Lucy Valley

Lucy Fanny Tal (born October 28, 1896 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary as Lucye Fanny Traub ; died July 2, 1995 in New York City , United States ) was an Austrian -US publisher , translator and film dramaturge . She was the wife of the publisher, writer and poet Ernst Peter Tal , and the cousin of Ernst Angel and Dora Jacob (1889-1984), the wife of Heinrich Eduard Jacob .

life and career

Lucy Fanny Tal was born in Vienna on October 28, 1896 as the daughter of the businessman Aladar Traub from Szegedin and his wife Johanna (née Kohn) in Vienna. Her parents, both of whom were Mosaic , also had two other children: Lucy's sister Johanna and her brother Bernhard Bela. On November 22, 1917, the then 21-year-old married the eight years older writer and poet Ernst Peter Tal , who was originally Rosenthal and was also a Jew, but converted to the Evangelical Church HB in Austria in 1909 and 1910 , and took on his new family name . The son Thomas, who was born in 1919 and was also a Protestant, came from this marriage. The circle of friends of Lucy and EP Tal included the poet Josef Weinheber , with whom the couple often hiked.

From 1927, Lucy Tal completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller at her husband's publishing house, EP Tal & Co in Vienna. On April 23, 1934, she received her apprenticeship from the Viennese book, art and music dealers and from then on she worked for her husband's publishing house, which he and Dr. Hans Schlögel founded, worked as a publisher. The couple maintained an international literary circle in their home. When Lucy Tal returned home on November 30, 1936, eight days after their ninth wedding anniversary , she found her husband and their son dead. After the unexpected death of her husband and son, she continued to run the Vienna-Neubau- based publishing house as sole owner and managing director until she escaped from National Socialism in March 1938.

Following their escape, which she Paris and London in the United States brought the publisher EP Tal & Co "was arisiert " before disappearing and on 10 June 1939 the commercial register by the by Alfred Ibach led Alfred Ibach Publishing was replaced. Before that, Tal had worked for the writer and lawyer Dr. Hugo Wolf (1888–1946) signed a power of attorney through which Wolf was authorized to arrange for possible deletions and new entries with the EP Tal company vis-à-vis the commercial court, but this failed. Tal received a French visa at an invitation from a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer employee to Paris, but emigrated to London in March 1938.

Thanks to friends from the film industry, especially Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, she was commissioned to dramatize literary works for the film in Hollywood after emigrating to the United States . Hugo Wolf, who offered her moral and financial support after the death of her husband, was deleted from the register of the Vienna Bar at the end of 1938 and also had to flee his home country, first finding refuge in Budapest before going to the United States emigrated. From 1942, she appeared as Associate Director ( German Deputy Director) of the San Francisco Town Hall Forum and was involved in social issues, including the Thursday Club of the Congregation Habonim . In 1971 an English-language edition of the novel Ali and Nino by the pseudonym Kurban Said was published with their help .

Lucy Tal died on July 2, 1995, at the age of 98 in New York City, the city where she had spent her retirement.

Literature & Sources (selection)

• Austrian publishing history 1918–1938 . - Vienna / Cologne / Graz: Böhlau Verlag, 1985. - in 2 volumes:
  • Vol. 1: History of the Austrian publishing industry . - 427 pp. - (Literature and Life; NF, 28.1). - ISBN 3-205-07258-8 u. ISBN 3-412-05585-9
  • Vol. 2: Fiction publishers of the First Republic . - 600 pp. - (Literature and Life; NF, 28.2). - ISBN 3-412-05585-9 a . ISBN 3-205-07258-8
• Ilse Korotin (Ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 3: P-Z. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , p. 3254.
• Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance
• Vienna library in the town hall

Web links

• Lucy Tal in the directory of artistic, scientific and cultural-political bequests in Austria
• Lucy Tal in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Experience and testimony Perspectives on the genesis of Heinrich Eduard Jacobs' biography The World of Emma Lazarus , accessed on April 23, 2017
2. ↑ ^{a b} b) Aryanization using the example of EP Tal & Co. Verlag , accessed on April 23, 2017