Hans Roger Madol

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Hans Roger Madol , born Gerhard Salomon (born April 4, 1903 in Berlin ; died November 14, 1956 in London ) was a German writer.

Life

Gerhard Salomon grew up as one of three sons in a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, his mother Minna Rosenau died before 1933, his father David Salomon was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943 . His older brother was the pacifist and journalist Berthold Jacob Salomon, known as Berthold Jacob . Gerhard Salomon completed a commercial apprenticeship with the antiquarian Max Perl in the Französische Straße . Then he tried his hand at being a poet. He bought large quantities of antiquarian German books on the English book market and opened his own antiquarian bookshop on Savignyplatz under the name “ Die Serapionsbrüder ”. After the book business went bankrupt in the inflation of 1923, he shifted to old manuscripts he bought in Paris and successfully mingled with a society of sellers and collectors. His father also found employment in his manuscript shop.

In 1928 he published his first book under the anagram Hans Roger Madol. It is about the child Louis Charles de Bourbon , son of the French king who was beheaded in the French Revolution, about his disappearance and about the pretender Karl Wilhelm Naundorff , who pretended to be him, the book sold well. The manuscript trade also made him rich, so that in 1929 Madol was able to acquire the Gammel Avernæs manor on the Danish island of Funen . When he was not working in Berlin or Paris, he had frequent visitors to the hospitable property.

Madol wrote two other successful biographical books on the book market, Ferdinand of Bulgaria on the Bulgarian Tsar , translated into six languages, and Godoy on Manuel de Godoy , Spanish dictator in Napoleon's time. His last book Conversations with Responsible Persons , published in Germany, contained interviews with Leopold Berchtold , Joseph Caillaux , Maurice Paléologue , Wilhelm von Schoen , Jules Cambon , Ferdinand von Bulgaria , Boris von Bulgaria , Alexander Fjodorowitsch Kerenski , Francesco Saverio Nitti , Richard von Kühlmann , Austen Chamberlain , Victor Margueritte , Nicolae Jorga , Sixtus von Bourbon-Parma and Tewfik Ruchti bey.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in Germany in 1933, some refugees stopped by him on Funen, among them the publicist Emil Julius Gumbel and the SPD politician Kurt Heinig . He was also connected to the Østrupgaard school home for emigrants . His Berlin schoolmate Gerhard Breitscheid, son of the SPD politician Rudolf Breitscheid , was involved in the rescue of two suitcases with manuscripts by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from the SPD party archive , which were briefly stored in Madol's Berlin antiquarian shop and then across the Green Border to Denmark were smuggled. In 1936 he sold the Avernæs estate and acquired the Oregaard estate near Odense , where he also took in refugees.

Even in exile he continued to write biographical books, one in Danish about the so-called “father-in-law of Europe”, King Christian IX. , and one about his son Prince Valdemar , who had given him access to the archive and with whom he had become friends. For the French newspaper Vue he interviewed the Danish Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning and the North Schleswig politician Hans Peter Hanssen .

Madol sold his property in Denmark and moved to England in 1939. He was interned there when the war broke out as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man . From 1940 he worked in England and the USA as a press attaché to Felix von Bourbon-Parma , husband of the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, who had fled the Germans .

Fonts (selection)

The Shadow King (1928)
Gerhard Salomon
  • ETA Hoffmann; Bibliography . Berlin, 1927
Hans Roger Madol
  • Melancholy . Poems. Berlin: The Morning, 1920
  • Way to me . Poems. Berlin: Braga Society, 1920
  • The shadow king. The life of Louis XVII. of France and the fate of the Naundorff-Bourbon family . Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1928
  • Ferdinand of Bulgaria: the dream of Byzantium . Using unprinted files from the Foreign Office and the Secret State Archives. Berlin: Universitas, 1931
  • Godoy. The end of old Spain. The first dictator of our time. Using unprinted files from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Spanish National Archives . Berlin: Universitas, 1932
  • Talks with those responsible . Berlin: Universitas, 1933
  • Christian IX, Europe's svigerfader . Copenhagen, Gyldendalske boghandel Nordisk forlag, 1936
  • Kongernes uncle; Prins Valdemars Erindringer . Copenhagen: Berlingske Forlag, 1938
  • The league of London: A book of interviews with Allied sovereigns and statesmen . London: Hutchinson, 1942
  • Prins Georg af Grækenland; intruder. Copenhagen: Berlingske Forlag, 1954

literature

  • Steffen Steffensen : Hans Roger Madol (Gerhard Salomon, 1903–1955) writer. In: Willy Dähnhardt ; Birgit S. Nielsen (Ed.): Exile in Denmark: German-speaking scientists, artists and writers in Danish exile after 1933 , Heide: Westholsteinische Verlagsanstalt Boyens, 1993 ISBN 3-8042-0569-0 , pp. 579-582 (first in Danish, Copenhagen 1986)
  • Oliver B. Pollak: The Biography of a Biographer: Hans Roger Madol (1903-1956). In: The Germanic Review , Volume 78, 2003, Issue 1: A Festschrift to Inge Halpert , pp. 74–85 doi: 10.1080 / 00168890309597463
  • Wilhelm Sternfeld , Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933-1945. A bio bibliography . Heidelberg: Schneider, 1962

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ dk: Gammel Avernæs in the Danish Wikipedia
  2. ↑ dk: Oregaard in the Danish Wikipedia

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data in the article on the brother at Renate Heuer . The year of death at Steffensen 1955.
  2. ↑ Berthold Jacob. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 12: Hirs – Jaco. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-22692-2 , pp. 304-308.
  3. ↑ Gerd Callesen: Die resettete Bibliothek , in: Junge Welt, May 5, 2018
  4. ↑ Steffen Steffensen (1908-1984) , in: Dansk biografisk leksikon , 3rd edition, 1984
personal data
SURNAME Madol, Hans Roger
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Salomon, Gerhard (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1956
Place of death London