John Knittel

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John Knittel , born as Hermann Emanuel Knittel (born March 24, 1891 in Dharwar , India ; † April 26, 1970 in Maienfeld , Graubünden ) was a Swiss writer .

Life

John Knittel was born in India as the son of the Württemberg missionary Hermann Wilhelm Knittel, who was in the service of the Basel Mission , and his wife Anna, née Schultze, from Basel, whose mother came from South Tyrol . Hermann Wilhelm Knittel came from a family of bell foundries in Cannstatt ; Anna Schultze's father was the owner of the C. Schultze'schen Universitäts-Buchdruckerei Basel . 1895 Knittel returned with her three children from Karnataka back to Switzerland and received 1907 in Basel , the Swiss citizenship granted. There John Knittel, who initially only spoke Kannada , first visited the boys' house of the mission and then the high school on Münsterplatz , where he was a classmate of Carl Jacob Burckhardt . After about two months, however, he was expelled from high school and briefly received a few private lessons from a Dr. Wolf, then came to a rectory in western Switzerland, where he learned French, and finally got a job in the cotton factory of his godfather.

Writing beginnings

In 1910 he moved to London and became a bank clerk at Crédit Lyonnais . From 1915 he worked for the English branch of an American film company (Polyscope). On the side, he occasionally organized social events. One of them was a boat trip on the Thames, whereupon he was mistakenly referred to as the ship owner. In London he met Frances White Mac Bridger, whom he secretly married in 1915 against their parents' wishes. The marriage had three children, Doreen (born 1917), Robert (born 1919) and Margret (born 1921), later Mrs. Hubert Furtwängler, who belonged to the close circle of friends of the Scholl siblings (resistance movement " Weisse Rose ").

The encounter with the English writer Robert Smythe Hichens in 1917 became a key experience. This recognized Knittels literary talent and wrote two plays with him, which were never performed. It was not until 1921 that Knittel's first novel "Aaron West" appeared with a foreword by Hichens, which received a lot of attention in the reviews and in German translations is entitled "Die Reisen des Aaron West" or "Kapitän West". In England he became a member of the PEN Club.

Return to Switzerland and stays abroad

In 1921, Knittel traveled to Switzerland with his wife, children and Robert Hichens and settled on Lake Geneva . In the following years the family traveled extensively: Egypt , Algeria and Tunisia . In Egypt (?) He became an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and supported a humanitarian Swiss project aimed at improving the poor life of the Fellahs . From 1932 to 1938 Knittel lived with his family and Robert Hichens near Cairo, but was also very much in Switzerland, where his plays "Protektorat", "Hochfinanz" and especially the "Via Mala" (premiered on September 17th 1937 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich) were successful. The professional activities and the global political situation prompted Knittel and Hichens to return to Europe. In 1938, the Römersteig house above the Maienfeld vineyards in Graubünden was moved into as new accommodation.

Activities in the Second World War and the consequences

During the Second World War he visited Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in Berlin and became a member of the European Writers 'Association (ESV) at the invitation of Hans Carossa at the Weimar Poets' Meeting in 1941. In 1942 he also attended the Weimar Poets' Meeting as the Swiss representative of the ESV. In 1943 he campaigned in vain for his daughter's friends who were condemned to death and belonged to the White Rose resistance group : Willi Graf , Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber . He was considered a “Nazi friend” in Swiss fellow writers. Thereupon he left the Swiss Writers' Association in 1945 (see Authors of Switzerland , AdS), but not the PEN Club, which had campaigned for his removal from the black list in England.

Works

Knittel wrote all of his works in English. His Swiss publisher marketed him as a Swiss writer without specifying the respective translator.

Novels and short stories

  • Aaron West , Roman, 1921 (German: The Journeys of Aaron West / Captain West , 1922)
  • A Traveler in the night , Roman, 1924 (Eng. The way through the night , 1926)
  • Into the abyss , Roman, 1927 (German Thérèse Etienne , 1927)
  • Nile Gold , Roman, 1929 (German: The Blue Basalt , 1929)
  • Midnight People , Roman, 1930 (German Abd-el-Kader , 1930)
  • Cyprus Wine , 1933 (without German translation!)
  • The Commander , Roman, 1933 (Eng. The Commandant , 1933)
  • Via Mala , Roman, 1934 (German Via Mala , 1934)
  • Dr. Ibrahim , Roman, 1935 (German El Hakim , 1936)
  • The asp and other stories , narrations, 1936 (Eng. The Aspis snake and other stories , 1942)
  • Power for sale , Roman, 1939 (German Amadeus , 1939; continuation of Thérèse Etienne , in which he advertises the Atlantropa project)
  • Terra Magna , novel, 1948
  • Jean-Michel , Roman, Orell Füssli, Zurich, 1953 (unabridged paperback edition, Heyne, Munich, 2nd edition 1991)
  • Arietta , Roman, 1957 (German Arietta. Moroccan episode , 1959)

Plays

  • The Torch , play, 1922
  • High Finance , drama, 1934
  • Protectorate. A Popular Drama of Our Age , 1935 (dramatization by Abd-el-Kader )
  • Via Mala , drama, 1937
  • Socrates , drama, 1941
  • La Rochelle , Drama, 1943/44
  • Thérèse Etienne , drama, 1950

Filmography

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: John Knittel  - Quotes
personal data
SURNAME Knittel, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knittel, Hermann Emanuel (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Dharwar , India
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1970
Place of death Maienfeld , Graubünden