Heinz Liepman

Heinz Liepman (aka Liepmann; pseudonym: Jens C. Nielsen; born August 27, 1905 in Osnabrück ; † June 6, 1966 in Agarone , Ticino, Switzerland) was a German writer , dramaturge , literary agent and anti-fascist .

Origin, childhood and youth

Max Heinz Liepmann was the son of the Jewish business assistant Salomon Liepmann (1878–1917) and Hermine Liepmann, nee. Dutch (1871-1918). The family moved from Osnabrück to Hamburg. The father was a soldier in World War I and died in 1917 after being wounded in the Battle of Arras . After his mother's death in February 1918, his sister Else, who was two years older than him, was placed with relatives in Osnabrück. Heinz Liepmann came to his uncle Max Holländer in Bielefeld and attended secondary school there. In 1921 he fled from his uncle to Lindau and worked in a nursery. In the same year he traveled to the USA for the first time. In 1922 he returned to Germany and attended lectures in medicine, psychology and philosophy at Frankfurt University. At the age of 19 he got a job as an editorial trainee at the Frankfurter Zeitung and worked as an assistant director and dramaturge at the Städtische Bühnen in Frankfurt .

Life and work before the Second World War

Heinz Liepmann remained connected to the theater throughout his life. From 1927 Liepmann was employed as a dramaturge at the Hamburger Kammerspiele, possibly he had been employed there as an assistant dramaturge since 1925. Under the direction of Erich Ziegel , who founded the theater in 1918, the Hamburger Kammerspiele, with its ambitious literary stage for young authors, developed into one of the most important German-language theaters of the 1920s . Authors such as Bertolt Brecht , Frank Wedekind , Georg Kaiser and George Bernard Shaw were on the program. For many young actors like Gustaf Gründgens or Axel von Ambesser , the Kammerspiele were the springboard of their careers. When Ziegel left the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in 1928 , which he also headed from 1926 to 1928, Liepmann's engagement there also ended.

To date, the actual number of Liepmann's pieces has not been conclusively clarified. The play The Death of Emperor Wang-Ho (1926) is said to have existed as a manuscript, but is probably lost; Liepmann used the material for a short story of the same title, which he published in The Propylaea in 1927 . The Chamber is to blame for it (1927) is probably a working title for the play Drei Apfelbäume, published in 1933 under the pseudonym Jens C. Nielsen and premiered at the Deutsches Künstlertheater Berlin on May 29, 1933 . The servant without God is recorded as a stage manuscript, but not a performance. Columbus (1931) was premiered on February 23, 1932 by the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg.

Liepmann's commitment to a modern theater was reflected in his, Hans Henny Jahnn's and Justin Steinfeld's protest actions at the 4th International Theater Congress in Hamburg in 1930, which he reported on in the Weltbühne . Liepmann accompanied his work at the theater with numerous contributions to the publications of the Kammerspiele ( Der Freihafen , 1926–1928) and the Deutsches Schauspielhaus ( Die Rampe , 1925–1932), to which he remained connected even after his departure. Actor and author portraits can be found here alongside reviews, short stories and excerpts from his novels.

In June 1929 Liepmann's first novel was published by Phaidon Verlag in Vienna (later Phaidon Press ) under the title Nights of an Old Child . The first work deals with the story of the growing up of a war orphan. From then on, Liepmann was considered an exemplary representative of the "young generation" through the publisher's advertising. In the same year Liepmann was in a relationship with the actress Mira Rosowsky.

Liepmann's second novel Die Hilflosen , a story about guilt and innocence set in pre-revolutionary Russia and post-war Germany, was published in March 1930 by Verlag Rütten & Loening , Frankfurt / Main. In 1931 the English translation was published under the title Wanderers in the Mist . For this he immediately received the renowned Harper Literature Prize, an international literary prize from Harper & Brother Verlag. For Liepmann, the novel marked the breakthrough as a writer. The Deutsch-Israelitisches Gemeindeblatt in Hamburg wrote on June 10, 1930: “Heinz Liepmann, a son of our community, has suddenly been placed in the forefront of contemporary writers when he was awarded a second prize by the New York publisher Harper & Brothers. “Only half a year later, Liepmann's third novel Der Frieden broke out was published again by Phaidon Verlag . The novel takes place during the inflation period after the First World War ; announced by the publisher as the great novel from Germany's suffering . Unconfirmed reports Liepmann was at this time, after the treatment of a painful kidney disease with morphine, a morphine addict . The addiction should accompany him in the rest of his life.

In 1931 Liepmann's political engagement increased. He became a member of the Protection Association of German Writers (SDS) and in August and September 1931 made his Hamburg apartment available as a contact address for the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers . Together with Justin Steinfeld and others, Liepmann founded the group of actors, the Collective Hamburg Actors .

Liepmann's drama Columbus , conceived in 1927 and published in 1931 by Chronos Bühnenverlag, Berlin, was premiered on February 23, 1932 in the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. The premiere audience reacted enthusiastically and accordingly positively from many of the reviews. Even the Völkischer Beobachter was relatively cautious, but emphasized that the piece was written by the "Jew Heinz Liepmann". The daily newspaper of the Hamburg NSDAP , the Hamburger Tageblatt , reported on the other hand with the conclusion: “Liepmann is undoubtedly a Jew. The existence of the revolutionary and the lack of ideas that could be developed ... reveal it too clearly ... After all, experience shows that Germany and the world must be careful not to let Jews solve their problems for them. We have nothing to fear from Liepmann in this regard. He only strengthened our desire to see and experience contemporary problems with contemporary people of German blood on stage. ”On April 14, 1932, he organized the“ Charity Festival of the Association of German Writers for the Benefit of Needy Hamburg Writers ”in Hamburg. On May 8, 1932, the collective performed the piece Our Damage to the Leg. An unlearned didactic piece with choirs to the public for the first time. The stated author Jan Mangels Prigge is undoubtedly a pseudonym; Whether Liepmann, Justin Steinfeld or another author is behind it is not clear.

The article "The beginning of barbarism. An answer to Joseph Goebbels" appeared on July 31, 1932 in the supplement to the Hamburger Echo as Liepmann's answer to a speech by Goebbels on the Berlin radio . In it he warns clearly against increasing National Socialism : “Germany was once famous as a people of poets and thinkers, today it could almost be described as the people of judges and executioners, if all the threats of National Socialist luminaries could be carried out. The concept of 'head-rolling' was previously unknown in the political life of a mature nation, as were romantic horror fantasies such as the 'night of long knives', etc. ”Furthermore, Liepmann sharply criticizes the handling of all areas of cultural existence and the senseless mania for destruction. It proves the intellectual brutality of the new masters. In July 1932, the NSDAP became the strongest party in the Reichstag elections and Heinz Liepmann, after another accusatory publication, became an object of hate for the Hamburg National Socialists.

His public protest in April 1933 against the discrimination against the Jewish writer Justin Steinfeld, whom the Nazis had not allowed into the Altona City Theater , as well as theater reviews from the same month, ended Liepmann's connection with the theater before exile. On May 29, 1933, his play Three Apple Trees was performed at the Deutsches Künstlertheater Berlin . A port piece under the pseudonym Jens C. Nielsen for the premiere.

Liepmann's works were banned by the National Socialists on April 26, 1933 ( list of burned books 1933 ). In June 1933 Liepmann was imprisoned in Wittmoor concentration camp , but was able to escape a short time later and move to Holland. At the end of 1933 his novel Das Vaterland was published in Amsterdam . In it he describes how the crew of a fishing trawler returned to Hamburg in March 1933 after a three-month voyage and found their country to be terribly changed.

Exile (1934 to 1947)

During his stay in Amsterdam, Liepmann was arrested on February 12, 1934 for a sentence in his novel Das Vaterland related to Paul von Hindenburg and the Osthilf scandal , and sentenced on February 21, 1934 to one month in prison. International protests prevented extradition to Germany. Liepmann was deported to Belgium and traveled on to Paris. On February 17, 1934, while Liepmann was imprisoned, his play Three Apple Trees was performed under the title De Drie Appelboomen in Amsterdam .

On July 7, 1934, Liepmann gave a lecture on his "experiences in German and Dutch prisons" at the German Club in Paris. In the summer of 1934 Liepmann worked for Die neue Weltbühne in Vienna and for the Pariser Tageblatt . The Parisian publishing house Die Zone published The Life of Millionaires . On June 8, 1935, Liepmann's German citizenship was revoked. At the invitation of the People's Forum, he went on a lecture tour to Canada and the USA in November. Between 1935 and October 1937 he traveled several times to London, New York and Montreal. During his stays in London he was repeatedly charged with violating the narcotics law. In October 1935 , Liepmann's second exile novel … is punished with death , which describes the beginning of organized resistance in Nazi Germany in 1933 , was published by Europa-Verlag , Zurich . In the same year, his third novel in exile, in which he warns against German armament with chemical weapons and poison gas, was published in England under the title Death from the Skies. A Study of Gas and Microbial Warfare and published a few months later in the USA under Poison in the Air .

On October 12, 1937, Liepmann returned to New York and then worked for various American newspapers (including the Saturday Evening Post , American Mercury and American Magazine). In 1939 his sister Else, married. Wolff, to the USA; In 1941 Liepmann's partner Mira Rosowsky followed into exile in the United States. Around 1940 Liepmann changed his name to Liepman. There is no reliable information about Liepman's activities for the period from 1941 to 1943. There is evidence of his collaboration in the editorial team of Time from 1943 to 1947.

Return to Hamburg and founding of the literature agency (1947 to 1961)

Liepman returned to Hamburg in August 1947 as a correspondent for Time . As a freelance writer and journalist, he then wrote for various newspapers such as Die Welt and Illustrierte Kristall . In the same year he met Ruth Lilienstein (1909–2001), daughter of the Jewish Lilienstein family from Hamburg, again. According to Lilienstein, the two met before the Nazi era in Hamburg while working for the German Communist Party . In 1948 Liepman's short stories The 6th Window on the 11th Floor appeared in the USA , which were later printed in many magazines and school books.

On July 13, 1949 Ruth Lilienstein, who had divorced her first husband Oskar Stock, and Heinz Liepman married in Mastrils in Graubünden and founded a literary agency together that same year. Through Liepman's contacts with his American publisher, he was commissioned to look for important German authors who might be of interest to the US market. Since the German publishers were also interested in English-language literature, Liepman got the exclusive representation for a number of American publishers, for example Doubleday . Liepman brought Norman Mailer with The Naked and the Dead ( The Naked and the Dead ), F. Scott Fitzgerald , Richard Wright and many more in the agency. Heinz and Ruth Liepman worked with Rowohlt , with Wolfgang and Elli Krüger (founders of S. Fischer Verlag ), with Hoffmann & Campe and the publishers Eugen Claassen and Hilde Claassen ( Claassen-Verlag ).

While Heinz Liepman devoted himself exclusively to writing again, Ruth Liepman managed the literary agency. She brought the works of other well-known authors such as Arthur Miller , JD Salinger , Vladimir Nabokov and Arthur Hailey to Germany.

In 1950 Liepman's English-language novel Case History was published . In 1951 he wrote several radio reports for the NWDR and worked as a political correspondent for the Algemeen Handelsblad . Heinz Liepman's translation and adaptation of Elmer Rice's Seeing Naples and Die was premiered on January 29, 1952 at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. In the same year Liepman's translation of John Gunthers Eisenhower appeared .

1956 was in the illustrated Kristall Liepman's biography Rasputin. Holy and Devil Pre-Published. In 1957 his radio play The fruits of the cactus appeared. A journey through the state of Israel . The works of Crimes in the Twilight followed. Famous criminal cases from the last few decades (1959), the collection of essays A German Jew Thinks About Germany (1961) and The Way Out. The Confessions of the Morphinist Martin M. (1961). According to Ruth Liepman, Heinz Liepman was close friends with Georg Ramseger , then the head of the world's arts section , and in 1958 he worked for the newspaper. In 1961 he went to Zurich as their culture correspondent .

Moved to Switzerland in 1962

In January 1962, the Liepmans moved their residence and the literary agency from Hamburg to Zurich. In Zurich, Liepman worked as a cultural correspondent for Die Welt and Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), and wrote for Die Weltwoche , Zürcher Woche , Tages-Anzeiger and St. Galler Tagblatt . In addition, he continued to work as a writer. In 1964 his last novel Karlchen or Die Tücken der Virtue was published .

The Liepmans owned a holiday home in Agarone in Ticino . Not far away lived Erich Maria Remarque , Günther Weisenborn , Alfred Andersch and Erich Fromm , with whom Heinz and Ruth Liepman had close friendships.

In 1966, Heinz Liepmann published the collection of articles on Conscientious Objection or Is the Basic Law still valid before he died on June 6, 1966 during a vacation in the holiday home in Agarone as a result of several heart attacks. Heinz Liepman was buried in Agarone at his own request.

The Liepman AG literature agency is still based in Zurich today.

Heinz Liepman is one of the almost forgotten writers, all of whose works are only available in second-hand books. The Hamburg historian and journalist Wilfried Weinke curated the exhibition "Heinz Liepmann - Writer, Journalist, Emigrant, Remigrant" in Hamburg in 2007. The exhibition provided information about the multifaceted life and diverse work of Liepman against the background of contemporary history.

Works

Narrative work

• 1929 - Nights of an Old Child. Novel. Phaidon Verlag, Vienna
  • Translations:
    • 1930 - Les nuits d'un much enfant. Tr. Guy Fritsch-Estragin and Denise van Moppès. B. Grasset, Paris
    • 1937 - Nights of an Old Child. A novel. Translated from the German by A. Lynton Hudson. JB Lippincott, London, Philadelphia
    • 1938 - Escape to Life. Tr. Alfred Lynton Hudson. Duckworth, London
• 1930 - The helpless. Novel. Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt
  • Translations
    • 1931 - Wanderers in the mist. Published in New York and London.
• 1930 - Peace broke out. Novel. Phaidon Verlag, Vienna
  • Translations
    • 1932 - Peace broke out. Published in New York and London
• 1933 - The Fatherland. A factual novel from today's Germany. Van Kampen & Zoon, Amsterdam
  • Translations
    • 1933 - Smierc made in Germany. Tr. I. Berman. Sigma, Lwów
    • 1934 - Murder - Made in Germany. A true story of present-day Germany. Published in New York and London
    • 1934 - Het Vaderland. A documentary novel uit het Duitsland van nu. Published in Amsterdam
    • 1934 - Fedrelandet. Published in Oslo
  • New editions
    • 1979 - With a foreword by Heinrich Böll. Konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg, (library of burned books).
• 1934 - The life of millionaires. Novel. The Zone, Paris
• 1935 - … is punished with death. Europa-Verlag, Zurich
  • Translations
    • 1936 - Fires Underground. A narrative of the secret struggle carried on by the illegal organizations in Germany under penalty of death. Published in London and Philadelphia
  • New editions
    • 1985 - ... is punished with death. Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim
• 1937 - Death From the Skies. A Study of Gas and Microbial Warfare. Novel. Tr. Eden and Cedar Paul . Secker & Warburg, London
• 1937 - Poison in the Air. Roman. Lippincott, Philadelphia
• 1948 - The 6th window on the 11th floor. Stories. The New Spirit, Berlin
• 1950 - Case History. Novel. Beechhurst, New York and published in London in 1952
  • Translations
    • 1952 - La Faille. Tr. Henri Evans. Le club français du livre, Paris
• 1956 - Rasputin. Saint or devil. Gebrüder Weiss, Berlin-Schöneberg
  • Translations
    • 1958 - Raspoetin de bezeten Monnik. Tr. Gerrit Kouwenaar. Van Kampen, Amsterdam
    • 1959 - Rasputin and the Fall of Imperial Russia. Tr. Edward Fitzgerald. RM McBride, New York
    • 1959 - Rasputin. A new judgment. Tr. Edward Fitzgerald. Muller, London
    • 1961 - Rasputin, the Mad Monk of Russia. Reader's Digest 79
  • New editions
    • 1976 and 1981 published by Claassen, Roth Liepmann and Heyne
• 1959 - Crimes in Twilight. Famous criminal cases from the last decades. Gebrüder Weiss, Berlin-Schöneberg
  • Translations
    • 1960 - Myterieuze Misdaaden. Tr. J. Verdiesen. Spectrum, Utrecht
• 1961 - A German Jew thinks about Germany. Nar-Tamid, Munich
• 1961 - The way out. The confessions of the morphinist Martin M. Roman. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg
  • Translations
    • 1963 - La confession de Martin M. Published in Grenoble and Québec
    • 1963 - verslaving. Het verhaal van een morfinist. Tr. A.Th. Mooji. Van Kampen, Amsterdam
  • New editions
    • 1962, 1966 and 1978 at Bertelsmann, Rowohlt and Ullstein
• 1964 - Little Karl or The Tricks of Virtue. Novel. Rowohlt, Reinbek
  • Translations
    • 1966 - Kareltje of hoe de braafheid hem bedroog. Tr. JP Calff. Van Kampen, Amsterdam
• 1966 - Conscientious objection or does the Basic Law still apply? Polemic. Rowohlt, Reinbek

Dramas

• 1926 - The death of Emperor Wang-ho. play
• 1926 - The servant without God. Tragic comedy in three acts
• 1927 - The Chamber is to blame. play
• 1931 - Columbus. Drama. Conceived in 1927; published in 1931 by Chronos Bühnenverlag, Berlin
• 1933 - Three apple trees. A port piece in three acts. Published under the pseudonym Jens C. Nielsen.

Translations

• 1952 - Eisenhower by John Gunther. Translated into German and annotated by Heinz Liepmann. Diana, Stuttgart
• 1952 - Naples and See and Die by Elmar Rice. Drama. Translation and editing by Heinz Liepman

literature

• Ruth Liepman: Maybe happiness is not just a coincidence , Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1993 (various new editions)
• Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books . Cologne: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2008; ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 . (On Liepman, pages 134-136)
• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss , (Ed.), Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 , Vol II, 2 Munich: Saur 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 729
• Wilhelm Sternfeld , Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933-1945. A bio-bibliography , Schneider, Heidelberg / Darmstadt, 1962
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Kraus Reprint, Nendeln 1979, ISBN 3-262-01204-1 (reprint of the Czernowitz edition 1925), Volume 7, pp. 259f
• Klaus Müller-Salget:  Liepmann, Heinz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 533 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Wilfried Weinke: A German Jew is thinking about Germany. The writer and journalist Heinz Liepmann, his work in Hamburg and his examination of anti-Semitism and philosemitism in Germany after 1945. In the journal of the Association for Hamburg History 85 (1999), pp. 183–206. Online on the server of the Hamburg State and University Library here. agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinz Liepman in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Heinz Liepman in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Biography nibis.de
• Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center Osnabrück Safekeeping of materials about his life and work
• Heinz Liepman's estate in the German Exile Archive of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A German Jew thinks about Germany. (PDF) Wilfried Weinke, p. 186
2. ↑ ^{a b} A German Jew thinks about Germany. (PDF) Wilfried Weinke, p. 188