Hans Kafka

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Hans Kafka , from 1940 also John Kafka or John H. Kafka (born  December 26,  1902 in Vienna , † February 5,  1974 in Munich ) was an Austrian journalist , writer and screenwriter . He is not related to the writer Franz Kafka .

Kafka went to Berlin in 1925, where he worked as a theater and film critic and published two volumes of short stories. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, he emigrated to Vienna, London and Paris and wrote scripts and his first novel “The Story of a Great Love”.

From 1940 to 1958 he lived in Hollywood and New York, mainly as a screenwriter. For many years he was the editor of the column "Hollywood Calling - Hans Kafka Speaking" in the German exile magazine " Aufbau " and provided the German-speaking emigrant colony in Los Angeles with news from cultural life. In 1947 and 1949 he wrote his two main works, the novels "The apple orchard" and "Sicilian street".

In 1958 Kafka returned to Germany and reported as a correspondent for the New York weekly " Variety " on cultural life in German-speaking countries.

Life

Early years

Hans Kafka was born on December 26, 1902 in Vienna- Mariahilf as the son of a Jewish doctor. He had a sister, Mimi Kafka, who was married to Fritz Mandel in her first marriage and to Hans Schnabl in her second marriage. She emigrated to Australia in 1939 and returned to Vienna in 1950, where she died in 1975.

“Little Kafka”, as his friends in exile in California called him, was not related to Franz Kafka , but an encounter with him was one of his “strongest childhood memories”. He attended the Kandl Gymnasium in Vienna and then began studying medicine at the University of Vienna at his father's request. After two years, he swapped the subject for philosophy and law. During or after his studies he was employed by the Vienna Creditanstalt .

As a young man he published his first poems and prose sketches in the Viennese magazines “Die Wage” and “ Der Tag ” (founded in 1922). The “ Berliner Tageblatt ” published Kafka's travel reports from Italy, but also short stories, sketches and essays.

Berlin (from 1925)

In 1925 Kafka went to Berlin and from then on lived from writing. He mainly worked as a theater and film critic for the daily newspapers " BZ am Mittag " and " Tempo ", both of which were published by Ullstein-Verlag , and for the weekly newspaper " Die literäre Welt ". For the illustrated weekly papers “ Simplicissimus ” and “ Jugend ” he provided short glosses and short stories. From 1930 Kafka wrote reports on famous criminal cases on behalf of Ullstein Verlag, for which he researched while traveling through Italy, France and Scandinavia. In 1927 he published his first collection of novels, “The Limitless” with “twenty-five stories”, which Franz Theodor Csokor found “surrealistic”, while Oskar Maria Graf emphasized the “playful and relaxed” aspects of the stories. This was followed in 1928 by his second volume of short stories, “Calculations”, and in 1931 the biography “ Hans Albers . The fairy tale of a career ”. In 1932, Kafka first worked as a screenwriter for the film fun game "Im Bann des Eulenspiegel". From 1928 to 1932, Kafka was also involved in 18 radio broadcasts.

Exile (from 1933)

After the Nazis came to power in April 1933, Kafka lost his job at Ullstein-Verlag because of his “non-Aryan” descent. He went on a trip to Chicago, lived for a short time in Czechoslovakia, returned to his hometown Vienna in 1934, went to London in 1936, to Paris in 1937 and emigrated to the USA in 1940, where he lived in Hollywood until 1958, in between three years in New York.

Vienna / London

In order to secure his livelihood, Kafka worked in Vienna for the Ralph A. Höger Verlag on various commissioned works, among other things he wrote an art Baedeker from Vienna and in 1935 the book “Thoughts and Words” financed with Italian money, a selection of speeches and Mussolini's writings , which he translated and supplemented with an introduction and chapter comments. Between 1935 and 1936, also in Vienna, Kafka's first novel "The Story of a Great Love" was written, the "fictional description of the love affair between Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton ", which he published under the pseudonym Walter Gundacker. In 1936 he moved to London “ to work on film projects with Alexander Korda ”.

Paris

In 1937, Kafka settled in Paris with his wife, the stage actress Trude Burr. Here he wrote the script for the film "Carrefour", which was made into a film by Kurt Bernhardt in 1938 and was awarded a prize by the French state. An English version of the film came out in 1940 under the title " Dead Man's Shoes ". In Paris he also wrote the story "The Uniform", which was filmed in Hollywood in 1940 under the title " They Met in Bombay ". He was also able to sell the story “The Birthday Gift” to Hollywood (first filmed under the title “ North to Alaska ” in 1960 ) and use the proceeds to finance the emigration to the USA.

In June 1939, Kafka and his wife moved into a villa near Paris with the composer Erich Zeisl and his family (see Hans Kafka and Erich Zeisl ). After the outbreak of war, Kafka was interned as an Austrian for five months, in Maisons-Laffitte near Paris and in two camps in Normandy, Domfront and Damigny . After his wife had obtained a visa to travel to the USA at the American consulate in Paris, Kafka was released from the internment camp in February 1940.

Hollywood (from 1940)

After his release from French internment, Kafka and his wife embarked on the steamer “De Grasse”, the last passenger ship that left France before the German invasion. They landed in New York on February 22, 1940 and were received by producer Paul Gordon and Kafka's agent George Marton. In May 1940, the Kafka couple settled in Los Angeles. They rented a bungalow on Larrabee Street in west Hollywood, a few miles east of Beverly Hills , where many prominent emigrants resided. He soon felt at home in the “colony” of German-Austrian emigrants, where everyone knew each other. In an act of adaptation to his new homeland, Kafka changed his name to John Kafka or John H. Kafka and in 1945 also took American citizenship under this name. Unlike many of his fellow emigrants, the good English-speaking Kafka quickly found work in Hollywood thanks to the contacts he had made in England. His wife was less fortunate. Although she worked as an actress on smaller stages in Los Angeles, a career in film was closed to her.

In the summer of 1940 Kafka worked on the film " They Met in Bombay ", for which he had provided the template with "The Uniform", and then on the film "Crossroads", an American remake of "Carrefour" or " Dead Man's Shoes " . In both films, Kafka is only mentioned as the story-giver in the opening credits. Kafka also had to repeatedly wrestle for contracts with the studios, as his correspondence with Erich Zeisl shows . Over the years he has had several four to twelve month contracts, three contracts with MGM , two each with Columbia and King Brothers, and one with Warner Brothers . His collaboration on the script for the 1960 film "Man on a String" was Kafka's last work for Hollywood.

From 1941 to 1947 Kafka worked for the weekly German-language émigré magazine “ Aufbau ” (see below ). At times, Kafka was also the editor of the supplement “The West Coast” and the club page of the “ Jewish Club of 1933 ”, of which he was a member. In 1944 and 1946 he was elected for two years as a member of the board of directors and assigned to the press committee, which was responsible for the club's "structure".

Between 1945 and 1946 he wrote his first major work, an English-language novel, "The apple orchard", which was published in 1947. The novel tells the “life story” of an apple tree plantation in the American Northwest, beginning at the time of the Civil War , and describes the history of the American West in a parable. The apple orchard is built by pilgrims, experienced its decline during a gold rush and then its successful resurrection through the collective efforts of a cooperative. The opinion of the critic was divided, but rather positive. Warner Brothers bought the film rights, but after Kafka had worked on the script for six months, the filming of the material was abandoned, probably due to political concerns.

new York

In 1947, Kafka ended his work on “construction” and in 1948 moved with his wife to New York , the setting for his second major work, the novel “Sicilian street”, also written in English, which he had started in Hollywood in 1948. In 1949 he completed the novel, which "depicts the struggle for existence of an Italian puppet theater in New York". In it, Kafka sheds light on “the clash of old European romanticism with American reality”. The novel was on the New York Times ' preliminary bestseller list for four weeks ; otherwise, the opinion of the critics was divided on this work as well. Three Hollywood studios acquired the option rights for the fabric without using them. After his return to Germany, Kafka created a new German version of the novel entitled “Enchantment in Manhattan”, which appeared in Hamburg in 1960 and was taken over by Bertelsmann Lesering in 1961 .

Hollywood (from 1950)

In 1950 Kafka settled back in Hollywood. He wrote a script for his novel "Sicilian street", which was not made into a film. Around 1952 his career as a film writer stalled. The reasons for this were a serious illness from 1953 to 1955, but certainly also his temporary departure to New York, the reduced production of the film companies and the competition from renowned scriptwriters among those returning from the war. Kafka tried to stay afloat by selling stories to smaller film companies and the emerging television productions, and also provided contributions for the German-language broadcaster Voice of America and even advertising copy for an insurance company.

A certain bitterness arose from this life situation, which prompted him in 1957, two years after the death of Thomas Mann , to conduct a curious trial against a German film producer. He claimed that the basic idea for Thomas Mann's novel “ The Confessions of the Con man Felix Krull ” came from one of his novels and that he should therefore be named as a co-author in the opening credits. Kafka lost the trial, also because Thomas Mann had evidently conceived the novel 20 years before the publication of Kafka's novella.

In 1956 Kafka wrote the play "Mystery Story", for which five Broadway producers acquired the option rights, but the play was not performed. In 1960 the German version of the piece, which was created at the same time, was successfully premiered in Vienna under the title “The Man in the Tower”.

Munich (from 1958)

Title head of the magazine "Variety".

In 1958, Hans Kafka joined the New York weekly “ Variety ”, a journal for the film and entertainment industry, as Germany correspondent . He and his wife moved to Munich, Altheimer Eck on October 11, 1958, and from then on reported on film, television, theater, opera and music in Germany and on the festivals in Bayreuth, Salzburg and Vienna. Although he never returned to the United States, he kept in close contact with Hollywood and New York because of his work. Kafka had returned to Germany for “pragmatic reasons of employment”, not as a “convinced remigrant”. He remained an American at heart and could not forget the behavior of the Germans after 1933. In 1972 he admitted in a letter to John M. Spalek: "If I weren't employed by an American company, I wouldn't be here."

In 1959 and 1960 three more films were made, in whose scripts Kafka was involved:

  • In 1959 the last screenplay he had worked on in Hollywood was filmed under the title “Man on a string” (German: “Secret files M”).
  • His story “The Birthday Gift” was also released in 1960 after a waiting period of twenty years under the title “ North to Alaska ”.
  • The screenplay “Festival”, written in English in 1959, was produced in 1960 as a German feature film under the title “Final Chord”.

Also in 1960 the German version of his play “Mystery Story” was successfully premiered under the title “The Man in the Tower” in Vienna, but there were no further productions. In the same year, Kafka created a new German version of his novel "Sicilian Street" under the title "Enchantment in Manhattan", which was published in Hamburg and in 1961 was taken over by Bertelsmann Lesering .

Retirement

Kafka was no longer able to gain a foothold in the literary scene in the Federal Republic of Germany. Several heart attacks took him physically and mentally, and in the end he was paralyzed and almost blind and in need of care. On February 5, 1974, Kafka ended his life at the age of 71. He died in Munich and was buried in his hometown of Vienna. Trude Kafka-Burr survived her husband by 17 years and died in 1991. Kafka's estate passed into the possession of relatives in the USA. According to Roland Jaeger, in 2002 "efforts were made to secure the papers and manuscripts still available there for exile research".

Hans Kafka and Erich Zeisl

Erich Zeisl.

In the Paris emigrant circles, Kafka met the Austrian composer Erich Zeisl , with whom he was close friends until his death in 1959. Kafka knew Zeisl's wife Gertrud from childhood, she was a school friend of his sister Mimi, who had also emigrated to Paris. Zeisl and his family fled from Vienna to Paris after the Kristallnacht and spent the first few months in a hotel. In June 1939, the Zeisl and Kafka families moved together to the Villa Les Griffons in Le Vésinet , 20 km west of Paris. Later in exile in the USA, Kafka pulled out all the stops to get Zeisl to work as a film musician with MGM .

In May 1939, Joseph Roth , a Viennese compatriot of the Kafkas and Zeisls, died in exile in Paris . In July 1939, members of the Reinhardt Ensemble in Vienna organized a staged performance of Joseph Roth's “ Job . A simple man's novel ”, with music by Erich Zeisl and with the participation of Trude Burr as Mendel's daughter Mirjam. Zeisl, deeply impressed by Roth's novel, especially because of the strong references to his own fate as an emigrant and because he identified with the protagonist of the novel, won Kafka for the idea of ​​translating “Job” into an opera. Kafka finished the English-language libretto, but Zeisl got stuck halfway in the two decades that he worked on the work until the end of his life: when he died in 1959, only the first two of four acts were finished. The Munich State Opera performed this fragment as “Zeisls Hiob” in July 2014 together with a completion of the opera: The Bavarian State Opera performed the music of Erich Zeisl with the Jakobsplatz Munich orchestra under the musical direction of Daniel Grossmann (title: “Europe”) for the first time completely on; in the second part (“America”) composer Jan Duszynski and dramaturge Miron Hakenbeck continued the story in a commissioned composition for the Bavarian State Opera.

1952 Zeisl's comic opera " Leonce and Lena " was performed in Los Angeles . For this purpose, Kafka had translated into English the German libretto that Hugo F. Königsgarten had created based on Georg Büchner's play.

plant

Fonts

  • Hans Kafka: The Limitless: Twenty-five Stories. Berlin: Die Schmiede publishing house, 1927.
  • Hans Kafka: calculations: stories. Berlin: "The Awakening" K. Virneburg, 1928.
  • Hans Kafka: Impromptu theater. In: Kurt Virneburg (editor); Helmut Hurst (ed.): Young German poetry. Berlin: Eigenbrödler Verlag, 1930, pp. 178-183.
  • Hans Kafka: Hans Albers: The fairy tale of a career. Vienna: Höger, 1931.
  • Benito Mussolini ; Hans Kafka (editor and translator): thoughts and words. Commented on with the attempt at a “statesman's psychology”. Leipzig; Vienna: Ralph A. Höger-Verlag, 1935.
  • Walter Gundacker (= Hans Kafka): The story of a great love: a novel. Vienna: Höger, 1936.
  • Hans Kafka: Job. English libretto for an unfinished opera by Erich Zeisl , based on Joseph Roth's novel “ Job ”. Los Angeles, from 1939. Unpublished, manuscript in the estate.
  • John Kafka: The Apple Orchard. New York: Coward-McCann, 1947.
  • John Kafka: Sicilian Street. German version: "Enchantment in Manhattan". New York: Coward-McCann, 1949.
  • Hugo F. Koenigsgarten; Hans Kafka (translation): Leonce and Lena. Libretto for Erich Zeisl's comic opera, based on Georg Büchner's play. Los Angeles, 1952. - Translation from German into English by Hans Kafka. Unpublished, manuscript in the estate.
  • John Kafka: Mystery Story. Drama in English, 1956. Unpublished, manuscript in the estate.
  • John Kafka: World and Coffee House: A not very serious and different story. With drawings by Hans Thiemann. Berlin: Herbig, 1958.
  • John Kafka: The man in the tower: play in 3 acts (9 pictures). German version of "Mystery Story". Berlin-Charlottenburg: Bloch, 1959.
  • John Kafka: Enchantment in Manhattan: Novel. German version of "Sicilian street". Hamburg: Rütten & Loening, 1960.
  • Hans Kafka: Fantastic stories. Berlin: Entenpress, 2017.

Scripts

  • 1932: Under the spell of the Eulenspiegel.
  • 1938: Carrefour.
  • 1940: Dead Man's Shoes, English version of "Carrefour".
  • 1940: They Met in Bombay, based on Kafka's story "The Uniform".
  • 1942: Destination Unknown.
  • 1942: Crossroads, US version of "Dead Man's Shoes".
  • 1944: Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
  • 1945: The Woman Who Came Back.
  • 1957: TV episode "A Picture of the Magi" for the series "Family Theater", and for the series "Telephone Time".
  • 1960: Man on a String, German: Secret files M.
  • 1960: North to Alaska, based on Kafka's story "The Birthday Gift".
  • 1960: final chord

Radio

  • 1928–1932: 18 radio reports in German stations: German broadcast archive.
  • 1950s: radio reports for the American international broadcaster “ Voice of America ”.
  • About 25 radio plays.

construction

Title head of the structure and first issue of the West Coast with Kafka's first Hollywood column, September 9, 1941

In 1940, when Kafka emigrated to the USA, Manfred George had been the editor-in-chief of Aufbau for a year . In Berlin he was the feature editor of the Berlin daily Tempo until 1933 , for which Kafka had also worked as a theater critic from 1930 to 1933. Shortly after his arrival, Kafka contacted his former colleague, and when the structure was to be expanded in September 1941 to include the fortnightly supplement The West Coast , Kafka was given its own column entitled Hollywood Calling - Hans Kafka Speaking .

Kafka's column, which, in contrast to the rest of the otherwise German-language magazine, was in English, supplied the emigrants with news from the studios and also kept them up to date on the activities of the exiled writers, musicians and theater people. With his column, Kafka fulfilled an important mediating function for the German emigrants. Today his articles are a valuable resource on film history and on the California emigrant scene. By January 1947, Kafka's column appeared in over 130 issues on the West Coast , then he finished building it up to devote himself entirely to his own writing in New York. By 1949, Kafka also made a dozen other contributions, including the article What our immigration did for Hollywood - and vice versa , on the tenth anniversary of Aufbau , in which he listed the considerable number of 230 German-speaking authors and filmmakers who were active in California.

Note:

Memberships

  • from 1941 (?): Jewish Club of 1933.
  • from 1941: Writers' Guild of America.

literature

life and work

  • Harry Zohn : John Kafka. In: #Spalek 1976.1 , pp. 423-432 (biography). - Professor Harry Zohn (1923–2001), a professor of German studies, came from Vienna like Kafka and had emigrated to the USA. For his biography he used letters from Kafka to John M. Spalek and himself from 1972 as well as verbal information from Kafka's widow from the summer of 1974.
  • Roland Jaeger (Hrsg.): Hollywood calling: the "construction" column on film exile / Hans Kafka. Hamburg 2002. (biography, cross-section of Kafka's Hollywood columns).

Lexicons

  • Siglinde Bolbecher ; Konstantin Kaiser : Lexicon of Austrian exile literature. Vienna 2000, pp. 353-354.
  • Christian Cargnelli (Ed.): Departure into the Unknown. [Austrian filmmakers who emigrated before 1945]. 2. Lexicon, tributes, self-testimonies. Vienna 1993, pp. 64-65.
  • Bruno Jahn (editor): Kafka, Hans. In: The German-language press: A biographical-bibliographical handbook. Berlin 2005, pp 516-517, online: .
  • Wilhelm Kosch (founder): German Literature Lexicon: biographical-bibliographical manual. 8. Hohberg - Kober. Bern 1981, column 812-813.
  • Werner Röder (Hrsg.): International biographical dictionary of Central Europe emigrés 1933–1945 [= Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933]. 2.1. The arts, sciences, and literature, part 1: A – K. Munich 1983, p. 579.
  • Rudolf Ulrich: Austrians in Hollywood: their contribution to the development of American film. Vienna 1993, pp. 126-127.
  • Harry R. Warfel: American novelists of today. New York 1951, pp. 234-235.
  • Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , pp. 271-272.

swell

  • Erika Mann : A dead person in court. A plea. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , September 3, 1957. - Reprint: Erika Mann; Irmela von der Lühe (Ed.): My father, the magician. Reinbek 1996, pp. 309-312.
  • John M. Spalek (Ed.): German Exile Literature Since 1933, Volume 1: California, Part 1. Bern 1976.
  • John M. Spalek (Ed.): German Exile Literature Since 1933, Volume 1: California, Part 2. Bern 1976.
  • Joseph P. Strelka : Des Odysseus descendants: Austrian exile literature since 1938. Tübingen 1999, pp. 246–247.
  • Karin Wagner: I moved out a stranger: Eric Zeisl; Biography. Vienna 2005.
  • Karin Wagner: Eric Zeisl en exile à Paris. A la charnière entre ancien et nouveau monde. In: Michel Cullin : Douce France? : Music Exile in France, musiciens en Exil en France 1933–1945. Vienna 2008, pp. 439–448, Hans Kafka: 446–447.
  • Karin Wagner (ed.): … Erichisrael greets you: Letters from and to Eric Zeisl, Hilde Spiel, Richard Stöhr, Ernst Toch, Hans Kafka and others. a. Vienna 2008.

bibliography

  • Harry Zohn : John Kafka. In: #Spalek 1976.2 , Bern 1976, pp. 192–193 (sources). - List of works and references. Description of the estate.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. #Wagner 2008.2 , p. 365.
  2. a b c d e f g #Zohn 1976.1 , p. 423.
  3. #Bolbecher 2000 . - The statement in Bolbecher “1930 Doctorate to Dr. phil. (Literature, Psychology) ”is probably wrong, since Kafka had been living in Berlin for five years at that time.
  4. Kafka's contributions to “Simplicissimus” online: simplicissimus.info , Kafka's contributions to “Youth” online: jugend-wochenschrift.de .
  5. # Less 2011
  6. # Jaeger 2002 , p. 13.
  7. a b c d e # Jaeger 2002 , p. 15.
  8. Trude (Gertrud) Burr, Kafka or Kafka-Burr, sometimes also Burg.
  9. # Ulrich 1993 .
  10. # Jaeger 2002 , pp. 16-17.
  11. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 424-425.
  12. IMDb: imdb.com , imdb.com .
  13. #Wagner 2008.2 , pp. 119–129.
  14. #Zohn 1976.1 , p. 424.
  15. # Jaeger 2002 , pp. 6, 10, imprint of the club pages of the "Jewish Club of 1933".
  16. ^ Structure , Volume 10, Number 33, August 18, 1944, p. 16, online :; Structure , Volume 12, Number 35, August 30, 1946 page 20, online: .
  17. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 425-428, #Warfel 1951 .
  18. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 429-431, #Warfel 1951 .
  19. # Jaeger 2002 , p. 29
  20. a b c #Zohn 1976.1 , p. 426.
  21. #Jaeger 2002 , pp 29-30, #Mann, Erika 1957 .
  22. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 426, 431.
  23. #Wagner 2008.2 , p. 365.
  24. # Jaeger 2002 , p. 32.
  25. #Zohn 1976.2 , p. 192.
  26. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 426, 431, #Jaeger 2002 , pp. 32-33.
  27. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 429-431, #Warfel 1951 .
  28. # Jaeger 2002 , p. 33.
  29. # Jaeger 2002 , p. 34, #Wagner 2008.2 , p. 365.
  30. # Jaeger 2002 , p. 35. - See also the list of Kafka's literary estate (manuscripts, letters, newspaper clippings) compiled by Harry Zohn: #Zohn 1976.2 , pp. 192–193.
  31. #Wagner 2008.2 , p. 59.
  32. #Wagner 2008.2 , p. 48.
  33. #Wagner 2008.2 , pp. 115, 117.
  34. #Wagner 2008.2 , pp. 50–52, 60, #Wagner 2005 , pp. 154–162.
  35. #Zohn 1976.2 , p. 192. - Kafka's manuscript is in his estate.
  36. #Wagner 2008.1 .
  37. Annual Report of the Bavarian State Opera 2014, pp. 44/45. Accessed on March 16, 2018.
  38. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 425-426, #Wagner 2008.2 , p. 390.
  39. #Zohn 1976.2 , p. 192.
  40. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp 425-428, #Strelka 1999 , #Warfel 1951 .
  41. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp 429-431, #Strelka 1999 , #Warfel 1951 .
  42. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 425-426, #Wagner 2008.2 , p. 390.
  43. #Zohn 1976.1 , pp. 426, 431, #Zohn 1976.2 , p. 192.
  44. #Strelka 1999 .
  45. #Bolbecher 2000 : no conciliatory ending as in the English version.
  46. See: Film Portal .
  47. a b c #Bolbecher 2000 .
  48. imdb.com
  49. imdb.com
  50. dra.de
  51. # Less 2011
  52. a b # Jaeger 2002 , p. 22.
  53. # Jaeger 2002 , p. 33.