Hermann grave

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Hermann Grab (born May 6, 1903 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; died August 2, 1949 in New York ) was a German-speaking Catholic Austrian writer and musician of Jewish descent. His full name was Hermann Grab von Hermannswörth (Czech Heřman Grab z Hermannswörthu ).

Life

Coat of arms of the Grab von Hermannswörth family, awarded in 1915.

Grab came from a Jewish Prague family who, having become rich, converted and, with Emanuel Grab (1868–1929) with the predicate “von Hermannswörth” , was raised to the hereditary Austrian knighthood by Emperor Franz Josef I for cultural patronage . Both Richard Strauss and Theodor W. Adorno , with whom Grab was close friends, were frequent guests in their Villa Koschinka . Grab attended the German-language high school Na Příkopech (Grabengymnasium) and showed his musical talent as a child. He studied philosophy and music in Prague, Vienna, Berlin and Heidelberg; Influenced by the philosophy of Max Scheler , he received his doctorate with a thesis “The concept of the rational in Max Weber's sociology . A contribution to the problems of the philosophical foundation of the social science ” with Gottfried Salomon-Delatour in Heidelberg. Grab obtained a doctorate in law "on the side" and worked part-time for a year in a law firm in order to be independent of his father. In fact, however, he made music his “job”, initially as a music critic for the Prague daily newspaper “Montagsblatt” and a music teacher, then as a pianist. He was friends with Rudolf Serkin and George Szell , and as a member of the International Society for New Music , he was also close to Arnold Schönberg's circle .

Grab, who called his biography “scandalously uninteresting”, left Prague literally at the last moment, in February 1939 - the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in March - and went to a concert in Paris with three historical piano instruments , and then went there Find exile. As a result, he was spared the fate of his mother and grandmother, who perished in German extermination camps. When France collapsed, Grab was able to escape to Portugal, from where he was allowed to enter the United States five months later. In New York he was teaching piano at the renowned Mannes College of Music . After three years of serious illness, Grab died of cancer in New York in 1949.

Hermann Grab's literary oeuvre is not very extensive; it essentially only includes the novel “Der Stadtpark”, written in 1932 and first published in 1935, as well as the seven stories of the volume “Hochzeit in Brooklyn”, published posthumously in Vienna in 1957 . The short novel, the lovingly ironic story of a childhood at the time of the First World War, is one of the earliest and most important Proust adaptations in German-language literature. The novel is not only set in Prague, but is also about the city itself. The late, “systematically damaged novellas”, as his friend Adorno called them, are based on experiences with National Socialism and life in emigration; in them Grab “as a neat and nuanced writer reluctantly got involved in the inorganic, fragile, inhuman”, as Adorno continued: “The author of lyrical prose bowed to the burden of horror, unconcerned about his own disposition and prehistory. His strength was the awareness of weakness. […] At last he thought of a great novel that should have portrayed the hectic rise of a Jewish banking family and their downfall in Poland and gave something like the archetype of society between the two wars. The execution was denied him. "

Works

  • The concept of the rational in Max Weber's sociology. A contribution to the problems of the philosophical foundation of social science . Braun, Karlsruhe 1927 (also Heidelberg Univ. Diss. 1927).
  • Wedding in Brooklyn. Seven stories . New Critique Publishing House, Frankfurt / M. 1995, ISBN 3-8015-0284-8 .
  • The city park. Novel. Vienna-Leipzig, Zeitbild 1935 . New edition: New Critique Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1996, ISBN 3-8015-0299-6 .
  • The city park and other stories . Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 1985, ISBN 3-596-25951-7 .

literature

  • Theodor W. Adorno: Hermann Grab. In: ders .: Collected writings. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M.
  • Cramer, Doortje: From Prague to New York without Return: Life and Work of Hermann Grab (1903-1949) . P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-631-47311-7 . (Zugl .: Mainz, Univ., Diss., 1993)
  • Karl Hobi: Hermann Grab. Life and work. Univ. Diss., Friborg (Switzerland) 1969.
  • Ernst Schönwiese : Hermann Grab. In: word in time. 4 (1958), p. 257 ff.
  • Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century. Volume 1: A-I. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 452.
  • Roman Kopřiva: Hermann Grab's calm on the flight between tradition and innovation. Notes on reading and poetics. In: Sylvia Paulischin-Hovdar (Ed.): Borders: Flight and Resistance. Literary answers to a political issue. On the occasion of the annual meeting of the Franz Werfel scholarship holders on April 13 and 14, 2018 in Vienna. Vienna: Praesens 2019, pp. 65–93. [1]
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 407

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ One of Hermann's cousins, Alice Grab, married Franz Strauss, the composer's son, in Vienna in 1924; see also Strauss and the family
personal data
SURNAME Grave, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grave of Herrmannswörth, Herrmann; Grave z Herrmannswörthu, Herrmann (Czech)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer and musician
DATE OF BIRTH May 6, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH August 2, 1949
Place of death New York City