Joseph Wechsberg

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Gravestone Joseph Wechsberg at the Jewish cemetery in Merano

Joseph Wechsberg (born August 29, 1907 in Mährisch-Ostrau , Austria-Hungary ; died April 10, 1983 in Vienna ) was a storyteller , essayist and journalist .

Life

Joseph Wechsberg was born on August 29, 1907 in Mährisch-Ostrau (Moravska-Ostrava) and raised in the Jewish faith. His grandfather was a wealthy banker; however, the family fortune was lost in the First World War. Wech's father was killed in the First World War .

Wechsberg attended a bilingual school. He studied law at the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague, music at the University of Vienna and philosophy at the University of Paris . In 1930 he received his doctorate in law summa cum laude in Prague . Like Alfred Polgar , he worked for the Prager Tagblatt . He had also studied violin at the Vienna Conservatory since he was 17. He played in Paris nightclubs and in 1927 and 1929 went to New York and the Far East as a ship musician . At the same time he tried his hand at being a journalist and travel writer. One of his first publications, a travelogue about his personal experiences in the Far East, was banned during the Nazi era .

In 1936 Wechsberg worked as Parliamentary Secretary of the Jewish Party and as a legal assistant in Prague. He also wrote for the Jewish newspaper Selbstwehr . In 1938 the Czech government sent him to America as an expert to give lectures on the Sudeten problem . Upon his arrival, he was advised not to return to Europe as the situation had worsened due to the Munich Agreement . His mother Hermine Krieger was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 . Wechsberg took American citizenship. By then he had written in German, Czech, and French; now he wrote most of his reports in English. Columnist stories appeared from 1943 in the American magazines Esquire and The New Yorker .

In 1943 Wechsberg was drafted into the American Army and sent to Europe as a military correspondent. In 1945 he was briefly editor of the army group newspaper Kölnischer Kurier on behalf of the US Army in Cologne , which was handed over to the British Army of the Rhine . After the war, Wechsberg published numerous reports and articles for various newspapers and magazines. He wrote Homecoming about his experiences as a military correspondent in his Czech homeland . From 1949 until his death he was the Europe correspondent for the New Yorker . From 1951 he lived in Vienna . He is buried in Merano .

Works (selection)

  • Visa to America. 1939.
  • Homecoming. AA Knopf, New York 1946.
    • Homecoming. Arco 2015.
  • A musician is spinning his yarn. 1949.
  • Champagne for breakfast. 1962.
  • Art of living and other arts. 1963.
  • Land with two faces. Criss-cross across the zone. 1964.
  • Blue trout and black truffles. 1964.
  • International high finance. 1966.
  • But the murderers are alive. 1967.
  • The stalinist. 1970.
  • Magic of the violin. 1974.
  • An almost forgotten world. 1980.
  • My father's cufflinks. 1982.

literature

  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur 1983. ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , pp. 1211f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ josephwechselberg.com: Joseph Wechsberg — Biographical Overview
  2. ↑ josephwechsberg.com: List of book compilations Including Joseph Wechsberg
personal data
SURNAME Wechselberg, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American storyteller, essayist, and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Moravian-Ostrava
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1983
Place of death Vienna