Kubi Wohl

Kubi Wohl (actually Jakob Wohl ; born on August 31, 1911 in the hamlet of Zibau near Kirlibaba-Mariensee , Suceava district , Bukowina , Cisleithanien , Austria-Hungary ; died on December 27, 1935 in Czernowitz , Kingdom of Romania ) was a German-Yiddish poet and writers.

Life

Kubi Wohl, son of the sawmill owner Elias Wohl in Zibau in the valley of the Golden Bistritz , wrote his first poem in German in 1919 at the age of eight, which he dedicated to a seven-year-old girl who had dominated her sensitive emotional life for years. At that time, Jews, Germans ( Zipser Sachsen), Ukrainians ( Hutsuls ) and Romanians lived in Zibau , although the colloquial language of the inhabitants was predominantly a dialectal German. The Wohl family had a special social position in the village - they had achieved a certain level of prosperity and came from northern Bukovina, where they had immigrated from Galicia in the 18th century . This special position was already characterized by the German mother tongue. In that small Carpathian village, German was the mother tongue and the domestic language, while the German population spoke Spisian throughout .

After Kubi Wohl had made a name for himself through his numerous lyrical contributions in the German-speaking and Yiddish press in Romania, he died at the age of 24, lonely and impoverished, on December 27, 1935 in Czernowitz. But many friends and admirers came to his grave to say goodbye: writers and journalists, Jews, Germans, Romanians, including the well-known publicist Shmuel Aba Soifer , who was later cruelly murdered by the Nazis, the left-wing revolutionary theorist Muniu Fried-Weininger, the the Romanian Security Police (Siguranța) arrested at the cemetery, and others. The speakers' obituaries in German, Yiddish and Romanian lasted from noon until late at dusk.

plant

Kubi Wohl wrote his first literary texts in German in the small town of Kimpolung in southern Bukovina (today: Câmpulung Moldovenesc ), where the Wohl family lived after 1918 - Elias Wohl continued to head the Zibauer sawmill. When he was fourteen years old, Der Baal-Tschiwe was created , a drama in four acts from Hasidic life, which he wrote in Yiddish, although he otherwise belonged to the German-speaking culture. It was then that what was later referred to as “running the gauntlet through Kimpolung's philistinism” began: “Kubi Wohl, a writer who was only fourteen years old, was publicly laughed at and ridiculed by numerous envious people and especially by his teachers, because according to petty-bourgeois German-Jewish standards, a boy in at his age to go to school and do what parents and teachers prescribed, but he was by no means allowed to work as a musician, poet or even as a dramaturge. It is well known that if someone disturbs the step of the flock, he will be cast out ... ”recalled the poet's sister, Dr. Klara Wohl in Haifa (Israel).

Now Kubi Wohl had to leave the Kimpolunger Gymnasium to attend the Chernivtsi Gymnasium, whereupon he was finally able to take the Matura (Austrian Abitur) in Vienna .

Then back in Czernowitz, his path as a sympathizer of left and revolutionary circles was mapped out. In sharp socially critical poems he declared war on bourgeois class society. Most of these poems appeared in the daily Czernowitzer Morgenblatt as well as in the two Yiddish newspapers Czernowitzer Bletter and Oifgang - after which "public opinion" marginalized him and pushed him into social marginalization. In his credo-like poem Prelude it says: I want to write iron verses / swords dedicated to battle / I want them to glow in fiery hatred / forge under the roaring bellows of the masses / and hammer on the anvil of time.

In the early 1930s, Kubi Wohl became known as a poet, but also as a musician and piano interpreter.

In a letter to the Bukovina writer Alfred Margul-Sperber dated January 8, 1933, to which he also enclosed the well-known cycle of poems Kinder Klagen, Kubi Wohl reported on his everyday life in Czernowitz, where he was fighting for his existence like a poor proletarian on the margins of society had to:

I lead a very restless life here. Wherever I turn, disappointment, bad luck and ignorance of the people await me. What I have experienced and suffered here in the last three weeks is not easy to tell! In search of people and bread, one finds oneself in the evening without both, alone and sore ...

With his poetic work, Kubi Wohl played a key role in shaping German-language proletarian poetry in Romania during the interwar period. It was not until 45 years after his death that the poet's sister, Klara Wohl, in Haifa in 1980, succeeded in creating a bilingual volume - Yiddish and German - under the title Kubi Wohl - the Meteor. Memories. Letters. Records of bringing out poetry . The poet Alfred Kittner (1906–1991), who was still living in Bucharest at the time, wrote an introduction to this, and the graphic design of this now rare edition was done by the Bukovina artist Isiu Schärf (1913–1997). The landscape on the edge of the Carpathians, from which Kubi Wohl came, the Austrian-influenced Bukovina was once a large house in which different peoples lived peacefully together . From here a number of elitist names of German and Yiddish poetry went into the world, B. Paul Celan , Rose Ausländer , Alfred Kittner , Moses Rosenkranz , Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger , Itzig Manger and Manfred Winkler . Like a mourning wanderer / a death-heralding image / autumn has come / wrapped in rags , wrote Kubi Wohl shortly before his death.

Publications

• The meteor. Memories, letters, notes, poems. Graphic design Isiu Schärf. Introduction by Alfred Kittner. Haifa, 1980. 240 p., With a picture of the poet and several photos. Bilingual edition - German and Yiddish, compiled by Dr. Klara Wohl, Haifa.
• Hammering on the anvil of time. Poems. In: Neue Literatur (Bucharest), 37/2, 1986, pp. 17-20.
• Banger moment [poems]. In: Amy Colin, Alfred Kittner (eds.): Sunken seal of Bukovina. An anthology of German poetry. Wilhelm Fink Verlag: Munich, 1998 pp. 280–283.

Web links

• Claus Stephani: A poet's voice fell silent early on , on the website of the cultural magazine David , Vienna 2001
• Claus Stephani: Take my song . To the documentary show of German-Jewish poets from Bukovina. In: David. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift (Vienna), 23/88, Apr. 2011, pp. 28–31

literature

• Kirlibaba [Zibau]. Lexicon entry. In: Pierer's Universal Lexikon, Volume 9. Altenburg 1860, pp. 538-539.
• Sukhava. Lexicon entry. In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 19. Leipzig 1909, p. 219.
• Dietmar Goldschnigg, Anton Schwob (ed.): The Bukowina. Studies on a sunken literary landscape. Edition Orpheus. Contributions to German and comparative literary studies. Edited by Joseph P. Strelka. Francke Published by Tübingen, 1990.
• Alfred Kittner: Late discovery of a literary landscape. The German literature of Bukovina. Symposium on Romanian German literature. Marburg Literature Forum, Institute for Modern German Literature at the Philipps University of Marburg, 1990.
• Klaus Werner (ed.): Threads stretched into nothing. German-language poetry from Bukovina. Insel Verlag: Frankfurt / M., 1992, 164 pp.
• Amy Colin, Alfred Kittner (ed.): Sunken seal of Bukowina. An anthology of German poetry. Wilhelm Fink Verlag: München, 1998, pp. 280, 282, 408, 409, 417.
• Claus Stephani: A poet's voice fell silent early on. Kubi Wohl was born 90 years ago. In: David. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift (Vienna), 13th year, No. 51 (December 2001), pp. 5-6.
• Josef Burg: About Yiddish poets. From the Yiddish by Beate Petras and Armin Eidherr. Hans Boldt Verlag: Winsen / Luhe, 48 pages, ISBN 978-3-928788-60-1
• Claus Stephani: Kubi Wohl and “public opinion”. Considerations on the edge of a biography. In: Israel Nachrichten (Tel Aviv), No. 9885, September 21, 2001, pp. 11-12.
• Willi Jasper. Chernivtsi as a spiritual way of life. In: ZEIT Online, May 31, 2007; Source: DIE ZEIT, No. 23, May 31, 2007. The beech. An anthology of German-language Jewish poetry from Bukovina. Compiled by Alfred Margul-Sperber.
• The beech. An anthology of German-language Jewish poetry from Bukovina. Compiled by Alfred Margul-Sperber. IKGS Verlag, Munich, 2009.
• Erich Rückleben: Homeland Language. Life and testimonies of Bukovinian poets. Chernivtsi Small Fonts. Series of publications by the traditional association. "Catholic Czernowitz Pennäler", Berlin, 2009.
• Rudolf Rybiczka: Shout for the sun! To a poem by Kubi Wohl (linocut). Reprinted in “Green Mother Bukovina”. HDO catalog, Munich 2010.
• Claus Stephani: "Green Mother Bukowina". German-Jewish writers from Bukovina. Documentation in manuscripts, books and pictures. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name from April 22 to June 25, 2010. Catalog and directory. House of the German East: Munich, 2010. 48 pp., 9 figs. ISBN 978-3-927977-27-3 .
• Michaela Trost: Green mother Bukovina. An exhibition on German-Jewish writers in Munich showed how many colors this green used to be. In: Kulturpolitische Korrespondenz (Bonn), No. 1296, July 30, 2010, pp. 10–11.
• Maja Wassermann: Bucovina Cultural Landscape. To a literary-artistic documentary show in Munich. In: Israel Nachrichten (Tel Aviv), No. 12287, July 15, 2010, p. 6.
• Maja Wassermann: Bucovina Cultural Landscape: To a literary-artistic documentary show in Munich. In: HDO-Journal, No. 8–9 / 2010, pp. 36–37.
• [Klaus Hübner]: Green mother Bukovina. In the Munich “House of the German East”. In: Fachdienst Germanistik. Language and literature in the criticism of German-language newspapers (Munich), 6/2010, p. 5.
• Horst Fassel: German-Jewish poets' lives from Romania […]. In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung (Munich), 60/8, May 20, 2010, p. 5.
• [Anne] Goeb [el]: Exhibition Land of the Past. “Green Mother Bukowina”, House of the German East. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), No. 107, May 11, 2010, p. 42.
• Claus Stephani: "Take my song." To the documentary show of German-Jewish poets from Bukovina. In: David. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift (Vienna), 23/88, Apr. 2011, pp. 28–31.