Hermann Borchardt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hermann Borchardt (born June 14, 1888 in Berlin as Hermann Joelsohn , † January 23, 1951 in New York City ) was a German writer , Germanist and high school teacher.

Life

Hermann Joelsohn was born to Lewis Joelsohn and Bertha Borchardt's first child. His mother, who had belonged to a Jewish family that had lived in Berlin since the 18th century, died shortly after his birth. Borchardt was baptized Protestant and attended the humanistic Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin. Most of his later school years he spent in a boarding school with the Jesuits in Strasbourg . He studied philosophy, Latin and German in Berlin and Greifswald . He received his doctorate in 1917 and passed his examination for teaching a year later. Because of increasing anti-Semitism, he took his mother's surname in 1925. He married Dorothea Redmer and at times also called himself Hans because Hermann and Dorothea reminded him too much of the unloved epic of Goethe .

George Grosz described him as follows in his autobiography:

In Germany, there lived a little man,
Borchardthans, that's his name,
Den they employed as a teacher,
he lived like a philistine.
But in secret, in his
room, he described all the misery to mankind.

Borchardt wrote texts for the KPD's satirical magazine Der Knüppel, for which Erich Mühsam , Kurt Tucholsky , Bertolt Brecht , Oskar Maria Graf , Richard Huelsenbeck and Alfred Polgar also wrote. Three stage dramas published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1928 have been lost to this day.

In 1933, threatened with arrest, he left Germany via Basel to Paris . A year later he went to Minsk and taught German at the university there. Because he refused to take on Soviet citizenship, he was expelled in 1936 and returned to Berlin with his family.

In July 1936 he was arrested and interned in the Esterwegen concentration camp . He was later transported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and finally to the Dachau concentration camp . He lost his hearing and one finger after being mistreated. His stock book , in which he recorded his experiences, has never been published and only survived in fragments. After his release in 1937, he received a visa for the USA through the mediation of George Grosz.

In 1943, Borchardt's novel The conspiracy of the carpenters was published in the USA - in an abridged version, the German unabridged edition was only published in 2005 by Weidle Verlag in Bonn. The novel sparked heated controversy among other exiled authors in 1943. Brecht, who knew and valued Borchardt as a collaborator on the drama Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouse , wrote in his journal:

“I state that the emigrants are extremely disgusted, the work is confused, religious, reactionary, a shame. Borchardt, as vicious as many moralists, is an abysmal provocateur, exaggerating his profession as a satirist, etc., etc. However, it should not be forgotten that his works are towering above those of Werfels and his friends, as they sharply and passionately defend our social struggles Treat time. (...) There is such a thing as religious socialism, which opposes clericofascism . I haven't read Borchardt's book yet. "

The basis of the novel was a "festival (..) that was supposed to celebrate the victory over tyranny" and was reworked into a novel at the suggestion of Franz Werfel von Borchardt. The work develops a Christian state utopia on the basis of religious professional guilds as an alternative to the parliamentary democracy that failed in the Weimar Republic and to communism that has become totalitarian. In his review, Walter Hinck highlights elements of satire and parody as well as the abundance of material:

“So the festival became the lap of a true novel colossus. The work contains entire reading dramas, especially philosophical fundamental discussions. Memoranda, memories and chronicles fill up the work. Sometimes characters gain our interest through their own skill (...). But otherwise the waves of changing events and names hit the reader over the head. "

In 1944, Hermann Borchardt took US citizenship and converted to Catholicism . He had two sons, Hans and Frank (1938–2007), professor of German studies at Duke University in Durham .

Works (selection)

  • Basic Philosophical Concepts - The Path of Knowledge of Socrates. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1927.
  • The conspiracy of the carpenters. historical accounting of a ruling class. Simon and Schuster, New York 1943 (translated by June Barrows Mussey and with a foreword by Franz Werfel . German edition only 2005).
    • The carpenters' conspiracy. Accountability report of a ruling class. Weidle Verlag, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-931135-80-2 . Ed. Ursula Beiküfner.

Publications

  • Hermann Borchardt - George Grosz. “Let's bury the hatchet!” The correspondence . Edited by Hermann Haarmann , Christoph Hesse and Lukas Laier. Wallstein, Göttingen 2019 (series: akte exil. New follow, vol. 2), ISBN 978-3-8353-3490-8 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Walter Hinck: Trapped in the beach hotel. Novel colossus and state utopia; The exile author Hermann Borchardt. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. October 7, 2005.
  2. ^ Bertolt Brecht, Grosse Annotated Berlin and Frankfurter Edition, Volume 27, Journale 2, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 176, lines 3-15.
personal data
SURNAME Borchardt, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Joelsohn, Hermann (former name); Joelsohn, Hermann Hans (former name); Peregrinus, Paul (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1951
Place of death New York City