Joseph Hahn (poet)

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Joseph Hahn (born July 20, 1917 in Bergreichenstein, Austria-Hungary , today Kašperské Hory , Czech Republic ; † October 31, 2007 in Middlebury (Vermont) ) was a German-American painter and poet .

Life

Joseph Hahn grew up as the son of an elementary school teacher and school principal and a teacher in Pohrlitz in South Moravia in Czechoslovakia . He attended secondary school in Brno and made friends with Peter Kien there . In 1935 he began to study teaching at the University of Brno and followed Kien to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1937 . A regular course of study was no longer possible, as his family had to flee as Jews to the Czech town of Brťoví when the Germans forced a solution to the Sudeten question in 1938 . After the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Hahn was able to flee to England from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on August 2 with the approval of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague and a British permit . His parents and almost all relatives were victims of the Holocaust .

Since the onward journey to Palestine had been blocked since the outbreak of war, Hahn worked in England as a factory worker and farmhand until he received a place at the Slade School of Fine Art , which was evacuated to Oxford in 1944 . In April 1945, his childhood friend in Brno, Olga Kleinmünz, who had fled to the United States, got him a visa for the United States, and the two married in June. His art studies at the Art Students League of New York , where he met George Grosz , was financed through the work of his wife. But since she contracted multiple sclerosis in 1949 , Hahn now had to work as a photo retoucher in New York City , which, in addition to caring for his wife, who died in 1978, gave him little time, so he gave up painting and started painting to draw. Hahn had a dual talent and wrote poetry for sixty years. Even when he emigrated, he remained attached to writing in the German language, even though he no longer spoke this language in his family. In 1989 Hahn moved with his second wife, the painter Henriette Lerner (1924–2008), to Middlebury and swapped the big city, which he perceived as a threat, for the rural idyll.

Hahn's work is characterized by four major themes: “The danger of annihilation by the atom; the destruction of the environment; the Holocaust; and the cruelty of humans towards animals. ”His graphic work has so far received greater international attention than the poems and the short prose texts. The editions of his volumes of poetry are illustrated with his own drawings.

Hahn was made an honorary member of the exile PEN posthumously . The Hahn couple donated their property to organizations that represent their humanistic values. Hahn's artistic estate is looked after by the German specialist Wolfgang Mieder .

Fonts (selection)

  • Poems and five drawings . Bern: Francke Verlag, 1987.
  • Eclipse and ray . Poems with ten drawings. Paderborn: Igel Verlag, 1997.
  • Holocaust Poems 1965-1975 . Translated by David Scrase. Burlington, Vermont: The Center for Holocaust Studies, University of Vermont, 1998.
  • The double gesture of the world . Poems, prose, drawings. Edited by Thomas B. Schumann. With an afterword by Wolfgang Mieder and David Scrase. Hürth near Cologne and Vienna: Edition Memoria, 2004.

literature

  • Jürgen Serke : Bohemian Villages. Wanderings through a deserted literary landscape . Paul Zsolnay, Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-552-03926-0 , pp. 315-325.
  • David Scrase, Wolfgang Mieder: Joseph Hahn . In: John M. Spalek (Ed.): German-language exile literature since 1933 . Volume 3, part 1. Ed. Saur, Bern, 1989 ISBN 3-908255-16-3 , pp. 190–202.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joseph Hahn , Obituary, Addison County Independent, Oct.15, 2007
  2. ^ A b Henriette Lerner-Hahn , obituary in the Addison County Independent, September 18, 2008
  3. ^ David Scrase, Wolfgang Mieder: Joseph Hahn . P. 198.
  4. ↑ Josef Hahn ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2012 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. , at PEN Center for German-Speaking Authors Abroad  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.exilpen.net
personal data
SURNAME Hahn, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hahn, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American artist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Kašperské Hory
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 2007
Place of death Middlebury (Vermont)