Lili Koerber

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Lili Körber (pseudonyms Agnes Muth , Silvia Broeck ) (born February 25, 1897 in Moscow , † October 11, 1982 in New York City ) was an Austrian writer of Jewish denomination.

Life

Lili Körber was born as the daughter of Ignaz Körber (1864–1944) , an Austrian import merchant from Tarnow , Galicia , and his Polish wife in Moscow, where her parents had settled in 1882. She grew up with two younger sisters, Margarethe (* 1899) and Nina (* 1903) in affluent circumstances. Her father was imprisoned as a foreigner in Russia at the beginning of the First World War . After his release, the family had to leave the country in 1915 and moved to Vienna (via Berlin ) . Lili Körber graduated from high school in Zurich with the Matura . She received her doctorate in 1925 with a dissertation on the poetry of Franz Werfels as Dr. phil. at the University of Frankfurt am Main .

Viennese years

After completing her studies, she returned to Vienna, where, apart from the trips undertaken during this period, she mostly stayed until she emigrated in 1938. From 1927 she worked there as a journalist for the Arbeiter-Zeitung , and in 1929/30 also for the Wiener Rote Fahne . A trip to Russia, which she began in 1930, extended her to a stay of almost a year, during which she worked for a few weeks as an unskilled worker in the Putilov works in Leningrad . Her "diary novel " A woman experiences everyday red life , which was published by Rowohlt Verlag in 1932 and was a sales success, processed her experiences there. In January 1933 she visited Berlin and, under the impression of the approaching rule of the National Socialists, wrote the novel A Jewess Experienced the New Germany , which tragically ends with the suicide of a Jewish woman living in mixed marriage . The book first appeared in Vienna in 1934, but was banned there because of blasphemy . In 1933 she became a member of the Association of Socialist Writers in Vienna . In 1935 she traveled to China and Japan.

exile

On March 19, 1938, shortly after the “ Anschluss ” of Austria, she emigrated to France - with a brief stopover in Zurich . In 1941, with the support of the Emergency Rescue Committee , she and her partner Erich Grave, who had previously been interned in a French camp, came to the USA via Spain and Lisbon. There she worked as a nurse, among other things. While in exile in America, she wrote the novel An American in Russia , in which she addresses her experiences with Stalinism . Her autobiographical novel Call me nurse remained unpublished.

Lili Körber died at the age of 85 on October 11, 1982 in New York, where she had lived since her arrival on June 23, 1941.

Journalistic activity

She appeared as a narrator, poet and freelancer for various magazines, including Die Neue Weltbühne in Prague, Gavroche in Paris, the Staatszeitung and Herold in New York, and The Other Germany in Buenos Aires. She published articles both in the Pariser Tageblatt (PTB), which was founded in Paris in 1933 by the Russian émigré and advertisement publisher Wladimir Poliakov ( Publité Metzl , previously the Moscow Advertisement Expedition Metzl ) for German-speaking exiles, and in the successor to the Pariser Tageszeitung (PTZ) in the Viennese years, as well as in the first months of their exile in France. The newspaper had to stop its publication after the outbreak of war in 1939.

Her literary estate is now in the exile archive of the German National Library .

Works

  • The lyric poetry of Franz Werfels. Dissertation. Frankfurt 1925.
  • A woman experiences the red everyday life. A diary novel from the Putilov works, 1932.
  • A Jewish woman experiences the new Germany. Novel. Zurich 1934.
  • Encounters in the Far East. Budapest 1936.
  • Sato-san, a Japanese hero. Satyrical time novel. 1936
  • An American in Russia. Roman 1942 In: Deutsche Volkszeitung. New York.
  • The marriage of Ruth Gompertz. Novel 1984.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lemke, 1999, p. 167
  2. ↑ Lemke, 1999, pp. 24-26
  3. ↑ a b c Walter Fähnders: Lili Körber , 2016 in the project Epoch Profile 20s ( online ).
  4. ↑ Lemke, 1999, p. 102f.
  5. ↑ Lemke, 1999, p. 159
  6. ↑ Lemke, 1999, p. 25 u. 167.

literature

  • Ute Lemke: Lili Körber: from Moscow to Vienna. An Austrian author in the turmoil of time (1915–1938). Carl Böschen Verlag, Siegen 1999, ISBN 3-932212-15-0 .
  • Walter Fähnders: "Red everyday life" - Lili Körber's views of Soviet Russia in 1932 and 1942. In: Archives for the history of resistance and work. No. 18, 2008, ISBN 978-3-88663-418-7 , pp. 423-460.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Körber, Lili
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muth, Agnes (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer of Jewish denomination
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1982
Place of death New York City