Ludwig Rubiner

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Ludwig Rubiner (born July 12, 1881 in Berlin , † February 27, 1920 in Berlin) was a poet , literary critic and essayist of Expressionism .

His most important works include the manifesto The poet intervenes in politics (1912) and the drama The Non-Violent (1919). With his criminal sonnets (1913) Rubiner is seen as a forerunner of Dadaism .

Life

School and university

Ludwig Rubiner was born into an Eastern Jewish family who came from Galicia and settled in Berlin. Rubiner attended the Protestant grammar school and enrolled in the medical faculty of Berlin University in 1902. A short time later he switched to the philosophy faculty and studied music, art history, philosophy and literature until the end of 1906. During his university days he became a member of the Berlin Free Student Union , where he gave lectures on Lev Tolstoy , Strindberg and Wedekind and engaged in theater performances. University life soon led him into the milieu of the Berlin avant-garde , where he was one of the most radical. While most of the people there worshiped Nietzsche , he highlighted Max Stirner's book The One and His Own (1845) as the “most important manifesto of the century” against his “only colorful sentimentality” .

In these circles Rubiner got to know numerous writers, such as Erich Mühsam , Paul Scheerbart , René Schickele , Ferdinand Hardekopf , Wilhelm Herzog and Herwarth Walden , who were among the most important representatives of Expressionism . The friendship with Walden made it easier for him to begin his journalistic activities.

First works

His first poem To the Heights appeared in the anarchist magazine Der Kampf in 1904 . In 1906, like his father, he began working as a newspaper critic and until 1911 published glosses , theater reviews and poems in the magazines Die Gegenwart , Morgen , Der Demokratie , Das Theater , Der Sturm and Pan . These are mostly short works on literary topics and personalities, essays on writers, composers and painters, reviews of individual works from literature and music, and explanations of art exhibitions.

Rubiner as a critic

For German literature, Rubiner discussed works by Else Lasker-Schüler , Max Brod , Ernst Blass , Arthur Holitscher , Peter Hille and Heinrich Mann . In the articles dealing with music, he wrote about Debussy , Pfitzner , Schönberg , Strauss , Busoni and Puccini . As for painting, he explained the artists of the Berlin New Secession, Matisse and Rousseau .

In 1906 he wrote the textbook for Walden's opera Der Nachtwächter , to which he tried to draw Mahler's attention. The cooperation with Walden lasted until the end of 1910, when they wrote the introduction to Madame Butterfly Puccini's for the Schlesinger opera guide .

Between 1908 and 1909 Rubiner traveled to various European cities and countries: he spent half a year in Italy (Pisa and Florence), went to Weimar and finally stayed in Russia, Austria and Switzerland.

Rubiner as a translator

Since the beginning of his activity as a literary critic, he was interested in foreign language literature, especially in French and Russian, because he mastered both languages. In 1907 he wrote an essay on Joris-Karl Huysmans , in 1909 one on Fyodor Sologub , from which he also translated several poems. He also translated a short story by Paul Verlaine and wrote an essay on the Belgian writer Fernand Crommelynck. Further translations are Michael Kuzmin's novel Taten des great Alexander (1908) and the novella Evenings on the Manor near Dikanka (1831–1832) by Nikolai Gogol . These works were published in the magazines Zwei Herrscher , Die Phantasie , Die Gegenwart , Die Schaubühne , Das Theater and Der Demokratie . His wife Frida , whom Rubiner had met in 1908 , also worked on his translations .

In France

In 1910 Rubiner published the detective novel The Indian Opals under the pseudonym "Ernst Ludwig Grombeck" . From 1911 to 1918 he worked for Franz Pfemfert's magazine Die Aktion . In November 1912 he moved to Paris, where he lived in a small hotel with the writer and art critic Carl Einstein , who worked for the magazines Der Demokratie and Die Aktion .

Here he mediated between German and French literature: he wrote regularly for the magazines Die Schaubühne , März and Die Aktion about the most important French events of the time. Rubiner met Marc Chagall in the artists' colony Fleury-en-Bière , which was founded by the Dutch painter Otto van Rees and where Kees van Dongen was a guest . He exhibited his pictures in Walden's first German autumn hall, and Rubiner became friends.

In 1915 he had to leave France and fled to Switzerland as a radical opponent of the war , where he wrote for the “ Neue Zürcher Zeitung ” and from 1917-18 published the exile magazine “Zeit-Echo”.

Rubiner as a social critic

In 1912 Rubiner turned to social criticism . In Paris, he wrote the political-literary manifesto The Poet Attacks Politics , which appeared in the action that same year . In 1913 he published the criminal sonnets , which he wrote together with the wealthy American dealer Livingstone Hahn and the employee of the magazine Die Aktion , Friedrich Eisenlohr . He translated and wrote the foreword to the autobiography of the criminal and criminal investigator Eugène François Vidocq (1920), who lived in Napoleon Bonaparte's France and the Restoration .

From 1914 on, having already returned to Berlin, he wrote articles for the magazine Die Weisse Blätter , for which he worked until 1919. In 1914 he wrote the pantomime for the silent film Der Aufstand , which is included in the collection Das Kinobuch edited by Kurt Pinthus .

Exile in Switzerland

When the war broke out, Rubiner and his wife voluntarily went into exile in Zurich. During this time he became the soul of a strong group of intellectuals and headed the magazine Zeit-Echo in the four issues of 1917. In Switzerland he had close ties to the magazine Die Weißen Blätter : in 1916 he published the poetry collection Das himmlische Licht there , which also appeared as a book in the same year, he also published the manifesto The Change of the World in 1916 in the magazine Das Ziel .

1917 was a very creative year: he headed his magazine Zeit-Echo , in which, still active as a literary critic, he published Tolstoy's correspondence under the title Revolution days in Russia . These are the letters Tolstoy wrote to his dearest friends in the last part of his life about the events of the Russian Revolution .

In the action , he published the programmatic work Der Kampf mit dem Engel , in the collection Das Aktionbuch edited by Pfemfert, five poems, calls to friends, and finally the anthology Der Mensch im Mitte , in which Rubiner collected the previously published essays. In 1918, together with his wife, he translated Tolstoy's diaries and published the manifesto The Renewal in the magazine Das Forum .

On December 24, 1918, he received an Austrian passport in Zurich. His idealization of the Russian Revolution led to his expulsion from Switzerland at the end of 1918. He returned to Berlin via Munich, where he lived in Busoni's old apartment.

Back in Germany

In 1919 he began to work as a lecturer at the Gustav Kiepenheuer publishing house in Potsdam. For the second time he published the collection of essays Man in the Middle , then two anthologies, Comrades of Humanity. Seals for the world revolution and the community. Documents of the spiritual turn of the world and the drama The Non-Violent , which Rubiner wrote between 1917 and 1918 in Switzerland. That year Rubiner also published the essay The Actor's Cultural Position in the magazine Freie Deutsche Bühne .

In the spring of 1919 Rubiner founded the Bund for Proletarian Culture based on the Soviet model in Berlin together with Arthur Holitscher , Rudolf Leonhard , Franz Jung and Alfons Goldschmidt . The Bund did not come into being within the Communist Party . The proletarian culture should support the struggle of the revolutionary masses for liberation from the bourgeois economic and educational monopoly. In 1919 Rubiner was involved in founding the "Proletarian Theater", a traveling theater for workers. The performances took place in factories, among other places. The Proletarian Theater ended with the premiere of the drama Freedom by Herbert Kranz on December 14, 1919. In 1920 the Bund broke up because of differences of opinion without having performed the drama The Non-Violent .

In the last part of his life Rubiner worked with his wife on the translation of Voltaire's novels and short stories . A year earlier he had published an essay entitled The Poet Voltaire in the White Papers , which he chose as the preface for the entire volume.

Rubiner's death

On the night between February 27 and 28, 1920 Rubiner died of a six-week lung disease in a Berlin private clinic, a few days after the Society Young Germany had given him an honorary title in recognition of his literary work. On March 3, he was buried in Berlin-Weißensee. The funeral speeches were given by Franz Pfemfert and Felix Hollaender .

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Ludwig Rubiner  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter from Ludwig Rubiner to Siegfried Nacht of August 16, 1908; quoted n. Werner Portmann: The wild sheep. Max and Siegfried night . Unrast-Verlag, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-89771-455-7 , p. 45.
personal data
SURNAME Rubiner, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grombeck, Ernst Ludwig (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet, literary critic and essayist of Expressionism
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1920
Place of death Berlin