Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach , pseudonym Ulrich Volkmann , Christian Corty (born April 27, 1900 in London , †  May 7,  1985 in Hamburg ) was a German-British writer , chess player and translator .

family

Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach was the second son of the Würzburg eye doctor Bruno Beheim-Schwarzbach and his wife Carola Beheim-Schwarzbach, nee. Stockmar. The parents were from Germany but had taken British citizenship . Martin received this because of his birth on a ship in the port of London. The father came from the patrician family Behaim von Schwarzbach .

The parents divorced in 1904. The first son Maximilian (1890–1961) stayed with his father and named himself from 1912 after the maternal maiden name Hans Stockmar . The mother moved to Hamburg with her younger son Martin, where she married the widowed South Sea merchant Eduard Hernsheim (1847–1917) in 1906 and died the following year. The widower married her sister Hedwig Elisabeth in 1908. Fire stack.

Life

In Hamburg, Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach first grew up on Mittelweg in the Rotherbaum district . From 1907/08 the family lived in Fährstraße on Uhlenhorst (today Fährhausstraße). Despite his British nationality, Beheim-Schwarzbach was drafted into German military service in the First World War after graduating from high school in 1918 . After the end of the war, he completed a commercial apprenticeship in a Hamburg timber shop. He then worked as a commercial clerk, beekeeper , sales representative for calculating machines and editor. In 1924 he married Hedwig Regling. In the same year he published his first volume of poetry, about a year later his story Crucifixion . Short stories, other stories, novels and translations from English followed. Beheim-Schwarzbach's translation of the novel Gone with the Wind by the American writer Margaret Mitchell , published in 1937, was a great success for the still young publishing house H.Goverts . Two years later, Beheim-Schwarzbach emigrated to London for fear of political persecution under the National Socialist regime. His wife stayed in Bergedorf .

In London, Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach worked as a factory worker, as a journalist, employee at the BBC and finally as an editor. At the same time he was active in the London Chess Club , where he made the acquaintance of several top British players, above all the chess master Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander . In 1934 Beheim-Schwarzbach had already published a book on master roles from four centuries; His narrative approach to chess later became a model for Helmut Pfleger , who moderated chess programs on German television.

From 1939 to 1946 Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach worked for British propaganda, among other things in the editing of the brochure Die Andere Seiten (four booklets, 1943), which was thrown over Germany in editions of several hundred thousand. After the end of the Second World War he returned to occupied Hamburg as a British officer in 1946 , where he was responsible for the newspaper Die Welt on behalf of the military government . In 1950 Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach resigned from the British civil service and became a freelance writer in Hamburg. In the same year he accompanied the entrepreneur Kurt A. Körber on a trip through the USA as an interpreter .

On December 4, 1951, Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach was one of the sixteen writers who split off from the German PEN Center in Darmstadt with the establishment of the German PEN Center.

Beheim-Schwarzbach had numerous correspondence with other writers, such as Kasimir Edschmid , Axel Eggebrecht , Richard Friedenthal , Hermann Hesse , Hermann Kesten , Siegfried Lenz , Joachim Maass , Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig . The correspondence is in the archive of the Akademie der Künste . In addition to translations, he was well known for his adolescent arrangements of classical materials. He has also written dubbing books for a number of feature films, including Mr In The House I Am ( Hobson's Choice , 1954) by David Lean .

Memberships

Awards

Quote

  • "Browsing through the encyclopedia is like strolling in the countryside, where you come across something surprising at every turn."

Works

Fiction

  • Crucifixion. Legend. Steps, Hamburg around 1925.
  • The runes of God. Novellas. Reclam, Leipzig 1927.
  • The Michaelskinder. Novel. Insel, Leipzig 1930.
  • Lords of the earth. Novel. Insel, Leipzig 1931.
  • The loaned book. Attempt to create a typology of the book snub. Warneck, Berlin 1939.
  • The magic circle. Stories. Bermann-Fischer, Stockholm 1940.
  • The head of Medusa. Sonnets. Chiswick Press, London 1941.
  • The crypt. Poems. Dulk, Hamburg 1946.
  • The rejected, Claassen & Goverts, Hamburg 1947 - 415 pages
  • The thieving joys of Herr von Bisswange-Haschezeck. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1952.
  • The island of Matupi. Novel. List, Munich 1955.
  • The confidante. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1961.
  • The star of Burgundy. Novel of the Nibelungs. Rütten & Loening, Hamburg 1961.
  • Shirazades nights. Love and wonder stories from 1001 nights . dtv, Munich 1966,
  • The gold makers. Fantastic stories. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1984.
  • The bird of paradise. Fairy tales, legends and fantastic stories. Edited and revised by Volker Michels in collaboration with the author . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1991, ISBN 3-7995-1663-8 .
  • The most beautiful knight sagas. Bertelsmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-570215687 .

Non-fiction

  • The Prussian Revolution . Bermann-Fischer, Stockholm 1940
  • The book of chess. An illustration and instruction for the friends of the game. Insel Library No. 460. Insel, Leipzig 1934
  • Knaur's chess book. A century of chess in masterly games . Droemer, Munich 1953, ISBN 3426270269
    • English edition: Chess with the Masters. Translated from the German by Leonhard Barden. Arco Books, 1963
    • Dutch edition: Thieme's Schaakboek. Translated from the German by Franciscus Antonius Kuijpers . Thieme, Zutphen 1964
  • Knut Hamsun in personal testimonies and photo documents . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1958
  • The great shepherds of mankind. Blüchert, Stuttgart 1958
  • Top secret. About spies, informers and agents. Together with Paul Flora . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1966
  • Christian Morgenstern . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1964
  • Paul. The way of the apostle. Publishing house Die Pforte, Dornach / Basel. 4th edition 2000. ISBN 3-85636-136-7

Translations

Editing

  • Culture and state. Festschrift for the 60th birthday of Hans-Harder Biermann-Ratjen . Hauswedell, Hamburg 1961
  • Poison and bile. 32 satires. Merlin, Hamburg 1963

Secondary literature

  • Jakob Anderhandt: "The House of Matupi" and "Vom Disappearance", in which: Eduard Hernsheim, the South Seas and a lot of money: biography . MV-Wissenschaft, Münster 2012, Vol. 2, pp. 447–457 and 459–471.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Hamburg address of the Hernsheim family was Mittelweg No. 16 (Jakob Anderhandt: Eduard Hernsheim, the South Seas and a lot of money: biography . MV-Wissenschaft, Münster 2012, vol. 2, p. 450). The villa was later rebuilt and now houses the Michael Stich Foundation.
  2. ↑ On the happiness of reading. In: Luck with Books. Ceremony for the 125th anniversary of Bertelsmann. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1961, p. 72 f.
personal data
SURNAME Beheim-Schwarzbach, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 1985
Place of death Hamburg