HG Adler

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Hans Günther Adler (born July 2, 1910 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; died August 21, 1988 in London ) was a Czech German-speaking poet, writer and contemporary witness of the Shoah , who had lived in exile in London as a private scholar since 1947 . He became known with his scientific work Theresienstadt 1941–1945. The face of a coercive community , which as a pioneering work in contemporary history is still a standard work today and which was published in English in 2017.

He had been friends with Franz Baermann Steiner since childhood , administered his estate, advocated his poetic work and published his poems.

Life

HG Adler was the only member of his family who survived the German extermination of the Jews. He describes his life up to his arrival in London in ten pictures or chapters of his novel Panorama in the figure of Joseph. He shortened his first name due to the fact that his name was identical with SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Günther , Adolf Eichmann's representative in Prague for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , from 1945 HG .

HG Adler was born on June 2, 1910 as the son of the bookbinder Emil Alfred Adler and his wife Alice, b. Fraenkel, born in Karolinenthal , Prague . In 1920 and 1921 he attended elementary school in Deutsch-Beneschau . His further education forced the young eagle to enter the Masonic Institute, in which he did not spend a happy time between the years 1921 and 1931. He himself described the stay in the boarding school as his "first concentration camp experience". From 1923 Adler attended the Staatsrealgymnasium in Mährisch-Trübau , then, between 1925 and 1927, the Staatsrealgymnasium in Prague, which he left voluntarily in order to prepare externally for the Matura . During this time, Adler began his first literary attempts. After successfully passing his Matura, he enrolled at the German University of Prague in 1930. Shortly thereafter, he published his first publication, Meer und Gebirge (1931) .

After studying music, art and literature as well as philosophy and psychology and doing his doctorate on the subject of Klopstock and music at the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague from 1930 to 1935, Adler was secretary of the Urania Prague People's Education Center, teacher and for German-language programs responsible employee at the Czechoslovak Radio. During this time, Adler strengthened many friendships with other writers such as Elias Canetti or the sculptor Bernhard Reder . Regardless of the threat of occupation by the National Socialists, Adler stayed in Prague, despite a plan to emigrate, where he met the doctor Gertrud Klepetar on December 31, 1938 and married in 1941. When the German Wehrmacht marched into Prague in March 1939, Adler's attempt to flee abroad failed. From August 1941, he had to forced labor afford and was after temporary activity in the Jewish community in Prague with his wife and their parents on the night of 6 to 7 February 1942 in the Theresienstadt ghetto deported .

With his admission there, Adler decided, should he survive this time, to testify to it. He begins collecting material and making notes in order to later write a book about the camp. On October 12, 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz together with his wife and mother-in-law, where they were separated from one another as a result of a "selection". Before he was sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp in mid-October 1944, he gave his notes during his detention in Theresienstadt to Leo Baeck , a member of the Jewish Council of Elders, for safekeeping in the ghetto vault. Adler's texts survived World War II in a black briefcase and then came back into his hands.

Adler was the only one who came to the concentration camp in Birkenau; his wife and her mother did not survive their stay in Auschwitz. At the end of October 1944 he was brought to Niederorschel , a satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp . In mid-February 1945 he ended up in the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp , where, as a camp clerk , he had access to paper and a typewriter to write poems, which he kept in an aluminum box. Like Ivan Ivanji , Anton Hilckman, etc. a. hide from the death marches , was liberated by the US Army on April 11, 1945 and returned from there via Halberstadt on adventurous routes to Prague.

In Prague, Adler and Přemysl Pitter looked after Jewish and German war orphans (including Jehuda Bacon ) and the collection of the Prague Jewish Museum . After his Czechoslovak citizenship was withdrawn because of his German mother tongue in June 1946 and to escape Stalinism, Adler fled into exile in Great Britain on February 11, 1947 ; There he married his childhood friend from Prague, the sculptor Bettina Gross, on February 16, 1947, who had already emigrated to England in 1938. The poet and Germanist Jeremy Adler is their son. He settled in London and was granted British citizenship on July 31, 1956.

Here he met Elias Canetti and Franz Baermann Steiner again and was among the German-speaking authors in exile such as Erich Fried , Grete Fischer and Wilhelm Unger , whom he, at the instigation of West German publishers, instigated by Ricarda Huch , Günther Weisenborn and Erich Kästner , was building a German library in post-war London. In 1959, at the request of Hermann Langbein , he joined the International Auschwitz Committee (IAK) and organized its work in Great Britain. He supported Langbein from 1960 to 1962 in the publication of the Auschwitz documentation, which appeared against the resistance of the communists in the IAK, from which Adler therefore left again. In 1960 he published the article Self-Administration and Resistance in the Concentration Camps of the SS in the quarterly journal for contemporary history . On October 18, 1961, West German Radio broadcast the three-hour feature Auschwitz designed by Langbein and Adler . Topography of an extermination camp . In 1964, Adler published his critical studies, contributions and essays on the sociology of contemporary history in the anthology Die Experience der Ohnmacht . From 1973 to 1985 he was President of the PEN Center for German-Language Authors Abroad .

With his monumental work Theresienstadt 1941–1945. The face of a coercive community , Adler founded research on the National Socialist camp in 1955. The reports he collected from the deportation camp in Auschwitz were used as part of the Eichmann trial . With an astonishing number of documents he attested the camp system, its history, sociology and psychology as a coercive community and expressed criticism of the Jewish elders . This was taken over by Hannah Arendt and can be found in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem . Jiří Kosta did not share his portrayal of self-government . In his novel Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald refers to H. G. Adler and Theresienstadt . For years, Adler's book has been considered a standard work, to which he added the documentary The Secret Truth in 1958 .

In autumn 1958 the IfZ ( Institute for Contemporary History Munich ) invited him to write a paper of his own choosing on this "subject area". That was the occasion for his second major work, Der Verwalten Mensch , published in 1974 . Studies on the deportation of Jews from Germany . In this work, Adler explores the administration ( bureaucracy ) of expulsion into extermination, legitimized by a barbaric civil order, using the example of the Würzburg Jewish community . Nicolas Berg discusses the edition history of this research work in detail in the chapter Conciliation and powerlessness: HG Adler and the IfZ of his book The Holocaust and the West German Historians. Exploration and memory .

Adler's writing career solidified more and more. In addition to numerous prizes for his work, he received the Austrian honorary title of professor in 1977. Adler remained in exile for most of his literary work, where he died in August 1988 at the age of 78.

reception

As an author of poems and novels, Adler had little success in post-war Germany, despite his efforts and annual reading trips. Jeremy Adler handed over the estate of his father and Franz Baermann Steiner to the German Literature Archive in Marbach .

2010 led Hans Dieter Zimmermann in Prague Literature House for the 100th birthday of HG Adler, the conference who testifies for the witness? On the novels of the Prague German writer HG Adler (1910-1988) through.

The North American poet Peter Filkins translated the novels Panorama and The Invisible Wall as well as the short story A Journey into American English. As editor he published two volumes of essays by Adler, After Liberation (2013) and The Orthodoxy of the Heart (2014).

The Modern Literature Museum in Marbach am Neckar presented the Fluxus exhibition Gloomy Idyll from October 6, 2015 to February 21, 2016 . Consolation of German Romanticism with landscape photos by Adler from the German Literature Archive in Marbach, which Péter Nádas selected and accompanied with an essay: “Apparently nobody mentions his pictures. At least not in the literature that I've read about person and work. […] Besides his temperament, many things could explain why he was a marginal figure in his career, why his life's work has remained so undeserved, so unknown to this day. "

On November 7, 2016, Rüdiger Görner spoke with Jeremy Adler and Michael Krüger about "[German] German-speaking exiles in London under the sign of the Shoah" at the International College Morphomata of the University of Cologne, which is especially dedicated to the exile authors HG Adler, Elias Canetti and Franz Baermann Steiner dedicated (audio recording).

In 2019 Peter Filkens published the biography HG Adler - A Life in Many Worlds .

In 2019, Lynn L. Wolff published the book A Modernist in Exile, The International Reception of HG Adler (1910-1988) .

Quote

"The past is only in humans, but it cannot be established in the outside world." HG Adler

Awards

Works

Prose works

  • Our Georg and other stories. Bergland, Vienna 1961.
  • A travel. Narration . Bibliotheca christiana, Bonn 1962; Structure paperback, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-7466-1854-1 .
  • The prince of blessings. Parables, reflections, parables. Bibliotheca christiana, Bonn 1964.
  • Sodom's downfall. Trifles. Bibliotheca christiana, Bonn 1965.
  • Panorama. Novel in 10 pictures. Walter, Olten 1968; Zsolnay, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-552-05489-9 .
  • Events. Small stories and short stories. Walter, Olten 1969.
  • Contrasts and Variations. Essays. Echter, Würzburg 1969.
  • House rule. Wording and interpretation. Wiener Journal, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-900379-24-6 .
  • The invisible wall. Novel. Zsolnay, Vienna 1989; Structure paperback, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-7466-1139-3 .
  • Committed to the truth. Interviews, poems, essays. Edited by Jeremy Adler. Bleicher, Gerlingen 1998, ISBN 3-88350-660-5 .
  • Collected stories in five volumes:
    • Events. Collected Stories Volume 3. Ed. Jeremy Adler, Franz Hoheneder and Helmuth A. Niederle. Löcker, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-85409-813-3 .
    • Guilty and innocent. Collected Stories Volume 4. Ed. Jeremy Adler, Franz Hoheneder and Helmuth A. Niederle. Löcker, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-85409-793-8 .

Volumes of poetry

  • Window. Six poems. Alphabox, London 1974, ISBN 0-904504-00-X .
  • Book of friends. Voices about the poet and scholar with unpublished poetry. Edited by Willehad P. Eckert and Wilhelm Unger . Wienand, Cologne 1975, ISBN 3-87909-062-9
  • Many seasons. Dürer, Munich 1975.
  • Tracks and pillars. Alphabox, London 1978.
  • Transubstantations. 1978.
  • Tracking times. 1978.
  • Looks. Poems 1947–1951. European ideas, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-921572-41-X .
  • Voice and acclamation. Knaus, Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-8135-7899-2 .
  • Other ways. Collected poems. Drava, Klagenfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-85435-625-7 .

Non-fiction

HG Adler: Theresienstadt (1955)
  • Theresienstadt 1941–1945. The face of a coercive community. JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1955
    • Theresienstadt 1941–1945: the face of a coercive community; History, sociology, psychology . 2., verb. and additional edition Tübingen: Mohr, 1960
    • Reprint: Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, 2012, 2018 ISBN 978-3-89244-694-1 ; Scientific Book Society WBG, Darmstadt 2013
  • The struggle against the “final solution to the Jewish question”. Federal Center for Homeland Service , Bonn 1958.
  • The Jews in Germany. From the Enlightenment to National Socialism. Kösel, Munich 1960. (Piper, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-492-10766-4 )
  • The experience of powerlessness. Contributions to the sociology of our time. EVA, Frankfurt am Main 1964.
  • Managed human. Studies on the deportation of Jews from Germany. Mohr, Tübingen 1974, ISBN 3-16-835132-6 .
  • Human freedom. Essays on sociology and history. Mohr, Tübingen 1976, ISBN 3-16-838682-0 .
  • Preschool for an experimental theology. Reflections on reality and being. Steiner, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-515-04772-7 .
  • Committed to the truth. Interviews, poems, essays. Edited by Jeremy Adler. Bleicher, Gerlingen 1998, ISBN 3-88350-660-5 .
  • After Liberation: Selected Essays on History and Sociology. Edited and with an afterword by Peter Filkens. Konstanz University Press, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-86253-041-0 .
  • Orthodoxy of the Heart, Selected Essays on Literature, Judaism and Politics. Edited and with an afterword by Peter Filkens. Konstanz University Press, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-86253-055-7 .
  • The Poetry of the Prague School. With a foreword by Jeremy Adler , Wuppertal 2010, ISBN 978-3-938375-36-5 ; first published in: Manfred Wagner (Ed.): In focus: an Austria. 14 posts in search of a constant. Europa, Vienna 1978, pp. 67-98

Editing

  • Franz Baermann Steiner : Unrest without a watch. Selected poems from the estate. Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1954.
  • The hidden truth. Theresienstadt documents . Mohr, Tübingen 1958.
  • With Hermann Langbein and Ella Lingens-Reiner : Auschwitz. Certificates and reports. EVA, Frankfurt am Main 1962. (EVA, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-434-46223-6 )
  • Franz Baermann Steiner: Conquests. A lyric cycle. Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1964.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Buchenwald Memorial: HG Adler 1910 (Prague) - 1980 (London) Educator, historian, writer “As long as we judge, we will still live. But we die of mourning. ” Buchenwald Memorial, accessed on January 4, 2018 .
  2. ^ Kurt Schilde: HG Adler: Theresienstadt 1941-1945. In: https://www.hsozkult.de/ . July 28, 2006, accessed on January 20, 2020 (German).
  3. Brockhaus Encyclopedia , Volume 18, 1973, s. Theresienstadt, p. 635.
  4. Vojtěch Blodig, Památník Terezín: National Socialism / W. Benz: Theresienstadt. H-Soz-Kult (H-Net) and Working Group on Historical Peace and Conflict Research, February 23, 2016, accessed on May 6, 2017 .
  5. Peter Filkens: The Coerced community of Theresienstadt. In: Tablet. July 12, 2017, accessed May 18, 2019 .
  6. HGAdler: The Hölderlin image Franz Baermann Steiner. (PDF) Hölderlin Gesellschaft, accessed on January 4, 2018 .
  7. Buchenwald Memorial: HG Adler 1910 (Prague) - 1980 (London) Educator, historian, writer “As long as we judge, we will still live. But we die of mourning. ” Buchenwald Memorial, accessed on January 9, 2019 .
  8. Süddeutsche Zeitung: Survive in order to write. Retrieved May 10, 2020 .
  9. "Ortlose Message" The Friends of HG Adler, Elias Canetti and Franz Baermann Steiner in English exile . In: Ulrich Ott (Ed.): Marbacher Magazin . No. 84 . Gulde Druck, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-929146-75-4 , p. 179-181 .
  10. ^ HG Adler: Other ways. Collected poems . In: Kathrin Kohl, Franz Hohenheder, with the assistance of Jeremy Adler (ed.): Edition Milo . tape 25 . Drava Verlag, Klagenfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-85435-624-0 .
  11. ^ Wilhelm Unger: The other Germany . In: Willehad P. Eckert and Wilhelm Unger (eds.): HG Adler, book of friends, voices about the poet and scholar with unpublished poetry . Wienand, Cologne 1975, ISBN 3-87909-062-9 , pp. 14-18 .
  12. ^ HG Adler, Hermann Langbein, Ela Lingens-Reiner (ed.): Auschwitz, testimonials and reports . European Publishing House, Cologne / Frankfurt am Main 1962, ISBN 3-434-00411-4 .
  13. Katharina Stengel: Auschwitz between East and West. The International Auschwitz Committee and the genesis of the Auschwitz anthology. Certificates and reports. In: Katharina Stengel (Ed.): Victims as Actors. Interventions by former Nazi victims in the post-war period. Published on behalf of the Fritz Bauer Institute. Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-593-38734-5 , pp. 174-196.
  14. ^ HG Adler: Self-administration and resistance in the concentration camps of the SS. In: Quarterly books for contemporary history. Hans Rothfels, Theodor Eschenburg, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart, July 1960, accessed on March 19, 2018 .
  15. ^ HG Adler, Hermann Langbein: Auschwitz. Topography of an extermination camp. 3 CDs. DAV, Berlin 2014.
  16. HG Adler: The experience of powerlessness . European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1964.
  17. ^ Jiří Kosta: HG Adler's magnum opus on the Theresienstadt ghetto. Critique of a standard work. In: Journal of History . 58, 2010, no. 2, pp. 105-133.
  18. ^ W. G. Sebald: Austerlitz . Hanser, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-7632-5201-0 , p. 331 ff .
  19. Helen Finch et al. a .: HG Adler / WG Sebald Conference: Witnessing, Memory, Poetics (10-11 October 2012). British Academy, accessed October 2012 .
  20. Fabian Kettner: Birth of the Shoah from the spirit of modernity? Corrections on the occasion of the new edition of HG Adler's book 'Theresienstadt 1941–1945. Face of a coercive community '. March 8, 2007, accessed January 1, 2018 .
  21. Ahlrich Meyer: People must not be administered. NZZ , October 2, 2013, accessed on January 2, 2018 .
  22. ^ HG Adler: The administered human. Studies on the deportation of Jews from Germany (see foreword) . Siebeck & Mohr, Tübingen 1974, ISBN 3-16-835132-6 .
  23. Nicolaus Berg: The Holocaust and the West German Historians. Exploration and memory . Wallstein, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-610-5 , p. 304-311 .
  24. Jeremy Adler, Rüdiger Görner and Michael Krüger: German-speaking exiles in London under the sign of the Shoah. Morphomata - University of Cologne, November 7, 2016, accessed on March 14, 2017 .
  25. Who testifies for the witnesses? On the novels of the German writer HG Adler (1910-1988) from Prague. In: Prague House of Literature for German-speaking authors. Retrieved on October 14, 2019 (German).
  26. Peter Filkins. Bard College at Simon's Rock, accessed March 16, 2017 .
  27. ^ Adam Kirsch: The Unforgivable Sin of Survival. Tablet Magazine New York, December 10, 2014, accessed April 28, 2017 .
  28. Thomas Meyer: Experience plus knowledge. In: Die Zeit No. 8/2015. February 19, 2015, accessed March 16, 2017 .
  29. ^ Péter Nádas: Gloomy idyll. Consolation of German Romanticism. In: German Literature Archive Marbach (Ed.): Marbacher Magazin . No. 149 . German Schiller Society, Marbach am Neckar 2015, ISBN 978-3-944469-12-6 , p. 5 .
  30. Hannelore Schlaffer: Photos by HG Adler in Marbach, room views of the Alps. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 27, 2015, accessed on May 6, 2017 .
  31. Jeremy Adler, Rüdiger Görner and Michael Krüger: German-speaking exiles in London under the sign of the Shoah. Internationales Kolleg Morphomata - University of Cologne, November 7, 2017, accessed on March 16, 2017 .
  32. Writing history, writing biography - The many worlds of HG Adler. In: Villa Ichon. May 8, 2019, accessed May 18, 2019 .
  33. ^ Josefine Langer: P. Filkins: HG Adler. In: https://www.hsozkult.de . January 13, 2020, accessed on January 20, 2010 (German).
  34. René Schlott: Survival in order to write. Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 26, 2020, accessed on April 27, 2020 (German).
  35. Udo Bremer, 3sat film editorial team in an interview with Christoph Hübner and Gabriele Voss: Estate (film): Interview with Christoph Hübner and Gabriele Voss. In: 3sat. September 2, 2019, accessed on September 25, 2019 (German).
  36. http://www.boehlau-verlag.com/download/160837/978-3-205-78152-3_OpenAccess.pdf
  37. Marcel Atze : The journey takes place to solve burning questions. On the new edition of HG Adler's novel “Eine Reise” plus a comment on WG Sebald's “Luftkrieg und Literatur”. litertaurkritik.de, accessed on January 4, 2018 .
  38. Lothar Müller: Evil is not banal. FAZ, November 27, 1999, accessed on January 4, 2018 .
  39. Fabian Kettner: The invisible wall. Notes on HG Adler's work. literaturkritik.de, accessed on January 4, 2018 .
  40. Fabian Kettner: The eagle has landed “Other ways”: The poems of HG Adler are available for the first time in a complete edition. liertaturkritik.de, accessed on January 4, 2018 .
  41. See Kurt Schilde: Review of: Hocheneder, Franz: HG Adler (1910–1988), private scholar and freelance writer. A monograph. Vienna 2009. In: H-Soz-u-Kult. July 2, 2010.