Jura Soyfer

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Jura Soyfer (born December 8, 1912 in Charkow , Charkow Governorate , Russian Empire ; died February 16, 1939 in Buchenwald concentration camp ) was a political writer in Austria in the 1930s . He published in several magazines and wrote a total of five pieces and three preserved scenes, which are still performed today.

Life

Jura Soyfer was born in Kharkov in the Russian Empire as the son of the Jewish industrialist Vladimir Soyfer and his wife Lyubow Soyfer. In 1920 the family fled from the Bolshevik Revolution via Georgia and Constantinople and came to Baden near Vienna in 1921 , from where they later moved to Vienna. Jura Soyfer started school at the age of ten at the Hagenmüllergasse secondary school , Erdberg, where he later successfully graduated. At the age of 15 he began to study socialist scriptures and became a staunch Marxist . In 1927 he joined the Association of Socialist Middle School Students and worked in the agitprop group "Blue Blouses". Since Russian, French and German were spoken in the family, Soyfer quickly developed a feeling for and a preference for language and language games. In 1929 he became a member of the Political Cabaret of the Social Democrats . There he gained his first experience in scenic writing. From December 1931, political satires by Soyfer appeared weekly in the Arbeiter-Zeitung and in the social-democratic weekly Der Kuckuck . He also wrote two articles for the political stage . In it he called for a politicization of the theater and the abolition of mere distraction and entertainment. In this respect, he was the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht very close.

After the February fighting in 1934 he joined the illegal KPÖ , wrote leaflets and began work on his novel So died a party . This novel, of which only a fragment has been preserved, was a settlement with the Austrian Social Democrats, whose policies led to the defeat of February 1934. In 1935, Soyfer met Leon Askin (Leo Askenasy) through Hans Weigel , who worked as an actor and director at Vienna's ABC Theater , where most of Soyfer's plays were performed.

Gravestone in the Hebrew Free Burial Association's Mount Richmond Cemetery, Staten Island , New York

In 1937 Soyfer was arrested because he was mistaken for a certain Seidel (actually Franz Marek , leading functionary of the Communist Party). When it turned out that there was enough incriminating material against Soyfer even with his critical pieces, he was imprisoned for three months. On February 17, 1938, he was released as part of an amnesty for "political" people. He was then free for 26 days. On March 13, 1938 - the day after the Anschluss - he was arrested by Austrian officials in Gargellen while trying to get to the saving Switzerland on skis.

First he came to the community kotter in St. Gallenkirch in the Bludenz district . On March 16, 1938, he was brought before the Feldkirch Regional Court , which was only sworn in on Hitler on March 18, 1938 . On June 23, 1938, he was transported to Dachau concentration camp , and in autumn to Buchenwald concentration camp ; there he died of typhus on February 16, 1939 . At that time, his parents who had emigrated to the United States had already sent an affidavit and his concentration camp release papers had been signed. His remains were transferred to New York and buried on Staten Island by the HFBA .

plant

From the beginning of 1932 to 1934, Soyfer regularly published poems in the Arbeiter-Zeitung (AZ) that dealt with the current political situation. After his trip to Germany in the summer of 1932 he wrote again and again against National Socialism, whereby his poetry represented both a call for vigilance and resistance as well as satire and trivialization of the political opponent. After the establishment of the corporate state in 1934, Soyfer found it difficult to publish; not until 1935 did he write again for the Sunday edition of Wiener Tag . Furthermore, some songs and poems are integrated into his pieces; these include, among others, the Moritat im Paradies in Der Lechner Edi looks ins Paradies (1936), the Vagabundenlied in Astoria or the Ballad der Drei in Broadway Melodie 1492 (1937).

Soyfer's first play The End of the World or The World Will Not Stand Long was premiered in the early summer of 1936 and canceled on July 11, 1936. It shows humanity before the apocalypse , the destruction of the world by a comet - the violent suppression of revolting masses and the delusion in which people wait for the end of the world are shown. Finally, the comet does not have the heart to destroy the earth, which gives the piece a positive outcome, but at the same time emphasizes the inevitable incorrigibility and stupidity of humanity. The subtitle is an allusion to the comet song in Johann Nepomuk Nestroy's piece Lumpazivagabundus .

The second piece, Der Lechner Edi looks ins Paradies , which was played in literature on the Naschmarkt from October 6, 1936 to January 6, 1937 , shows an unemployed person who sets out with the help of a time machine, the culprit for his misery in the past to find. Finally, he exposes the human invention as the culprit. Nevertheless, the piece ends with a call from man to man to make a decision, including a political one. Soyfer makes the leap from pathos to a cabaret element, political criticism.

In his third play, Astoria , Soyfer problematized the concept of fatherland , which had been rampant in Austria since 1918. Astoria is a fictional country to which the hopes and longings of the protagonists cling in the play. Your dreams are repeatedly destroyed by the impossibility of implementation. This is made clear at the end of the piece by a song of praise that the performers sing to the place while they are actually being taken to prison.

In 1937 Soyfer wrote the play Vineta . There he distances himself from all the traditions of folk plays and shows an absurdity of action and language that inevitably steers towards the abyss and destruction. The protests against circumstances that are viewed as unchangeable and the “not wanting to know” are discussed. Vineta is a warning about war and illusions that are created to oppress people.

Soyfer wrote Broadway Melody 1492 in 1937 for the ABC theater. It is an adaptation of the play Columbus by Kurt Tucholsky and Walter Hasenclever . Soyfer takes on the satire on the clergy and court society, but his political social criticism is far more radical. Through the perspective from the lower class, Broadway Melodie 1492 represents a classic folk piece in which it becomes clear that the lower classes of society are, or at least should be, superior to the ruling class.

Three other scenes have also been preserved. In the history lesson in 2035 , a teacher asks his students about the “Neo-Middle Ages” (Vienna in the 1930s). The vision of the future presents Soyfer's own time as barbaric and backward-looking; For example, a student can say “nothing” about cultural life, to which the professor answers with “very good”. The pictures of a sausage cart from 1937 make two Viennese philosophize about the political situation in Europe, albeit by talking about the sausage cart; Soyfer uses the ambiguity of the Viennese dialect for this. The most loyal citizen of Baghdad , performed at the end of 1937, is a satire on the Austrian corporate state and its small-mindedness.

In addition, Soyfer wrote two “Proletarian Celebrations” with the titles Christmas Tree of Mankind - A proletarian Christmas party and King 1933 is dead - Long live King 1934 .

During his imprisonment in 1937/1938, Soyfer began to write another piece about the person of Adolf Hitler . Nothing of these designs has survived. Another eight scenes and pieces have not survived or have not yet been found.

In the Dachau concentration camp, Soyfer and the composer Herbert Zipper created the famous Dachau song with the refrain:

"But we have learned the Dachau slogan,
And we got hard as steel.
Stay human, comrade
Be a man comrade
Do all the work, get going, comrade:
Because work, because work sets you free ,
Because work, because work sets you free! "

meaning

Jura Soyfer is one of the few Austrian authors who has been translated into more than 30 languages. His concern was not to present complete solutions or results in the theater; for him, the problems presented could only be solved in real life, i.e. in real protest. His pieces destroy illusions and call for society to be changed as it is. He himself saw it as a means of propaganda directly related to the time in which he lived.

Soyfer's pieces were only published collectively in 1974 after former members of the English exile organization “ Young Austria ” tried to get them. As a result, his works were torn out of their context and listed in the GDR as a timeless social criticism that was valid there. The Jura Soyfer Society was founded in Vienna in 1988.

Texts by Jura Soyfer were set to music by Herbert Tampier, Georg Herrnstadt and Willi Resetarits ( Butterflies - Displaced Years ) as well as Sabina Hank (CD Abendlieder ) and Klaus Bergmaier (CD Die Mühlen der Gerechtigkeit ).

Commemoration

In front of the house at Gärtnergasse 4 in Vienna-Landstrasse , where Soyfer lived from 1930 to 1931, there is a memorial stone . A plaque on the residential building Vienna 9th , Kinderspitalgasse 10, reminds us that Jura Soyfer lived here from 1931 to 1935.

At Haus Wien 2. , Heinestrasse 4, the last residential building of Jura Soyfer, there is a memorial plaque to the left of the entrance.

In 1968 the Jura-Soyfer-Gasse in the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung Ost in Favoriten (10th district ) was named after him.

In the Institute of Theater, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna , a lecture hall is dedicated to Jura Soyfer.

  • Memorial plaque on the last residential building in Jura Soyfers, Heinestrasse 4, Vienna-Leopoldstadt

  • Memorial stone for Jura Soyfer in front of his former home in Vienna-Landstrasse

  • Jura-Soyfer-Gasse

Fonts

  • Work edition. Ed. Horst Jarka. Deuticke, Vienna 2002.
  • Displaced years. A collage about the interwar period. Butterflies, Vienna, no year (approx. 1980).
  • The complete work. Ed. Horst Jarka. Europe, Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-203-50741-2 .
  • From paradise and the end of the world. Edited by Otto Tausig . Vienna 1947, extended edition Berlin 1962.
  • The good God created order. A selection. Edited by Werner Martin. Reclam, Leipzig 1979 (in it: This is how a party died , a previously unpublished fragment of a novel, pp. 225–376) With 22 illustrations by Soyfer and about the February fights in 1934 .

Settings

  • The composer Dieter Salbert set 16 songs and chansons for voice and piano in his "Jura Soyfer-Album", premier: December 1st, 19768 Braunschweig State Theater on the occasion of the ASTORIA production

literature

  • Horst Jarka: Jura Soyfer. Life, work, time. Löcker, Vienna 1987.
  • Gerhard Scheit : Theater and Revolutionary Humanism. A study on Jura Soyfer. Vlg. For social criticism, Vienna 1988.
  • Herbert Arlt, Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner (Ed.): Jura Soyfer and Theater. Peter Lang, Frankfurt 1992.
  • Jürgen Doll: Theater in Red Vienna. From social democratic agitprop to dialectical theater Jura Soyfers. Böhlau, Vienna 1996.
  • Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists 1933 to 1945. With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 318.
  • Peter Langmann: Socialism and Literature. Jura Soyfer. Studies on an Austrian writer from the interwar period. Hain Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1986.
  • Herbert Arlt (Ed.): Jura Soyfer. Edition 2012. Jura Soyfer Gesellschaft, Vienna 2012.
  • Katharina Bauer, Julia Bruckner, Maria Dalhoff, Wolfgang Guttmann, Susita Fink, Sarah Kanawin, Alexander Karpisek, Felix Kohlmeister, Evita Deborah Komp, Tiffany Kudrass, Veronika Madudova, Thomas Ochs, Carina Pilko, Theresa Prammer, Ruth Magdalena Schmid, Karin Sedlak, Christian Simon, Christina Steinscherer, Anna Storchenegger, Anja Strejcek, Michael Stütz, Christian Swoboda, Jasmin Sarah Zamani - a student collective (ed., Contributions) under the direction of Gabriele C. Pfeiffer: Jura Soyfer, a student project at the tfm . Developed as part of the course: "Jura Soyfer (1912–1939) - Theater and Life Dramas", at tfm | Institute for Theater, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna, summer semester 2009 and winter semester 2009/10. Printed: St. Stefan im Lavanttal 2010. Online at theaterfink.at (PDF; 2.4 MB).
  • Alexander Emanuely : State of emergency. Jura Soyfers Transit. Encyclopedia of Viennese Knowledge, Volume XVIII, Weitra, 2013, ISBN 978-3-99028-184-0 .
  • Johann Holzner:  Soyfer, Jura. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 607 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • JS Ges .; WP, Vienna. (P.-H. Kucher):  Soyfer Jura (Juri). In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 12, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2001-2005, ISBN 3-7001-3580-7 , p. 438 f. (Direct links on p. 438 , p. 439 ).
  • Erna Wipplinger, Margit Niederhube, Christoph Kepplinger: Jura Soyfer - A reading book. Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-85476-485-4
  • Hartmut Cellbrot: Branches. Jura Soyfer as a reader of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In: Freiburg University Gazette. Issue 214 - Dec. 2016, pp. 79–95.
  • Joanna Jabłkowska: Popular theater or political drama: Jura Soyfers plays . In: Aneta Jachimowicz (Hrsg.): Against the canon - literature of the interwar period in Austria. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2017, pp. 265–280.

Web links

Commons : Jura Soyfer  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Writer of the Austrian Resistance Jura Soyfer was born 100 years ago , portrait of Regina Kusch on Deutschlandfunk from December 8, 2012
  2. ^ Felix Czeike : Historisches Lexikon Wien , Volume 5. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-218-00547-7 , p. 254.
  3. ↑ Austria-Forum: "The Unfinished from Staten Island - Jura Soyfer would have been 100 years old this year" From the "Wiener Zeitung". Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
  4. ^ Peter Langmann: Socialism and Literature. Jura Soyfer. Studies on an Austrian writer from the interwar period. Hain Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1986, p. 26.
  5. ^ Herbert Arlt (Ed.): Jura Soyfer, Volume 1: Dramatic. Edition 2012, Jura Soyfer Gesellschaft, Vienna 2012, p. 359.
  6. ↑ Folk songs archive ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2014 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.volksliederarchiv.de
personal data
SURNAME Soyfer, Jura
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Kharkov , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1939
Place of death Buchenwald concentration camp