Ludwig Lewisohn

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Ludwig Lewisohn (born May 30, 1882 in Berlin ; died December 31, 1955 in Miami Beach ) was an American writer.

Life

Ludwig Lewisohn's Jewish parents Jacques and Minna Lewisohn emigrated to the USA in 1890 for economic reasons . They first lived with relatives in St. Matthews , South Carolina, and then in Charleston . The family converted to Methodists , and Ludwig attended a Methodist school. He graduated from the College of Charleston and then studied literature at Columbia University , where he earned an AM in 1903 . A Jew's doctorate in English literature was hopeless, he was told, because after that he would not get a position in teaching and science anyway. This prompted him to return to the Jewish religion, but also to raise the question of the limits of assimilation set by the majority society in the Jewish communities. The Island Within (1928) was one of his autobiographical novels on the subject.

In 1908, with the support of Theodore Dreiser, his first novel, The Broken Snare , was published, which addressed sexual pleasure, Lewisohn's second main literary theme. Lewisohn was interested in psychoanalysis and was the analysand of Abraham Brill . He was in correspondence with Sigmund Freud

Lewisohn worked from 1910 as a German teacher at the University of Wisconsin , from 1913 to 1917 at Ohio State University . During this time he translated works by Gerhart Hauptmann , Hermann Sudermann and Rainer Maria Rilke and wrote the literature studies The Modern Drama and The Spirit of Modern German Literature . After the USA entered the war, he was dismissed as an opponent and pro-German. From 1919 to 1924 he was a literary editor and theater critic and later also co-editor of the weekly newspaper The Nation . From 1924 to 1934 he stayed in Europe, mainly in Paris , where he ran a salon with the New Yorker Thelma Spears (1903–1968), and they had their son James Elias (1934–2015). His wife Mary Crocker, whom he married in 1906, refused to consent to the divorce in 1922, and so he got into trouble with the American consulate in Paris. In the War of the Roses, Crocker prevented the publication of the novel The Case of Mr. Crump in the United States until her death in 1946 . Lewisohn was later married twice.

In 1925 he visited the Jewish settlements in Palestine and became an advocate of Zionism . Back in the United States in 1934, he gave speeches against National Socialism and for the home of Israel . In 1944 he became editor of the official Zionist magazine The New Palestine . In 1948 Lewisohn was among the founders of Brandeis University , where he taught literature until his death.

He wrote over 40 books, including several autobiographical writings, and published Otto Ranks The Artist in the English translation Art and Artist . He also translated literature from French ( The Poets of Modern France ). Lewisohn translated Franz Werfel's Das Lied von Bernadette and Der Weg der Verheißung into English, as well as works by other refugees such as Soma Morgenstern and Martin Buber , which he translated from the manuscript.

Fonts

  • The Broken Snare. 1908.
  • A night in Alexandria. 1909.
  • German Style, An Introduction to the Study of German Prose. 1910.
  • The Modern Drama. New York 1914.
  • Up stream. 1922.
    • Against the current: an american. Timeline. Translation Thea Wolf. Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, Frankfurt am Main 1924.
  • Don juan Boni and Liveright, New York 1923.
  • Israel. 1925.
  • The Case of Mr. Crump. 1926.
    • The Herbert Crump case. Novel. Foreword by Thomas Mann . Authorized translation by Anna Kellner. Drei Masken Verlag, Munich 1928.
    • The Crump case. Novel. Afterword Thomas Mann. Translation by Christian Ruzicska. Secession, Zurich 2010.
  • The Island Within 1928.
    • The legacy in the blood. Novel. Translation by Gustav Meyrink . Paul List, Leipzig 1929
  • Stephen Escott. Bernh. Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1930.
  • Expression in America. 1931.
  • The Last Days of Shylock. Illustrations by Arthur Szyk . 1931
    • Scheilocks last days. Novel. Translation of Magda Kahn. P. List, Leipzig 1931.
  • The golden vase , Roman Summer . 2 novels. The Albatross, Hamburg 1932.
  • Racisme contra humanisme. In: Cahiers juifs. No. 5/6, Paris 1933, pp. 350-362.
  • as editor: Rebirth: a book of modern Jewish thought . Harper, New York 1935.
  • Trumpet of Jubilee. 1937.
  • Anniversary.
    • Prodigal daughter. Novel. Translation Rose Richter. Humanitas, Zurich 1949.
Translations
  • Franz Hoellering : The defenders . Little, Brown and Co., Boston 1940. ( The Defenders , Zurich 1947)
  • Martin Buber : For the sake of heaven . The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1945. ( Gog and Magog . Heidelberg 1949)
  • Soma Morgenstern : The spirit returneth: a novel . Translation from the manuscript. Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1946. ( Sparks in the Abyss )
  • Soma Morgenstern : In my father's pastures . Translation from the manuscript. Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1947. ( Sparks in the Abyss )
  • Soma Morgenstern : The third pillar . Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York 1955. ( Sparks in the Abyss )
  • Jacob Picard : The marked One and twelve other stories . Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1956. ( The Marked )
  • Jakob Wassermann : Wedlock . Pyramid, New York 1964. ( Laudin and his family )

literature

  • S. Lainoff: Ludwig Lewisohn . Twayne Publishers, Boston, MA 1982. (not accessed)
  • Ralph Melnick: The Life and Work of Ludwig Lewisohn . Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 1998, ISBN 0-8143-2692-7 . (not viewed)
  • Pascal Fischer: Yidishkeyt and Jewishness: Identity in Jewish-American literature with special emphasis on language: Cahan's "Yekl", Lewisohn's "The island within", Roth's "Call it sleep", Malamud's "The assistant" . Winter, Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-8253-1567-3 , p. 24f: Vita. (Zugl .: Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 2003)
  • Hans Borchers: Freud and the American literature (1920-1940): Studies on the reception of psychoanalysis in literary journals and the works of Conrad Aiken, Ludwig Lewisohn and Floyd Dell. In: American Studies . 60, 1987. (not accessed)
  • Jane Statlander: Cultural dialectic: Ludwig Lewisohn and Cynthia Ozick . Lang, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8204-5849-X . (not viewed)
  • Ira Bruce Nadel: Jewish writers of North America: a guide to information sources . Gale, Detroit, Me. 1981, ISBN 0-8103-1484-3 , pp. 249-252. (45 entries, 35 of them under Fiction, Drama, Prose)
  • Jules Chametzsky et al .: Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology . WW Norton & Company, New York / London 2001, ISBN 0-393-04809-8 , pp. 343f: Vita; Extract from Up Stream. Pp. 345-351.
  • Encyclopaedia Judaica . Volume 11, 1971, Col. 178-179.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Elias Lewisohn. Obituary. In: The Ellsworth American. June 15, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Lewisohn, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1955
Place of death Miami Beach