Ferdinand Hardekopf

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Ferdinand Hardekopf - portrait of John Höxter ; from: Schall und Rauch , Issue Sept. 1920

Ferdinand Hardekopf (born December 15, 1876 in Varel , † March 26, 1954 in Zurich ; pseudonyms: Carsten F. Jesper, Stefan Wronski, Jason Bach, Hardy, Ravien Siurlai ) was a German journalist , writer , poet and translator.

Life

Ferdinand Hardekopf's birthplace in Varel (right)

Hardekopf first attended pre-school and then the secondary school in Varel (predecessor of today's Lothar-Meyer-Gymnasium ). At the age of ten, the gifted son of a textile merchant moved to the Oldenburg Grand Ducal High School . One of his teachers in those years was Ernst Ahnert (1859–1944) from Saxony , who later became a leading representative of the stenography movement in Germany. With Ahnert, the “ shorthand prodigy” learned the shorthand (according to the “ Gabelsberger system ”), which soon served him as a source of income, to the highest perfection. After graduating from the humanistic Thomas School in Leipzig , Hardekopf studied German, Romance languages ​​and philosophy at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin from 1895 to 1900 . His academic teachers at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin included a. the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel and the literary scholar Erich Schmidt .

After completing his studies, he stayed in Berlin, where he initially wrote literary and theater reviews for various newspapers and magazines. a. for Die Schaubühne (the forerunner of the world stage ) and for Münchner Neue Nachrichten . He quickly became a sought-after critic, initially mainly as a variety and theater reviewer in the weekly newspaper Die Schaubühne . From 1906 to 1912 Hardekopf published around 50 articles in the magazine. From 1911 he published in the mouthpiece of Expressionism , the weekly magazine Die Aktion . Hardekopf has been working as a stenographer since his studies. a. in the state parliaments in Dresden and Weimar as well as in the Leipzig city council. From 1904 to 1916 he held a position as a parliamentary stenographer in the German Reichstag. The job secured him a fairly regular income, which he could use to finance several trips. So in 1910 he went on a trip to France together with his then partner Emmy Hennings .

In 1916 Hardekopf went into exile in Switzerland because he was a pacifist . Here he was close to the Dadaist movement founded by Hugo Ball and others shortly before , without joining it firmly. He returned to Germany in the early 1920s. Since he could not gain a foothold in Berlin in the 1920s, he finally emigrated in 1922 and went to Paris. Here he translated the works of important contemporary French writers, including André Gide and Jean Cocteau , but also novels and short stories from French classics. He also wrote posts for French and Swiss newspapers and published in the in Amsterdam by Klaus Mann magazine published the collection .

He lived with his future wife, the actress Sita Staub (née Levien), a niece of Ilse Frapan , in Paris and on the Riviera. After the German occupation of France, he was interned and was only released again thanks to the efforts of André Gide . He then went with his partner to the unoccupied south of France. In 1946 he moved to Switzerland, where he lived hard on translation jobs for the Swiss Association of the Gutenberg Book Guild . He died in 1954 in Zurich in Burghölzli , the psychiatric clinic of the university hospital there.

Hardekopf's literary work in the narrower sense is not very extensive. It primarily contains poetry and small prose works, which were mainly created in the 1910s and 1920s and distinguish him as one of the pioneers of German expressionism in literature. The librarian and literary scholar Paul Raabe saw in him the "secret king of expressionism". The fact that Hardekopf is one of those lyric poets who are not represented in Kurt Pinthus' important expressionism anthology " Menschheitsdämmerung " (1919), which has been widely received up to the present day , is certainly one reason for his low level of awareness.

Like other literary contemporaries, Hardekopf also experimented with “mind-expanding” drugs. Traces of these experiences can be seen in some of his poems.

When Hardekopf was arrested and taken to an internment camp in 1940, valuable manuscripts were lost, including a copy of his main work The Decadence of the German Language .

Approx. Hardekopf's 50 translations from French have appeared in book form, and he has made a name for himself as a translator. Thomas Mann said: "... I think Hardekopf is our best translator from French."

After Hardekopf was almost completely forgotten for a long time after his death, his life and his literary work are now receiving more attention. The new interest was stimulated z. B. through readings, including by the writer and reciter Oskar Ansull , and events such as the multi-day “Small Hardekopf Festival” in Hardekopf's hometown Varel. as well as a number of new publications on his biography and importance as a translator of French literature. The publication of a collection of feature articles by the young Hardekopf ("Letters from Berlin") in the docudrama "The Reichstag - History of a German House" (director: Christoph Weinert) produced by ARTE and NDR in 2017 met with a great response on the cultural pages of the national press The stenographer Ferdinand Hardekopf, portrayed by an actor, plays a leading role as a critical observer of the parliamentary debates during the First World War.

An extensive part of Hardekopf's estate, including numerous letters, is kept in the German Literature Archive in Marbach. Further partial legacies can be found in the Swiss Literature Archive (Bern), in the STURM archive of the Berlin State Library, in the Aarau Cantonal Library, in the German Exile Archive of the German National Library (Frankfurt am Main) and in the Bibliothéque littéraire Jacques-Doucet (Paris).

Works

  • Collected seals. Edited and biographical introduction by Emmy Moor-Wittenbach. Publishing house Die Arche, Zurich 1963.
  • Berlin 1907-1909. Theater reviews from the Schaubühne. Edited by Arne Drews. Revonnah Verlag, Hannover 1997, ISBN 3-927715-46-8 .
  • We ghosts. Seals . Edited and epilogue by Wilfried F. Schoeller. Arche, Zurich / Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-7160-2329-9 , contains:
    • The evening. A Dialogue (1913)
    • Reading Pieces (1916)
    • Private poems (1921)
  • Ferdinand Hardekopf: Letters from Berlin. Features 1899–1902. Nimbus. Art and Books, ISBN 978-3-03850-015-5 .

Translations (selection)

  • Honoré de Balzac : Splendor and misery of the courtesans . Gutenberg Book Guild, 1950.
  • Colette : La Vagabonde. Gutenberg Book Guild, 1955.
  • Alexandre Dumas : The Lady of the Camellias. Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main 1978.
  • Anatole France : Crainquebille. Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1947.
  • André Gide: Die and become. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1930.
  • André Gide: The counterfeiters . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1957.
  • André Gide: The dungeons of the Vatican. Gutenberg Book Guild, 1965.
  • André Gide: Self-testimony. Autobiographical writings. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1969.
  • Jean Giono : Harvest. German house library, Hamburg 1961.
  • Jean Giono: loneliness of compassion ( short stories). S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1934.
  • Madame de La Fayette : The Princess of Clèves . Zurich: Manesse 1957.
  • André Malraux : The royal road. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1954.
  • André Malraux: Conditio humana. Abendländische Verlagsanstalt, 1949
  • Prosper Mérimée : Master novels. Afterword by Theophil Spoerri. Manesse, Zurich 1985.
  • Charles Ferdinand Ramuz : Diary 1896–1942. Transfer from Elisabeth Ihle u. Ferdinand Hardekopf. Steinberg, Zurich 1950.
  • Émile Zola : Germinal. Gutenberg Book Guild, 1955.
  • Emile Zola: The Legacy. Wolff, Munich 1925.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard Echte : From sentences and pseudonyms. In: You . No. 3, 1994, p. 11 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Richard Helmrich, a senior citizen . D. Prof. Ernst Ahnert , in: Nachrichten aus Heckners Verlag, Wolfenbuttel 1927, p. 14.
  3. ↑ Richard Sachse , Karl Ramshorn, Reinhart Herz: The teachers of the Thomasschule in Leipzig 1832-1912. The high school graduates of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1845–1912. BG Teubner Verlag, Leipzig 1912, p. 90.
  4. ↑ Richard W. Sheppard : "Ferdinand Hardekopf and Dada, in: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society, 20. Jg. 1976, Stuttgart 1976, pp. 132-161"
  5. ↑ Paul Raabe : “Expressionism. Records and memories of contemporaries, Oldenburg and Freiburg i. Br. 1965, p. 346 "
  6. ↑ Thomas Mann : "'Si le grain ne meurt -' in: Die Literatur, Heft 3 1929, Stuttgart 1929, p. 134"
  7. ↑ Olaf Ulbrich: [1] Published in: Nordwest Zeitung - Der Gemeinnützige . Friday Packet for April 18, 2016.
  8. ↑ See z. B. the following reviews: Rolf Hürzeler: Bad morals in the newspaper industry. The German journalist and man of letters Ferdinand Hardekopf complained more than a hundred years ago that the press was being wasted. His observations still seem current. , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , edition of December 18, 2015. Lothar Müller : Most of them have a crack. From 1899 to 1902 Ferdinand Hardekopf reported to the readers of the Eisenacher Tagespost about theater, bohemianism, traffic and bars in Berlin - his feature pages are a wonderful discovery , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , edition of January 15, 2016. Oliver Pfohlmann: Went Goethe to Café megalomania ? A literary discovery from the German Empire of the Fin de Siècle , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 6, 2016 edition.
  9. ↑ Olaf Ulbrich: Hardekopf plays the leading role in a TV documentary. Published in: Nordwest Zeitung - Der Gemeinnützige . Edition of December 21, 2017.
  10. ↑ DLA Marbach  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.dla-marbach.de  
personal data
SURNAME Hardekopf, Ferdinand
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jesper, Carsten F. (pseudonym); Wronski, Stefan (pseudonym); Bach, Jason (pseudonym); Hardy (pseudonym); Siurlai, Ravien (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, writer, poet and translator
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Varel
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 1954
Place of death Zurich