Ilse Ester Hope

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ilse Ester Hoffe (also Esther Hoffe ; born May 8, 1906 in Troppau , Austria-Hungary ; died September 2, 2007 in Tel Aviv ) was the secretary and partner of the writer and Kafka editor Max Brod .

Life

Hope studied French and literature. She fled German-occupied Prague to France in 1939 and to Palestine in 1940 . There she met Max Brod in the 1940s. Hoffe published his own poems in German and Swiss newspapers from 1947 and a volume of poetry in Munich in 1967.

Max Brod's estate

Max Brod had given Ilse Ester Hoffe the Kafka manuscripts from his possession in 1947, including letters and the manuscripts of Kafka's trial , description of a fight and wedding preparations in the country . He confirmed the donation in 1952 by writing on the respective portfolios with the date and signature: “This is the property of Ester Hoffe”, which she acknowledged with the sentence: “I accept these donations. “After Brod's death in 1968, she inherited his literary-historical significant legacy, including Max Brod's correspondence and important manuscripts on Franz Kafka's work, with the stipulation that the material rights and claims from Kafka's manuscripts should go to her heirs after her death, but that they are obliged to do so to hand over this part of the estate "to the library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem or the City Library of Tel Aviv or to another public archive in Germany or abroad" and to make it scientifically accessible. Hoffe's handling of this estate was repeatedly criticized, in particular that she repeatedly sold parts of it or had them auctioned at auctions without being willing to collaborate with literary research. In this way, Kafka's novel manuscript, Der Process, was auctioned off at the Sotheby’s auction house in 1988, initially in a private collection and later in the German Literature Archive in Marbach . At the auction, the price of one million pounds was obtained, the equivalent of 3.5 million Deutschmarks at the time, the highest amount ever paid for a manuscript of modern literature.

Other parts of Brod's and Kafka's estate, however, remained inaccessible in Hoffe's possession. After her death at the old age of 101, literary scholars hoped to tap into the estate.

Eva Hoffe and Ruth Wiesler (1932–2012), the two daughters of Esther Hoffes, filed a lawsuit against the Israeli National Library for the estate of Brod and Kafka after the death of their mother. At the beginning of January 2010 a court in Tel Aviv ruled that they had to reach an agreement with the Israeli National Archives and the National Library by January 15, 2010 at the latest about access to five safe deposit boxes with Kafka's manuscripts, otherwise the safes would be forcibly opened by the court.

On January 20, 2010, it was announced that the opening had been ordered. An appraiser appointed by the court was supposed to check the legality of Max Brod's deed of gift to the Hoffe family. The sisters wanted to sell the Brod estate and the remaining Kafka documents to the German Literature Archive in Marbach. On the other hand, the Israeli National Library in Jerusalem claimed the handover of the estate. Indeed, the Israeli courts upheld through all instances of the National Library, most recently in August 2016 in the Supreme Court of Justice Eljakim Rubinstein .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 18, 2007, p. 16
  2. ↑ a b c Andreas Kilcher: Epic dispute comes to an end , in Neue Zürcher Zeitung of August 13, 2016 [1] , accessed on February 19, 2018
  3. ↑ cf. the accusations of Klaus Wagenbach : bar scene with Frieda . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1982, pp. 160 ( online ). or Wieland Freund : Kafka papers survived cats and water . In: Die Welt (online), July 7, 2008
  4. ↑ Terry Trucco: A Kafka Manuscript Is Sold for $ 1.98 million . In: The New York Times , September 18, 1988.
  5. ^ Rita Reif: Kafka's Manuscript Of 'The Trial' to Go On the Auction Block . In: The New York Times , September 20, 1988.
  6. ↑ ARD ( Memento of the original from November 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Kafka - The Last Trial, November 20, 2016, 10:40 a.m., 51 min., From min. 26, accessed on November 21, 2016  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / pd-ondemand.swr.de
  7. ↑ cf. Brigitte Desalm : The trace of the writing ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Kölner Stadtanzeiger , 4./5. October 1998 or Andreas B. Kilcher: Kafka as a draftsman , in: IASLonline, February 23, 2005  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.textkritik.de
  8. ↑ broadcast culture today , Germany Funk, July 7, 2008
  9. ↑ Ofer Aderet: Bidding was erupts over Kafka's Tel Aviv legacy  ( 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. . In: Haaretz , July 10, 2008@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.haaretz.co.il  
  10. ↑ Jüdische Allgemeine , January 7, 2010 (based on a report by the Haaretz)
  11. ^ Benjamin Balint: Kafka's last trial in Die Zeit of September 12, 2016 [2] , accessed on February 19, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Hope, Ilse Ester
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hope, Esther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli estate administrator Max Brods
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Troppau
DATE OF DEATH September 2, 2007
Place of death Tel Aviv