Josef Kastein

Josef Kastein , since 1918 as a pseudonym for Julius Katzenstein (born October 6, 1890 in Bremen , † June 13, 1946 in Haifa ), was a German-Jewish writer and lawyer.

biography

Family and education

Kastein was the second son of Manus Katzenstein, a trader from a Jewish family from Hesse ( Abterode ) who moved to Bremen in 1886. He attended from 1897 the elementary school at Martini churchyard, 1900 the secondary school at the Sögestraße and after two years of interruption by a bone disease in 1909, the grammar school at Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse in Bremen, where he graduated in 1911 with the Abitur. During his youth he developed into a conscious Jew with a Zionist character . In 1911 he took part in the 10th Zionist Congress in Basel. He then studied law at the University of Munich , the University of Freiburg , the University of Berlin and the University of Göttingen . At the same time he was a member of a Zionist student union. A Palestine tour in 1913 left a lasting mark on it. In 1914 he passed his first legal examination and was appointed trainee lawyer in Bremen. Again he had to take a break for several months between 1915 and 1917 because of his illness. In 1917, he was with a work Concerning the legal nature of the silent partnership of the German Commercial Code at the University of Greifswald Dr. jur. PhD . His first marriage was from 1918 to 1926; his two sons were born in Bremen.

Lawyer and writer

After graduating, he earned his living as a lawyer. In addition, he produced his first literary works with the collection of poems Logos und Pan (1918), the collection of novels Die Brücke (1922) and essays that he published under his pseudonym Josef Kastein. He sharply separated his work as a successful lawyer from that of the freelance writer. He dealt with Jewish topics (Jewish literature, Palestine etc.) in his works from the 1920s. In 1926/27 he created his Hanseatic merchant novel with Bremen motifs under the title Melchior .

Kastein moved to Ascona, Switzerland, in the spring of 1926 . He was now only active as a writer. During the 1930s, Kastein was an internationally recognized author. He published mainly in magazines (especially in Martin Buber's magazine Der Jude ). He was best known, however, through some novels and the history of the Jews from 1931. This voluminous book (633 pages), which Ernst Rowohlt Verlag asked him to prepare , has been translated into several languages. In addition, other writings on Jewish topics were created, some of which were also translated. In view of these works, written from a Zionist point of view, Shalom Ben-Chorin referred to Kastein as the “historian of the Jewish soul”. In 1934 all of his publications were banned in Germany. In 1936 his German citizenship was revoked.

Kastein emigrated to Palestine in 1935 . He lived in Tel Aviv , learned Hebrew and wrote his last works in this language. In 1936 he married his second wife Margarethe Vogl, who took the Hebrew name Shulamith. On September 1, 1939, when the Second World War broke out, Kastein's wife was on a home leave in Vienna; She was not allowed to return to Palestine and had to leave for New York, from where she never saw her husband again (she died there in 1983). Several attempts by Kastein to emigrate to the USA failed. His mother was deported from Bremen to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 and murdered there.

In 2004, autobiographical memoirs were published from Kastein's estate. In them he describes his childhood in Bremen. The question of the demarcation from the "others" runs like a red thread through the text.

Works

• Josef Kastein as Julius Katzenstein: About the legal nature of the silent society of the HGB , H. Adler, Greifswald 1917 DNB 570429129 OCLC 65143548 (dissertation University of Greifswald 1917, 86 pages).

A story of the Jews

• A history of the Jews (1st – 4th thousand), Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1931 [“Albert Einstein admirably appropriated”] / (5th – 6th thousand), Berlin: Rowohlt, 1933 / (6–7. Tausend), Berlin: Rowohlt, 1934 / [8. – 10. Tausend], Vienna: Löwit, 1935 / New extended edition (11th – 13th thousand), Vienna / Jerusalem: Löwit, 1938.
• Een divorced the joden . Author. vert. uit het Duitsch door JL Snethlage, Arnhem: van Loghum Slaterus, 1933.
• Storia del popolo d'Israele . Trad. dal tedesco di Emilia Durini, Milan: Ed. Corbaccio, 1935.
• History and destiny of the Jews . Translated by Huntley Paterson. New York: Viking Pr. 1935 / Garden City, NY, Garden City publishing co., Inc., 1936 [Reprinted by Simon Publications 2001].
• Toledot ha'ummah hajjisra'elit . Sefer 1 [/ 2 in 1 vol.] [Josef Qastajin]. Tirgem miggermanit JL Baruk, Tel-'Abib: Debir, 1938.
• Historia y destino de los judíos [Trad. directa por Sigisfredo Krebs], Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad 1945 (Biblioteca de grandes obras famosas; Vol. 3).

Further works on Jewish history / essays

• Joodsche problems in het heden . Author. vert. van EM Kleerekoper. Arnhem: van Loghum Slaterus, 1933.
• Jews in Germany , 1935.
  • Jews in Germany . Translated from the German by Dorothy Richardson . With a preface by James Stephens, London: Cresset Press, [around 1940].
• Jewish reorientation , Vienna: Löwit, 1935.
• Theodor Herzl . The experience of the Jewish person , Vienna: Löwit, 1935.
• The Jewish experience in history , 1936.
• Jerusalem. The history of a country , Vienna and Jerusalem, Löwit, 1937.
• Paths and wrong ways . Three essays on contemporary culture, Tel Aviv: Ed. Olympia, undated [around 1952].
• What it means to be a Jew . Edited by Jürgen Dierking / Johann-Günther König, Bremen: Edition Temmen 2004.

Novels, short stories and plays

• Josef: Logos and Pan: A chain of songs from our life , Berlin; Vienna: R. Loewit, 1918.
• Workers: A Dramatic Scene , Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1921.
• Adam of Spades. Roman , Berlin: Th. Knaur Nachf., [1927].
• Melchior. A Hanseatic merchant novel , Bremen, Friesen, 1927 [reprint: Döll-Verlag , 1997].
• Sabbatai Zewi . The Messiah of Ismir , Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin, 1930.
• Uriel da Costa or The Tragedy of Minds , Berlin, Rowohlt, 1932.
• Süsskind von Trimberg or The Tragedy of Homelessness , Jerusalem: Palestine Publishing Company, 1934.
• Herod . The story of a foreign king , Vienna and Jerusalem, Löwit, 1936.
• Jeremias : The report of the fate of an idea , Vienna; Jerusalem: Löwit, 1938.
• Die Brücke: Novellas , [Berlin-Schöneberg]: [Oestergaard], [1938].
• A Palestinian Novella , Haifa: [self-published], 1942.

literature

• Schalom Ben-Chorin : Josef Kastein, the historian of the Jewish soul. On the 30th anniversary of his death on June 13, 1976 . In: Israel News of June 11, 1976, p. 9.
• Alfred Dreyer [former secretary of Kastein]: Josef Kastein: Return to Judaism. Stations of an inner development . In: Emuna-Israel-Forum , H. 5/6, 1976, pp. 18-28.
• Alfred Dreyer: Joseph Kastein, a Jewish writer (1890-1946). The Bremen years . In: Bremisches Jahrbuch Volume 58, 1980, pp. 93–144 ( full text )
• Alfred Dreyer: Josef Kastein - creative years in Switzerland . In: Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute 1981, pp. 21–50.
• Alfred Dreyer: Josef Kastein. Decision for Erez Israel . In: Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute 1983, pp. 23–51.
• Daniel Hoffmann (Ed.): Handbook on German-Jewish literature of the 20th century . Schöningh, Paderborn 2002.
• Kastein, Josef. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 13: Jaco-Kerr. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-598-22693-4 , pp. 282-292.
• Armin A. Wallas: Kastein, Josef. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , pp. 265-267.

Font directory

• Alfred Dreyer: Joseph Kastein (1890-1946). Bibliography. In: Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute . 1985, No. 71, pp. 35-56.

Web links

• Literature by and about Josef Kastein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Josef Kastein in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Short biography of Johann-Günther König

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Commercial Code