Manfred George

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Manfred George (actually: Manfred Georg Cohn , also Manfred Georg ) (born October 22, 1893 in Berlin ; † December 30, 1965 in New York ) was a German - American journalist , publicist and translator . From 1939 until his death he was editor-in-chief of the German-Jewish exile newspaper Aufbau in New York.

Life

Manfred Georg Cohn was born as the son of an entrepreneur in Berlin. He studied law at the universities of Berlin, Greifswald and Geneva . After a serious wound in the First World War , he was released from military service in 1915 and completed his studies with a doctorate in 1917. Even during his studies he worked as a journalist for the German Monday newspaper. He then became an employee at Ullstein Verlag . There he quickly advanced from the local editor of the Berliner Morgenpost to the editor-in-chief of the Berliner Abendpost . He later became a correspondent for the Vossische Zeitung and worked as an editorial manager in Breslau . During the dispute over the referendum in Upper Silesia , George was brought before a firing squad by Freikorps soldiers, but was able to escape because he was able to present a military service certificate.

This was followed by positions as a Ullstein correspondent in Dresden and Leipzig . After 1923 he made a name for himself as an author of theater reviews, which he published in the Berliner Volks-Zeitung and also in the 8 o'clock-Abendblatt . After separating from Ullstein-Verlag, he worked for Mosse-Verlag from 1923 to 1928 , then again for Ullstein until 1933. He was the feature editor of the newspaper Tempo and co-editor of the culture magazine Marsyas . From 1915 to 1932 George was also an employee of the Schau- und Weltbühne , for which he wrote 35 contributions. In the late twenties and early thirties he also wrote radio plays . His music revue Oh, USA was performed 50 times in Berlin.

In 1924, George and Carl von Ossietzky were among the founders of the Republican Party , which he chaired until the party was dissolved in the same year. As a pacifist , George had also joined the German League for Human Rights and the Never Again War movement in the early 1920s , which, like the Republican Party, had emerged from a circle around the Berliner Volks-Zeitung . George also joined the Zionist movement in Germany and published a popular biography of Theodor Herzl .

After the seizure of power of the Nazis George emigrated first in 1933 in the Czechoslovak Republic . In Prague he was the publisher of the émigré newspaper Prager Montagsblatt and was one of the founders of the Jewish Revue in 1935 . After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , he reported for six months about the fighting for newspapers in the Czech Republic, Switzerland , Austria , the Netherlands and Romania . After the Munich Agreement , George continued his exile via Hungary , Yugoslavia , Italy , Switzerland and France to the USA . The German Reich had expatriated him on August 5, 1938 . In New York he started out as editor of the Aufbau with a monthly salary of 15 dollars and made the paper an important journalistic voice in exile and in the post-war period. In 1945 he became an American citizen. In its obituary, the New York Times wrote :

Dr. George, author of novels and biographies, was known in Germany as a liberal journalist before the rise of Adolf Hitler and became the editor of Aufbau in 1939 after arriving here as a refugee without a penny in his pocket. The structure at that time was a small monthly newsletter from the German Jewish Club of New York, which is now called the New World Club . Dr. George put together an excellent advisory board, including Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann , and turned the publication into an influential weekly with a circulation of 30,000 copies.

In 1963, Berlin's then Governing Mayor Willy Brandt awarded George the Berlin Bear.

literature

  • Daniel Müller: Manfred Georg and the »Jewish Review«. A magazine in exile in Czechoslovakia 1936–1938. Constance 2000
  • New York Times: "Dr. Manfred George, 72, Dies; Editor of German Weekly Here ”, January 1, 1966, p. 17
  • Borrmann, Jennifer: "Bridging the gap" - film review and acculturation. The example of Manfred George. In: Exile Without Return. Literature as a medium of acculturation after 1933, ed. by Sabina Becker, Robert Krause. Munich 2010, pp. 112-138.
  • George, Manfred. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 8: Frie – Gers. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-598-22688-8 , pp. 385-397.
  • Rolf Aurich, Jennifer Borrmann, Wolfgang Jacobsen: Manfred George. Journalist and film critic. Film & Schrift, Volume 18. Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum for Film and Television. edition text + kritik, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86916-338-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Georg: Weltbühne author
  2. ↑ New York Times: “Dr. Manfred George, 72, Dies; Editor of German Weekly Here ”, January 1, 1966, p. 17
personal data
SURNAME George, Manfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cohn, Manfred Georg (former name); Georg, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, theater critic, publicist and translator
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1965
Place of death new York