 1930s she also lived in London for a while, finally back in Vienna, which she left shortly after the " Anschluss of Austria " on March 14, 1938, together with her sons and her new partner, the lawyer Eduard Frischauer. They fled via Switzerland to Paris and on to southern France.

On September 1, 1939, she arrived on the Île de France in New York. After a brief internment on Ellis Island , she settled in Hollywood on November 1, 1939 . There she mainly edited her own stories and dramas for the film. The novel Teufel next door , written in 1940, was filmed in 1956 under the title Devil in Silk under the direction of Rolf Hansen with Lilli Palmer and Curd Jürgens in the leading roles . Among the friendships with numerous German emigrants in Hollywood, the one with Vicki Baum stood out. In 1948 she visited Vienna again for the first time, and in 1951 Berlin. However, Gina Kaus could not make up her mind to return to Europe permanently. She died in Los Angeles on December 23, 1985 at the age of ninety-two.

Works (selection)

Gina Kaus wrote some of her works, including her first play for the stage, under the pseudonym Andreas Eckbrecht .

  • 1917 Thieves in the House (Drama)
  • 1920 The rise. Georg Müller Vlg., Munich (novella)
  • 1926 The Ridiculous Third (drama)
  • 1926 Toni (drama)
  • 1928 The lovers. Ullstein, Berlin (novel); New edition ed. v. Hartmut Vollmer. Igel-Verlag, Oldenburg 1999
  • 1928 The Front of Life (novel) in sequels in the Arbeiter-Zeitung , first book edition 2014
  • 1932 Die Überfahrt / Luxusdampfer - novel of a crossing. Knorr & Hirth Vlg., Munich (novel)
  • 1932 at nine tomorrow. Ullstein, Berlin (novel)
  • 1933 The Kleh sisters (novel; new editions: 1951, 2013)
  • 1935 Katharina the Great (biographical novel)
  • 1936 Josephine and Madame Tallien
  • 1937 prison without bars (drama)
  • 1937 writing on the wall (drama)
  • 1937 whiskey and soda (drama)
  • 1937 The night before the divorce (dramatic adaptation of the novel "Tomorrow at nine")
  • 1940 The devil next door / Melanie. Allert de Lange Vlg., Amsterdam. (Novel)
  • In 1979 she wrote her autobiography in the USA under the title And what a life ... with love and literature, theater and film (Albrecht Knaus Vlg., Munich)

Prices

  • Fontane Prize (1921)
  • Goethe Prize of the City of Bremen (1927)

Work editions

  • From Vienna to Hollywood. Memories from Gina Kaus. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-38257-8 (i.e. the autobiography from 1979)
  • Hartmut Vollmer (Ed.): The Irresistible. Little prose. Igel-Verlag, Oldenburg 2000, ISBN 3-89621-114-5 .
  • Veronika Hofeneder (ed.): The front of life. With a foreword by Marlene Streeruwitz . Metro-Verlag, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-99300-182-7 .

Selection expenses

  • Veronika Hofeneder (Ed.): Today as yesterday. Broken hearts. Modern women. Brave children. Little prose. Olms, Hildesheim u. a. 2013, ISBN 978-3-487-08533-3 .

literature

  • Veronika Hofeneder: The productive cosmos of Gina Kaus. Writer - pedagogue - revolutionary. Olms, Hildesheim u. a. 2013, ISBN 978-3-487-15060-4 .
  • Dagmar Malone: Gina Kaus. In: John M. Spalek , Joseph Strelka (ed.): German exile literature since 1933. Volume 1: California. Francke, Bern / Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7720-1158-6 , pp. 751-761.
  • Sibylle Mulot : Epilogue to Gina Kaus. In: Gina Kaus: From Vienna to Hollywood. Memories from Gina Kaus . (= TB 1757). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-38257-8 , pp. 239-251.
  • Hartmut Vollmer: Gina Kaus. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler's Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-476-01682-X , pp. 301-303.
  • Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books . Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 , pp. 75-77.
  • Edda Ziegler: The burned female poets. Writers against National Socialism. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2007, pp. 157–164.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martha Schad: Hitler's spy. The life of Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Munich 2002, p. 8 and note p. 248.
  2. ↑ Otto M. Kaus (January 7, 1920 - January 11, 1996), attorney and federal judge in California.
  3. ^ Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Karola Ludwig, Angela Wöffen: Lexicon of German-speaking women writers 1800–1945. dtv Munich, 1986, ISBN 3-423-03282-0 . P. 153 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Kaus, Gina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eckbrecht, Andreas (pseudonym); Wiener, Regina (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, translator and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1985
Place of death los Angeles