Leonhard Frank

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Leonhard Frank, before 1929

Leonhard Frank (born September 4, 1882 in Würzburg , † August 18, 1961 in Munich ) was a German writer .

Frank is one of the most important socially critical and pacifist storytellers of the first half of the 20th century. He wrote in an economical and matter-of-fact style that nonetheless succeeds in vividly depicting the social and psychological dependencies of his characters. His works are shaped by his political notion of solidarity and humane coexistence among people. Stylistically, they can be classified between expressionism and objectivity. A special feature of his oeuvre is the psychological deepening of his characters and the subjects dealt with.

Life

Leonhard Frank memorial plaque near the house where the poet was born on the wall of the Gothic Deutschhauskirche in the Würzburg Mainviertel
Memorial plaque, Pariser Platz 4, Berlin-Mitte

Leonhard Frank was born in 1882 as the fourth child of the carpenter journeyman Johann Frank and his wife Marie, née Bach , in the Würzburg Mainviertel at the foot of the fortress mountain at Zeller Strasse 34 and grew up there in very poor circumstances.

After attending the Protestant denominational school in Würzburger Münzstraße 19 from 1889 to 1896 (from which time Frank later processed his experiences with a sadistic teacher in the novella Die Cause ), a subsequent locksmith apprenticeship with a bicycle mechanic (company Fahrrad-Plager am Sternplatz, where later opened the goldsmiths Sebald and Engert), where he was employed until 1896, and a brief activity as a laboratory servant at the Würzburg Juliusspital , he left Würzburg in 1904 to become a painter in Munich. From 1905 he studied painting at the art academy in Munich with the help of two scholarships and kept himself alive with various auxiliary jobs. In 1909 he was one of the founding members of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) , from which he left in the course of the year. Frank was in the Schwabing bohemian scene in the vicinity of the psychiatrist Otto Gross ( Café Stefanie ) and was one of the visitors to Monte Verità in Ascona. For a while he lived with the poet and later GDR culture minister Johannes R. Becher in the Bad Urach artists' colony .

In 1910 he moved to Berlin , where he met Lisa Ertel (aka Luise Elisabeth Erdelyi) from Vienna and married in February 1915. In Berlin he moved around the so-called neopathetics, to which Kurt Hiller , Jakob van Hoddis , Georg Heym , Ernst Blass and others belonged. 1912 published the first stories of Frank in the theater and the time of Alfred Kerr operated PAN .

In 1914 he had a great success in Germany with his first novel Die Räuberbande . For this work he received the Fontane Prize endowed with 1,000 Reichsmarks . As a socialist and determined pacifist, he slapped the social democratic journalist Felix Stössinger in a Berlin café in 1915 because he publicly saw the sinking of the British passenger ship RMS Lusitania by the German submarine SM U 20 , which resulted in 1,198 deaths, as “the greatest heroic deed of human history ”. Because of this act, Frank then had to emigrate to Switzerland. Here he finished the novella The Cause , a clear statement against the death penalty, and wrote several short novellas against the war, which appeared in Switzerland in 1917 under the collective title Der Mensch ist gut . Banned in Germany, this book had to be imported illegally and was then redistributed by opponents of the war. The well-known actress Tilla Durieux organized a reading from the book shortly after it was published, which shook the approximately 300 listeners so much that it was difficult to prevent them from marching across Potsdamer Platz in Berlin with cries of protest against the war. One of the most impressed listeners was Käthe Kollwitz . In November 1918 Frank was awarded the Kleist Prize by Heinrich Mann .

After the end of the First World War in 1918, he participated in the Munich Soviet Republic as a supporter of Kurt Eisner and Gustav Landauer and was temporarily a member of the executive committee of the workers 'and soldiers' council . After the suppression of the council movement in Munich at the beginning of May 1919, in which Frank was wounded, he returned to Berlin, but in the meantime also lived in Munich, Würzburg and Vienna.

Frank worked as a freelance writer in Berlin until 1933. The death of his first wife in 1923 led to a serious creative crisis. After about a year he found his way back to writing and was part of the cultural milieu of Berlin, e. B. in the artist pubs Schwannecke and Schlichter and in the Eden Café of the hotel of the same name near the zoo. Frank was involved in the artistic aid committee of the International Workers 'Aid (IAH) run by Willi Munzenberg and the opposition writers' group "Gruppe 1925" (including Johannes R. Becher, Alfred Döblin , Bertolt Brecht ).

In 1928 Frank was elected to the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin . In 1929 he married again, his wife became the Kiev-born translator Elena Maquenne Pewsner, who came from Odessa. In the same year the son Andreas was born. From 1928 Frank was not only active as a writer, but also wrote scripts for various films. His adaptation of the Karamasoff material for the film Der Mörder Dimitri Karamasoff with Fritz Kortner in the leading role is impressive . Directed by Victor Trivas , with music by Hanns Eisler and the actor Ernst Busch , he was involved in the anti-war film No Man's Land . The work led to violent attacks by nationalists and Nazis and was banned by the government because of their pressure.

At the beginning of the Third Reich , after a short stopover in Munich, Frank emigrated to Paris for the second time via Zurich and London in 1933 . His books fell victim to the book burning in Germany in May 1933, and in March 1933 he was expelled from the Prussian Academy by Gottfried Benn . On November 3, 1934 , with the publication of the third expatriation list of the German Reich, his German citizenship was legally revoked , among other things because of the signing of the Saar Appeal by German intellectuals . In 1936 he and Thomas Mann traveled to Vienna on the occasion of Sigmund Freud's 80th birthday .

At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, like all German exiles, he was interned by the French authorities , first in Paris, then near Blois. Released in the meantime, he was arrested again by the French police with the attack by Nazi Germany on Belgium and the Netherlands in May 1940 and interned with around 1,000 other exiles in a former sardine factory in Audierne near Quimper , Brittany . Shortly before the arrival of the German troops, he escaped from internment and the fear of extradition to the Nazis. First on foot, later by bike and finally by train, Frank fled along with the journalist Léo Lania and another fellow sufferer, at permanent risk of death, through the German lines to Marseille. He later described this in detail in his biographical novels Mathilde and Links, where the heart is . The novel Mathilde is dedicated to his then lover, the Swiss writer and dancer Maria Meinen , who supported him financially during his escape.

He also lived in Marseilles, with no income and no valid papers, in fear of the French police and extradition to the Gestapo. During this time he was in close contact with Walter Mehring . With the support of Maria Meinen and various aid committees, for example the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) founded in New York with the participation of Erika Mann and Thomas Mann , he was finally able to flee to the USA via the Pyrenees , Spain and Portugal using a forged Czechoslovak passport (1940).

Here he worked as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers in Hollywood through the European Film Fund of Ernst Lubitsch and William Dieterle , but without finding success or recognition. In the United States, Frank was constantly monitored by the FBI and the immigration authorities because in their eyes he was a dangerous communist or "violently pacifist". In addition, his private life did not correspond to the moral standards prevailing in the USA at the time. After moving to New York in 1945 , he returned to Germany in 1950. The FBI continued to monitor Frank in Germany. He had previously written the novel Die Jünger Jesu, one of the few contemporary novels that dealt with the immediate post-war situation in Germany. With sympathy he describes the hardship and a new beginning in the destroyed Würzburg, but at the same time criticizes the emerging neo-fascist efforts. This brought him the enmity of a part of the Federal Republican public with the accusation of "nest dirtying and defamation". Frank settled in Munich shortly after his arrival, where he remained until his death. He became a member of the German Academy of Fine Arts and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. In Munich he found a connection to the literary Tukan circle around Erich Kästner .

In 1952 he married for the third time: in 1947 in the USA he met and fell in love with the former actress Charlott London, née Jäger, who has been the woman at his side ever since. Since both were married to other partners at the time, the wedding could only take place after the divorces were consummated. The best man of the marriage was Frank's long-time friend Fritz Kortner , actor and director. His last great work, the autobiographical novel Links, where the heart is , also appeared at the wedding .

In addition to the Silver Medal of the City of Würzburg in 1952, the Culture Prize of the City of Nuremberg in 1953, the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and an honorary doctorate from the Humboldt University in Berlin / GDR in 1957, the GDR awarded him the National First Class Prize in 1955 for his complete works . The USSR honored him with the Tolstoy Medal in 1960.

Despite all honors, it became more and more difficult for Frank to publish in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Adenauer era . He was one of those personalities who did not want to remain silent about the Nazi era and its crimes, who did not want to forget that numerous Nazi perpetrators could easily make a career in the Federal Republic of Germany. He was resented for visiting the communist GDR and for being involved in the “ Fight against Atomic Death ” movement in the West . His collected works were published in those days of Walter Janka led Aufbau-Verlag the GDR. When Janka later fell out of favor with the SED and was arrested, Frank was presented as an emissary by Katia Mann and Hermann Hesse in East Berlin , but in vain.

Leonhard Frank died on August 18, 1961 in Munich. The news of the construction of the Berlin Wall came five days before his death . Frank rejoiced: “Finally! Only in this way can the GDR prevent exploitation by the West ”. He was buried in the north cemetery in Munich .

factories

Publisher's cover of the first edition in 1924

anthology

  • Collected Works. (6 volumes) Aufbau-Verlag , (East) Berlin, 1957.

Novels

  • The band of robbers . 1914.
  • The citizen. 1924.
  • The Ochsenfurt men's quartet. 1927.
  • Brother and sister. 1929.
  • Three out of three million. 1932.
  • Dream companions. 1936.
  • Mathilde. 1948.
  • The disciples of Jesus. 1947.
  • Left where the heart is. (Autobiographical novel) 1952.

Novellas

  • The cause. 1915.
  • Man is good . 1917. The same title for a collection of short stories, together with: In the last car. On the country road. The official. The Bridge of Destiny. To breathe. Querido , Amsterdam 1936
  • The father. 1918.
  • The mother. 1919.
  • On the country road. 1925.
Publisher's cover of the first edition in 1925
  • The Bridge of Destiny. 1925. With the stories:
    • The official.
    • Two mothers.
  • In the last car . E. Rowohlt, Berlin 1925, 1926. (See also 1929: Fall. Post-wareditionat Reclam, Leipzig. Partly with a short essay by Alfred Polgar about life and work LF.s. (3 p.) These editions can only be recognized bibliographically by this that the subtitle story , in the singular, is, page counting 52 p. - All editions with the plural stories with 69 p. do not contain this afterword, despite the identical row number RUB 7004 for both editions). ** Bulgarian edition: 1964. ** Several English editions.
    • Crash Reclam, Leipzig 1929. Ident. with In the last car - again in: New German narrators (vol. 1) (Max Brod et al.) Paul Franke, Berlin undated (1930) as well as further post-war editions at Reclam, Leipzig. Since 1929: RUB 7004. The edition with this title always contains Polgar's epilogue.
  • Karl and Anna . 1926. (Filmed in1928 by Joe May under the title Heimkehr and 1985 by Rainer Simon under the title Die Frau und der Fremde )
  • The nerd, among other things, stories. 1928.
  • The derailed. 1929.
  • German novella. 1954.
  • The portrait. 1954.
  • Berlin love story. 1955.
  • Michael's return. 1957.
  • Short stories. 1961. (Contains: The Hat, Five Pfennigs, Catholicism, The Erotomaniac and the Virgin, The Escape, Love in the Mist, An Inexplicable Experience )

Dramas

  • The cause. (Stage version) 1929.
  • Karl and Anna. (Stage version) 1929.
  • Horseshoe nails. 1930.
  • The outsider. 1937.
  • Maria. 1939.
  • The curve. 1955.
  • The hat dynasty. 1955.
  • Baccarat. 1957.
  • Ruth. 1960.

Short stories

  • The hat.
  • Fair.
  • To breathe.
  • The portrait.
  • Five pfennigs.
  • Emil Müller.
  • The matchmaker.
  • Berlin love story.
  • New York love story. 1946.

script

Adaptations

Film adaptations

  • 1928: Homecoming - based on the novella Karl and Anna
  • 1928: The band of robbers - after The band of robbers
  • 1931: no man's land
  • 1947: Desire Me - based on the novella Karl and Anna
  • 1958: The trial is postponed - after the novella Michael's return
  • 1963: The Cause (GDR) - based on The Cause (1915)
  • 1964: Chronicle of a murder - based on the novel The Disciples of Jesus
  • 1972: German novella. (FRG) - after German Novelle (1954)
  • 1974: The curve (GDR) - after Hufnägel (1930)
  • 1976: The Murderer (GDR) - based on The Cause (1915)
  • 1978: The Men's Quartet (FRG) - based on the novel The Ochsenfurt Men's Quartet
  • 1979: The End of the Song - two-part GDR television film - 1st part Ochsenfurt men's quartet - 2nd part Von three million three
  • 1980: The Murderer (FRG) - based on The Cause (1915)
  • 1985: The woman and the stranger - based on the novella Karl and Anna

Dramatization

  • 2012: The Citizen - Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art

radio play

  • 1955: The cause - radio in the GDR.

Awards

Honors

In addition to his hometown Würzburg with the Leonhard-Frank-Promenade (so named in 1965 after "long arguments and quarrels in the Würzburg city council") , a memorial plaque donated by the Würzburg Beautification Association in 1991 and designed by the artist Renate Jung on the site of his birthplace, which was demolished in 1903 due to dilapidation The Leonhard Frank Youth Center of the Workers' Welfare Association in Würzburg, which was set up in Frankenstrasse , has numerous municipalities, such as Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar or Suhl, that have named a street or schools after the writer.

On the occasion of Leonhard Frank's 100th birthday, the Leonhard-Frank-Gesellschaft e. V. founded. A primary school in Würzburg is also named after him.

Representation of Frank in the visual arts (selection)

  • Emil Stumpp :  Leonhard Frank (chalk lithograph, 1929)

literature

  • Publication series of the Leonhard-Frank-Gesellschaft eV Würzburg (detailed information on the website, see links).
  • Charlott Frank and Hanns Jobst (eds.): Leonhard Frank. 1882-1961 . Munich: Nymphenburger 1962.
  • Martin Glaubrecht: Studies on Leonhard Frank's early work . Bonn: Bouvier 1965.
  • Christian Schmeling: Leonhard Frank and the Weimar period . Lang, Frankfurt / M .: Lang 1989.
  • Michael Eberlein: Home and Exile. Leonhard Frank. In: Kurt Illing (Ed.): In the footsteps of the poets in Würzburg. Würzburg: Self-published (printing: Max Schimmel Verlag) 1992, pp. 103-110.
  • Charlott Frank: Say what else needs to be said. My life with Leonhard Frank . Munich: Nymphenburger 1982.
  • Elisabeth Lutz-Kopp: broken in the middle in two. By-product and lifesaver. The film in the life and work of Leonhard Frank . Gerolzhofen: LAG FILM Bayern 1995.
  • Alexander Stephan: In the sights of the FBI. German writers in exile in the files of the American secret services . Stuttgart: JB Metzler 1995.
  • Walter Fähnders (Ed.): Expressionist prose. A study book. Bielefeld: Aisthesis-Verl. 2001.
  • Walter Fähnders: The most passionate book against the war. Leonhard Frank: People are good. In: Thomas F. Schneider / Hans Wagener (eds.): From Richthofen to Remarque: German-language prose for the 1st World War. Amsterdam: Rodopi 2003, pp. 71-84.
  • Grobmann, Ralph: Emotional Socialist in the 20th Century. Leonhard Frank 1882-1961. Frankfurt / M .: Lang, 2004. ISBN 3-631-52479-X .
  • Fritz Kortner: Evening every day . Berlin: Alexander Verl. 2005.
  • Hans Steidle: Left with all my heart. The political dimension in Leonhard Frank's work. Illustrations Jürgen Hochmuth. Würzburg: Leonhard-Frank-Ges. 2005. ISBN 3-932404-15-7 . (Series of publications by Leonhard-Frank-Ges., Issue 15) Description: [1]
  • Hans Steidle: The poet and his hometown. Leonhard Frank and Würzburg 1882 - 1932. Würzburg: Schöningh 2007, ISBN 978-3-87717-794-5 .
  • "Leonhard Frank". In: Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt / MS Fischer 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
  • Dieter Sudhoff (Ed.): Stranger Girls - Stories of Passion . Berlin: Structure publ. 2007.
  • Volker Weidermann: The book of burned books. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 . (On Frank, pp. 176–179)
  • Michael Henke: Appreciations and errors. Two new books and Leonhard Frank. / Hans Steidle: Garden and horticulture as literary motifs for Leonhard Frank. Würzburg: Leonhard-Frank-Ges. 2009, ISBN 978-3-932404-17-7 . (Series of publications by the Leonhard Frank Society, issue 17). (contains, among other things, a review by Weidermann: The Book of Burned Books)
  • Petra Brixel: "Sophie was still alive today ... and we would be happy!" The writer Leonhard Frank and the painter Sofie Benz - a love affair in the light of old letters and the novel Links where the heart is. Munich: Allitera Verl. 2020, pp. 175-234 (Yearbook. Friends of Monacensia eV) ISBN 978-3-96233-261-7 .
  • Katharina Rudolph: Rebel in a tailor-made suit. Leonhard Frank. The biography. Berlin: Structure Verlag 2020, ISBN 978-3-351-03724-6 .

Web links

Commons : Leonhard Frank  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual references and comments

  1. ↑ Michael Eberlein: Home and Exile. Leonhard Frank. In: Kurt Illing (Ed.): In the footsteps of the poets in Würzburg. Self-published (printing: Max Schimmel Verlag), Würzburg 1992, pp. 103-110; here: pp. 103, 108.
  2. ↑ Michael Eberlein: Home and Exile. Leonhard Frank. In: Kurt Illing (Ed.): In the footsteps of the poets in Würzburg. Self-published (printing: Max Schimmel Verlag), Würzburg 1992, pp. 103-110; here: pp. 104-107.
  3. ↑ Helmut Friedel, Annegret Hoberg (ed.): The Blue Rider in the Lenbachhaus Munich. Prestel, Munich 2013, p. 30
  4. ↑ The film No Man's Land at the Deutsche Kinemathek ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been 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 / verleihfilme.deutsche-kinemathek.de
  5. ↑ Hepp, Michael (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger, Volume 1: Lists in chronological order . De Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 5 (reprinted 2010).
  6. ↑ Michael Eberlein: Home and Exile. Leonhard Frank. In: Kurt Illing (Ed.): In the footsteps of the poets in Würzburg. Self-published (printing: Max Schimmel Verlag), Würzburg 1992, pp. 103-110; here: p. 104 f.
  7. ↑ Jakob Hessing: The dream of real life. In: FAZ of December 9, 2020.
  8. ↑ Director: Hans Behrendt. Producer: Hermann Fellner, Josef Somlo. Script: Leonhard Frank, Franz Schulz, Hans Behrendt. Stage design: Oscar Friedrich Werndorff. Camera: Otto Kaunturek. Actors: Paul Hörbiger, Leonhard Frank, Gustl Gstettenbaur, Martin Herzberg, Fritz Draeger, Kurt Zarewski, Ilse Baumann, Kurt Katch, Otto Kronburger, Marija Leiko and others.
  9. ↑ Director: Jurij Kramer. Script: Leonhard Frank, Klaus Helbig, Jurij Kramer, Bernd Schirmer. Production management: Dieter Dormeier. Camera: Hans Heinrich. Production design: Klaus Winter. Costumes: Joachim Dittrich. Music: Uwe Hilprecht. Actors: Wolfgang Greese (scribe), Fred Delmare (falcon's eye), Hans Teuscher (Hans Lux), Peter Kalisch (Theobald Kletterer), Wolfgang Dehler (Oskar dazed)
  10. ^ Author and director: Simon Kubisch.
  11. ↑ Director: Martin Flörchinger. With: Norbert Christian (the murderer), Annemarie Hase (the landlady), Heinz Hinze (the carpenter), Annegret Golding (street maid), Hans Hamacher (teacher), Friedel Nowack (the mother), Werner Pledath (chairman of the court), Herwart Grosse (Public Prosecutor), Gerd-Michael Henneberg (Defense Counsel), Kurt Wenkhaus (The Juror), Friedrich Gnass (Prison Guard)
  12. ↑ Michael Eberlein (1992), p. 108 f.
  13. ↑ Michael Eberlein (1992), p. 108 f. (Cited).
  14. ^ Leonhard-Frank-Volksschule Website of the Leonhard-Frank-Volksschule , accessed on January 2, 2021.
  15. ↑ Emil Stumpp: Over my heads . Ed .: Kurt Schwaen . Buchverlag der Morgen , Berlin, 1983, pp. 35, 210
personal data
SURNAME Frank, Leonhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
BIRTH DATE September 4, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1961
PLACE OF DEATH Munich