J. Hellmut Freund

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Joachim Hellmut Freund (born September 12, 1919 in Berlin ; died February 29, 2004 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German journalist, editor and author. Under National Socialism , he had to flee Germany and emigrated to Montevideo . After his return he shaped the literary program of S. Fischer Verlag as a lecturer until his death.

Life

J. Hellmut Freund was born as the only son of his parents in a Jewish family in Berlin. His father Georg Freund was a respected journalist and for several years deputy editor-in-chief of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . He learned to read from him at an early age. He attended the Askanisches Gymnasium in Berlin. From the mid-1930s, Jewish religious education took place in the private rooms of the teacher Kantorowsky. In 1938, along with Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Freund was one of the last two Jewish students who were still able to pass the Abitur at a municipal grammar school in Berlin; in German he received an A. At the end of January 1939 he emigrated with his parents, his maternal grandparents and his uncle, a pediatrician, to Montevideo in Uruguay . Freund kept the household furniture they took with them throughout his life. He commented on the escape from Germany in his biography with the words: "Our stay, that was clear, could no longer be."

In Montevideo he first taught the German language as a private teacher, soon wrote theater and music reviews for newspapers, got his own music broadcast on the private radio station La Voz del Día and published in the literary magazine Entregas de la Licorne published by Susana Soca . He also translated German authors such as Thomas Mann , Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rudolf Pannwitz into Spanish. He got to know the writer Jorge Luis Borges , the journalist Dolf Sternberger and cultivated friendships with numerous musicians, including the conductor Fritz Busch , whom he admired and for whom he occasionally worked as a secretary when Busch was in Argentina at the time lived, gave concerts in Montevideo. One of his mentors was the writer Karl Leopold Mayer (1880–1965), who had also fled Berlin and was a lawyer whose doctorate had been stripped of his doctorate by the Leipzig Faculty of Law at the time of National Socialism .

As a press reporter he arrived on the first flight of Lufthansa from Montevideo in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957 for the first time in his home country since the war. At the opening ceremony, State Secretary Hans Globke, who had been discussed because of his Nazi past, was supposed to lead the German delegation, which was canceled by Freund after the intervention. Freund had previously made the list of participants of the German delegation public, which led to considerable protests in the Jewish communities of Uruguay and Argentina .

In 1960 J. Hellmut Freund finally returned to Germany and his parents followed shortly afterwards. Gottfried Bermann Fischer had successfully recruited him to work for S. Fischer Verlag . Freund became a lecturer for literary texts of classical modernism , including the diaries of Thomas Mann . Annette Kolb and Joseph Conrad were among the authors whose books he was in charge of . In addition to Rudolf Hirsch (1905–1996) and Günther Busch , he shaped the literary program of the Fischer Verlag and until his death in 2004 he helped to shape it as an advisor. His memoirs appeared posthumously in 2005 under the title Before the Lemon Tree. Autobiographical digressions of a returnee . He could no longer complete his recorded autobiography. It breaks off in 1961.

His story of persecution, he said, was atypical. His family of origin was spared the Holocaust . The father reached an old age, the mother died just before her 100th birthday. J. Hellmut Freund was buried next to his parents in a Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt am Main.

Publications

  • In front of the lemon tree. Autobiographical digressions of a returnee. Berlin - Montevideo - Frankfurt am Main. Edited by Vikki Schaefer and Leo Domzalski. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005. With the CD Not only books have their fate - also book makers . J. Hellmut Freund in conversation with Klaus Schulz on October 30, 1993. ISBN 3-10-023303-4

Editor (selection)

  • The Golden cut. Big storytellers in S. Fischer Verl. 1886–1914 , S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1964
  • A selection. Stefan Zweig , Ueberreuter, Vienna / Heidelberg 1986

essay

  • Arte foto-graphic. Alrededor de la producción de Arno y Jeanne Mandello , in: Entregas de la Licorne , Montevideo 1953, pp. 165-174; complete edition on periodicas.edu.uy (PDF)

literature

  • Deborah Vietor-Engländer : Hellmut Freund (September 12, 1919 - February 29, 2004) . In: New newsletter from the Society for Exile Research e. V. , Edition 24 of December 2004, pp. 9-10, ISSN  0946-1957 .
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 , Vol II, 1. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 333

Web links

Supporting documents and comments

  1. ↑ He shortened his first name Joachim to J.
  2. ↑ a b Lorenz Jäger: The long time carefree storytelling . In: FAZ , November 25, 2005
  3. ↑ a b c d Deborah Vietor-Engländer: Hellmut Freund (September 12, 1919 - February 29, 2004) . In: New newsletter from the Society for Exile Research e. V. , issue 24 of December 2004, p. 9f.
  4. ↑ a b c Ulrich Weinzierl: The I does not age . In: Die Welt , June 1, 2006
  5. ↑ Quoted by Ursula Pia Jauch. In: NZZ
  6. ↑ a b Ursula Pia Jauch: The editor J. Hellmut Freund looks back without anger. Autobiographical digressions . In: NZZ , April 12, 2006
  7. ↑ 10 years of La Voz del Día , ed. by Audición La Voz del Día, Radio America, Montevideo 1948. With the contribution From the Montevideaner Kulturecho by Joachim Hellmut Freund. Pp. 25-27
  8. ↑ Thomas Henne (Ed.): The withdrawal of doctoral degrees at the law faculty of the University of Leipzig 1933–1945. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-86583-194-1 , p. 9 f.
  9. ^ Erik Lommatzsch: Hans Globke (1898–1973). Civil servant in the Third Reich and State Secretary Adenauer . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-593-39035-2 , p. 311
  10. ^ Reviews in the feuilletons: Die Welt , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , Süddeutsche Zeitung , Frankfurter Rundschau (review notes at Perlentaucher) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
personal data
SURNAME Freund, J. Hellmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friend, Joachim Hellmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German editor and author
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 29, 2004
Place of death Frankfurt am Main