Kurt Münzer

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Kurt Münzer (born April 18, 1879 in Gleiwitz , † April 27, 1944 in Zurich ) was a German writer .

Life

According to his own statements, Münzer had a “golden childhood” as the son of Mayer called Moritz Münzer (* 1824 in Kieferstädtel ; † 1908 in Berlin), an Orthodox-Jewish merchant, and Klara née. Löwysohn (* 1846 in Peiskretscham ; † 1922 in Berlin), daughter of Rabbi Abraham Löwysohn, to whom he had a particularly strong bond. The family moved with him and his two siblings to Berlin around 1887 , where Münzer studied law, philosophy and art history after graduating from high school. Without working towards a specific professional goal, Münzer continued his studies from 1904 in Zurich, where he was in a relationship with the actor Karl Feigl . Münzer's acquaintance with Johannes Nohl and Erich Mühsam is documented from this time . He was involved in an attempt at blackmail under threat of private revelations against Magnus Hirschfeld and Benedict Friedländer , for whom Feigl was sentenced to prison.

Münzer had already found a publisher for his first book, the treatise Die Kunst des Künstler (1905). In the following 18 years more than 20 novels, short stories, plays and short stories were published, some of which achieved considerable circulation. They are mostly about Jewish identity, the relationship between art and life, interpersonal alienation, proletarian misery, the big city of Berlin. Münzer greeted the outbreak of the First World War with a patriotic collection of poems ( deeds and wreaths, songs on war. 1914). The novel Jude ans Kreuz (1928) anticipated the horrors of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis . Münzer's greatest success was the novel Mich Hungert , published under the pseudonym Georg Fink , about the problematic friendship of a “half-Jewish” proletarian son with the family of a middle-class factory manager. Based on his novel Der Ladenprinz , a film of the same name by Erich Schönfelder was made in 1928 (with Adele Sandrock , Harry Halm and La Jana , set by the expressionist set designer Andrej Andrejew ).

In terms of literary history, Münzer can best be assigned to magical realism .

Immediately after the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Münzer emigrated to Switzerland, where he lived mainly in Bern, was at times an employee of the Steinberg publishing house in Zurich, but was no longer able to achieve greater success as a writer.

Works (selection)

  • The lost song. Four one-act plays. Harmonie-GmbH, Berlin undated [1907].
  • The way to Zion. Novel. Axel Juncker, Berlin 1907.
  • City children. Novel. Vita, German publishing house, Berlin 1910.
  • The shop prince. Novel. Georg Müller, Munich 1914.
  • Deeds and wreaths. Songs about war. Axel Juncker, Berlin 1914.
  • Phantom. Novel. Wilhelm Borngräber, Berlin 1919. (New edition: Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-923211-22-7 . (Pdf) )
  • The white boy. The story of a strange love. Paul Steegemann , Hanover / Berlin 1921.
  • Poets and citizens. Beccards, Schwedt 1922.
  • The cold heart. Novel. Rösl & Cie., Munich 1922.
  • The unleashed afterlife - novellas. Verlag Deutsche Buchwerkstätten, Dresden 1922.
  • Esther Berg. Herz-Verlag, Vienna 1923. (New edition Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-945980-04-0 . (Pdf) )
  • Mamuschka. My mother's novel. Walter Heinrich, Freiburg im Breisgau 1923.
  • Jew on the cross. Novel. R. Löwit, Vienna / Leipzig 1928. (New edition with biobibliographic epilogue. Leipzig / Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-923211-85-2 . (Pdf) )
  • Brother bear. Selected short stories and feature articles. (Afterword Michael Helming . Leipzig / Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-923211-93-7 . (Pdf) )
  • as "Georg Fink": I'm starving. Bruno Cassirer , Berlin 1929. (New edition Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8493-0093-7 .)
  • as "Georg Fink": Are you lost? Bruno Cassirer, Berlin 1930. (New edition under the author's name Kurt Münzer and the title Menschen am Schlesischen Bahnhof. Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-923211-09-8 . (Pdf) )

literature

  • Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller: Man for man. Biographical lexicon . Suhrkamp, ​​Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-518-39766-4 .
  • Cornelia Tönnesen: Kurt Münzer. Between nihilism and expressionism. In: Bernd Witte (Ed.): Oberschlesische Literatur 1900–1925. Historical upheaval and literary reflection . Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-631-34635-2 , pp. 149–177.
  • Münzer, Kurt. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 17: Meid – Phil. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-22697-7 , pp. 227-250.

Web links

Wikisource: Kurt Münzer  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Portrait of Andrej Andrejew (French) ( Memento from August 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Münzer, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fink, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Gliwice
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 1944
Place of death Zurich