Hans Flesch-Brunningen

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Hans Flesch-Brunningen (actually Johannes Evangelista Luitpold Flesch Edler von Brunningen; pseudonyms: Johannes von Bruning, Vincent Brun, Flesch-Brun; born  February 5, 1895 in Brno ; † August 1, 1981 in Bad Ischl , Upper Austria ) was an Austrian writer and translator.

Life

Flesch came from the originally Jewish Flesch family who immigrated to Frankfurt from Prague in 1530. Isidor Vincenz Flesch, factory owner in Brno, received the hereditary Austrian nobility as "Edler von Brunningen" in 1879. Hans Flesch-Brunnen's uncle was the Viennese architect Gustav Flesch-Brunningen , who built the Schwarzspanierhaus in 1904 , his aunt the painter Luma von Flesch-Brunningen , his cousin was the director and set designer Gustav Manker .

The young Hans Flesch Edler von Brunningen grew up in Abbazia ( Opatija ; today Croatia) and in Vienna. He attended high school in Hietzingen and, as a high school student, edited the hectographed literary magazine “Das neue Land” together with Hans Kaltneker and Paul Zsolnay . After high school, he began to study law, which was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. He served as a one-year volunteer in Volhynia and Italy . He then finished his studies, received his doctorate in 1919 and married for the first time in the same year. Until 1923 he worked as a bank clerk, then as a trainee lawyer in Vienna. But such civic occupation was probably not his true calling: in 1925 he left his family, went to Italy and lived on Capri . In Paris he made the acquaintance of the famous author James Joyce .

In 1928 Flesch-Brunningen moved to Berlin as a freelance writer . At the same time he made trips to France and Italy. But after the “seizure of power” by the National Socialists , there was no longer any remaining in Germany.

Hans Flesch-Brunningen emigrated to Great Britain via the Netherlands in 1933 ; In early 1934 he reached London completely penniless , where he had to keep his head above water with odd jobs. Only with the publication of his texts in English did his financial situation improve. In 1939 he married Sophie Glücksmann († 1947) and became President of the Free German Cultural Association . 1940–1958 he was spokesman for the Austrian department of the BBC ; 1953–1958 he was President of the PEN Center for German Authors Abroad ; and from 1963 lived again in Vienna, from 1972 he was married to the writer Hilde Spiel .

The writer and friend Hermann Kesten portrayed Flesch on his 80th birthday:

“Hans Flesch is a wonderful person full of wonderful stories. He is long and bald, casual and funny, a critical enthusiast, with a casual charm and a malicious joviality , a lanky hypochondriac , blasé and boyish, a melancholic who plays the cheerful out of sheer absent-mindedness, an Austrian who has been around the world is, an amusing and exciting storyteller who only has a fraction of his stories printed. "

His grave is in the cemetery in Bad Ischl , where Hilde Spiel was buried in 1990 .

Literary life

At the age of 17 Flesch published his first poem in the magazine Pan , at 19 he wrote in Franz Pfemfert's Die Aktion , in 1914 a special issue of Flesch-Brunningen in the Aktion with a portrait of Egon Schiele appeared . In 1917 , at the age of 22, Flesch published The Destroyed Idyll , expressionist novels, in Kurt Wolff Verlag . Flesch-Brunningen became known for expressionist narrative texts and then turned primarily to the historical novel. The fantastic novels and stories that he published before his exile are among the few high-quality late Expressionist texts that emerged during the First Republic. The experience of exile is reflected in several works, such as the two novels published in London in Masquerade. The Blond Spider (1938/39) and Untimely Ulysses (1940), which were never translated into German.

Heimito von Doderer wrote in 1955, on the 60th birthday of Flesch-Brunningen:

“He looks the way he writes. Always on the move, always with the bow lifted, always foam around it, and always looking for new islands. Expressionism believes in new islands. More than that: he knows that you can no longer see the old ones, no matter how beautiful, if you don't look for the new ones, don't believe in them. Expressionism, in a specific form of its euphoria, is a very last aftermath of the Age of Discovery. Flesch depicts this echo as a concrete type of person, and since he is an artist, also as such. "

Works

Novels

  • The destroyed idyll (novellas). Leipzig: Kurt Wolf Verlag, 1917.
  • Baltasar Tipho, a story from the star Karina . Vienna & Leipzig: Ernst Peter Tal Verlag, 1919.
  • Counterplay . Vienna: Edmund Strache Verlag, 1920.
  • The two ways. A book of youth (epilogue: Albert Ehrenstein ). Baden-Baden: Merlin Verlag, 1929.
  • Heart way to the center . Baden-Baden: Merlin Verlag, 1929.
  • Excerpt and return (novel). Berlin: Verlag Kunstkammer M. Wasservogel, 1929.
  • The Amazon (revolutionary novel). Berlin: Propylaeen Verlag, 1930.
  • Displaced persons. From Ovid to Gorguloff (essays). Vienna & Leipzig: Verlag Elbmühl, 1933.
  • The Duchess of Ragusa. Novel from Baden-Baden during the Wars of Liberation . Salzburg: Bergland Verlag, 1935.
  • Alcibiades Beloved of Gods and Men (novel). New Yorh & London: Putman & Jonathan Cape, 1935.
  • Pearls and Black Tears (novel). Hamburg: Kröger Verlag, 1948. New edition: Nymphenburger Verlag, Munich 1980. New edition (preface: Evelyne Polt-Heinzl ): Edition Atelier , Vienna 2020.
  • The parts and the whole (novel). Vienna & Hamburg: Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1969.
  • Between Central and Museum . Vienna & Munich: Verlag Jugend und Volk, 1970.
  • The Frumm . Munich: Nymphenburger Verlag, 1979.
  • The Roman Forum . Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein Verlag, 1981.
  • The tempted time. Life memories ; edited and provided with an afterword by Manfred Meixner. Vienna & Munich: Verlag Christian Brandstätter, 1988. ISBN 3-85447-261-7 .

literature

  • M. Lukasser: The exile experience in the work of H. Flesch-Brunningen , diploma thesis, Vienna 1989.
  • S. Garger: H. Flesch-Brunningen. An introduction to life and work , diploma thesis, Vienna 1995.
  • Siglinde Bolbecher & Konstantin Kaiser (eds.): Hans Flesch (-Brunningen) ; in: Lexicon of Austrian exile literature . Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft, Vienna & Munich 2000; Pp. 201-202. ISBN 3-216-30548-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jürgen Kuczynski : Memoirs. Cologne 1983, p. 300f
  2. ↑ Hermann Kesten: Whimsical Man, Whimsical Stories ; Süddeutsche Zeitung February 2, 1975
  3. ^ Crypt in the Bad Ischl cemetery
  4. ^ Heimito von Doderer in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 5, 1965

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Flesch-Brunningen, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Flesch Edler von Brunningen, Johannes (real name); Bruning, Johannes von (pseudonym); Brun, Vincent (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1981
Place of death Bad Ischl , Upper Austria