Leopold Marx

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Leopold Marx (* December 8, 1889 in Cannstatt , Württemberg ; † January 25, 1983 in Shavei Zion , Israel ) was a Swabian writer, poet and manufacturer who emigrated from National Socialist Germany to the British protectorate of Palestine in 1939 , there in a moshav settled and wrote in German throughout his life.

Life

Born in a family of manufacturers in Cannstatt (near Stuttgart ) on December 8, 1889, Leopold Marx attended high school there until 1904 . His parents were Eduard Marx and Babette, née Rothschild, who lived at Seelbergstrasse 1 (today Waiblinger Strasse 12) in Cannstatt. Together with Bernhard Gutmann they owned the mechanical ribbon weaving mill Gutmann and Marx on the premises of the former sanatorium of Dr. Ebner (corner of Seelbergstrasse / Waiblinger Strasse) in Cannstatt with a branch in Neuffen . The family house and the company in Cannstatt stood on Wilhelmsplatz . The branch in Neuffen was located near Lindenplatz on Oberen Graben.

When his father died in 1904, the fifteen year old had to give up his high school career and prepare to take over the company. From 1904 to 1908 he completed commercial and technical training (apprenticeship, textile school in Barmen , stay in London and Paris ).

In 1909 the not yet adult took over the business. In 1914, during the First World War , he was postponed as head of a war-important company, and in 1916 he was drafted in exchange for his brother Julius.

Before that he married Ida (Judith) nee Hartog from Mannheim , who also came from a Jewish family. In May he began his military service in northern France, in October 1916 he was taken prisoner on the Somme . There he overcame general prejudices against the French and clarified his relationship to Judaism after an incident with Algerian Jews who served as soldiers in France. While in captivity he learned some Hebrew and familiarized himself with the writings of Martin Buber . He came into contact with Hermann Hesse , who worked for the German prisoner-of-war welfare service in Bern and made books available for prisoners. Leopold Marx wrote his first poetry ( sonnets and others), some of which Hermann Hesse published.

In 1919 he managed to escape. He returned home in December. From then on he ran the family-owned factory together with his brother Julius until it was “ Aryanized ” in Neuffen in 1938 . The Mayor of Neuffen at the time, August Pfänder, played a role in this process.

In addition to his entrepreneurial activity, he published in magazines and newspapers such as the Jüdische Rundschau , Jugend and Berliner Tageblatt , mainly poems and articles, later also in development .

Since 1924 he had friendly relations with the well-known Jewish religious philosopher Martin Buber, who suggested Leopold Marx in communion with his brother Karl Adler and Otto Hirsch in Stuttgart a Jewish house of study ( Beth Hamidrasch founded), modeled after the in Frankfurt existing outdoor Jewish Lehrhaus .

After his deportation to the Dachau concentration camp and his release there (1938), he let his two sons Erich Josua (Jehoshua) and Eder / Eduard (Ephrajim) emigrate to Palestine. Both were previously in the Jewish country school home in Herrlingen , Eder as a student, Erich as an assistant. The life path of Erich Jehoshua, who died on January 14, 1948 in the Israeli War of Independence , was dealt with by Leopold Marx in his book My Son Erich Jehoshua .

Leopold Marx was arrested by the Gestapo in May 1939 and then released. In the second month of the war in 1939 he emigrated with his wife to Palestine , which he - the Zionist he was - called Erez Yisrael . In the same year he was accepted into the agricultural collective ( Moschaw Shitufi) Schavei Zion , in German also "Shavey Zion" or "Shavej Zion" ("returnee to Zion"). This moshaw was founded by a group of Jews from Rexingen who, under the pressure of persecution in Nazi Germany, had looked for a new home in the "Land of the Fathers" in 1938. He worked in the agricultural plantations for twelve years. He then worked as a gardener and had a great influence on the landscaping there and on cultural community facilities.

In Israel he developed an increased literary activity, despite his severely impaired visual performance. In February 1972 his wife Judith died; He died himself on January 25, 1983. His work Franz and Elisabeth was published posthumously by Bleicher-Verlag Gerlingen , as he had requested, on December 8, 1989, on his 100th birthday.

The literary estate of Leopold Marx is partially stored in the German Literature Archive in Marbach . His son Ephrajim Marx (Kibbutz Evron) also keeps parts of the estate.

Services

His poems and prose are moving testimony to the feelings of a Jew who lived through the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the traumatic Nazi era and the development of Israel. He is considered an important German-Jewish writer, also in the context of German-Israeli literature.

He enriched the cultural Jewish life in Stuttgart in the 1920s and 1930s with pieces he wrote himself (e.g. Purim in Schwabylon , a revue), articles, lectures and speeches.

After the synagogue in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt was burned down during the November pogroms in 1938 , he made rooms in his family house available to the community for worship purposes. In Shavei Zion he was one of those who designed the moshav and the cultural life, e. B. as a gardener, landscaper, chronicler, founder of the house "Beth Jehoshua" (house in memory of Jehoshua Marx) significantly shaped.

Works

  • Hachsharah , collection of poems, Jerusalem 1941/1942
  • About Schawej Zion , Shavej Zion 1960
  • Otto Hirsch - a picture of life , 1963
  • Song of Songs , 1964
  • There is a long street , volume of poetry, Berlin 1976
  • Contributions to the anthology Voices from Israel , 1976
  • Jehoshua, my son , Gerlingen 1979 (2nd, modified edition 1996 under the title Mein Sohn Erich Jehoshua - Life picture of an early matured man )
  • The hymns of praise. The Book of Psalms , Gerlingen 1987
  • Franz and Elisabeth , story, Gerlingen 1989

literature

  • Werner P. Heyd:  Marx, Leopold. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 347 ( digitized version ).
  • Werner Volke, epilogue, in: Franz and Elisabeth. Narration . Bleicher-Verlag, Gerlingen 1989, ISBN 3-88350-446-7
  • Manuel Werner: Cannstatt - Neuffen - New York. The fate of a Jewish family in Württemberg. With the memoirs of Walter Marx . Sindlinger-Burcharz publishing house, Nürtingen / Frickenhausen 2005, ISBN 3-928812-38-6
  • Franz and Elisabeth. Narration . Bleicher-Verlag, Gerlingen 1989, ISBN 3-88350-446-7
  • Carsten Kohlmann, Baden-Württemberg State Archive : The archive of the Shavei Zion community in Israel. Archive history, inventory structure, exhibition planning . Marburg an der Lahn 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Your story is presented in detail in: Cannstatter Stolperstein Initiative: Babette Marx: Middle of a Family
personal data
SURNAME Marx, Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Israeli writer, poet and manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Cannstatt
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1983
Place of death Shawe Zion , Israel