Marte Brill

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marte Brill , also: Martha (born September 5, 1894 as Martha Leiser in Cologne , † October 20, 1969 in São Paulo ) was a German-Brazilian writer and journalist .

Life

Marte Leiser was born into a family of Jewish Sephardic descent. At the age of 13 she lost her mother, who died of tuberculosis, whereupon her older sister took over the role of mother for her and her younger brother. The first poems were written as early as 1910. After studying literature and political science, she received her doctorate in Heidelberg in 1917 with a doctoral thesis on the Indian cotton industry. In 1920 she married the Jewish painter Erich Arnold Brill (1895–1942). Soon after the birth of their daughter Alice (1920–2013), the marriage ended in divorce. Until 1933 she worked for the tourist newspaper of the Hamburg-South American Steamship Company and also wrote articles for the Hamburg tourist paper and for the Hamburg radio on a regular basis . After the seizure of power by the Nazis , she was fired because of her Jewish origins and then left Germany. She and her daughter first found refuge in Mallorca , where they spent half a year. She then came to Brazil via Italy and Holland in 1934, where her ex-husband and daughter followed in 1935. There she worked for a number of years as the secretary of the 1st Aid Committee for German Refugees, her job being to find accommodation and work for the destitute, often large families. Marte Brill had a socialist and anti-fascist attitude, while her divorced husband, Erich Brill, is said to have been naive and apolitical. He returned to Germany from Brazil alone and was a victim of the Holocaust in 1942 in the Jungfernhof concentration camp near Riga . Despite her political views, Marte Brill did not participate in anti-fascist groups as she had no knowledge of the existing groups. The daughter Alice Brill Czapski gives other reasons for this political abstinence:

“You have to consider that we had to settle in here at the time of Getúlio Vargas , and that as“ hostile foreigners ”during the war we were even forbidden from the vicinity of São Paulo and the littoral (in English: coastal area). No distinction was made between Germans and refugees, and Getúlio was downright fascist. At that time my mother wanted to publish the melting pot (her novel), it was at Ed. Brasiliense has practically already been accepted, and the publisher then did not have the courage to bring out a downright anti-fascist book. (...) Again to our political attitude: we always fought against Nazism as actively as possible, for example I was still a very young person signing appeals for peace, which was not without danger for us back then. But I don't know of any organized resistance in which we could have participated. "

In Brazil, Brill wrote the strongly autobiographical novel Der Schmelztiegel , which was published in Germany by the Gutenberg Book Guild in 2003 , while their study of the last Inquisition on Mallorca has not yet been edited. The novel provides an insight into the general political and social climate of the asylum country of Brazil and also tells a lot about the struggle for the survival of the "small" and unknown people. Above all, however, it testifies to the will of the author to integrate herself into the melting pot of cultures that is Brazil. The manuscript that Marte Brill wrote between 1938 and 1941 and on which the novel is based is in her estate, which is kept in the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 of the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main.

In the 1960s, Brill campaigned for young Brazilian writers and produced literary translations into German. Gianfrancesco Guarnieri's play “You don't wear a tuxedo tie” was performed in the GDR .

Works

  • The melting pot Frankfurt / M. (Book Guild Gutenberg) 2003.

literature

  • Izabela Maria Furtado Kestler : The exile literature and the exile of German-speaking writers and publicists in Brazil (= European university publications , series 1: German language and literature. Volume 1344) Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / New York, NY / Paris / Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-631-45160-1 (dissertation University of Freiburg im Breisgau 1991, 267 pages).
  • Rosanna Vitale: Exile in Brazil 1933–1945. The experience of the stranger from the point of view of female self-testimonies. Eberhard Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-926777-64-8 .
  • Marlen Eickl: Martha Brill - committed journalist and literary chronicler of the Brazilian exile. In: John M. Spalek (Ed.): Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur since 1933. de Gruyter, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-024056-6 , Volume 3, Supplement 1, pp. 352-354.
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945. Volume II, 1. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 156, entry on Alice Brill.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Andress: Martha Brill. The preoccupation with the Marannen , in: 'Der Inselgarten' - the exile of German-speaking writers on Mallorca, 1931-1936, Amsterdam - Atlanta 2001, p. 110.
  2. ^ Instituto Itaú Cultural: Alice Brill. Retrieved January 27, 2019 (Brazilian Portuguese).
  3. ↑ Alice Brill. In: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (eds.): Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume II, 1. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 156.
personal data
SURNAME Brill, Marte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Brazilian writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH 20th October 1969
Place of death São Paulo