Martin Flinker

Martin Edward Flinker (born July 18, 1895 in Czernowitz ; † June 21, 1986 in Paris ) was an Austrian bookseller , publisher , writer and literary critic of Jewish descent who ran famous bookshops in Vienna and Paris and turned them into Germanophile microcosms.

Life

Martin Flinker was born in 1895 as the son of a Jewish doctor and a Jew who converted to Protestantism . His parents belonged to assimilated German-Austrian Judaism . At his father's request, he studied law and did his doctorate in Vienna. His passion, however, was literature, which is why he trained as a bookseller in the famous Hugo Heller bookstore at the Viennese farmers' market after completing his studies . After Heller's death in 1923, Flinker took over his bookstore, but went into business for himself in 1929 and founded the bookstore “Buchhandlung Dr. Martin Flinker at the Kärntnertor ”in Wiedner Hauptstrasse 2 in Vienna. After 1933 he published his later famous almanacs , book catalogs, which were preceded by essays and shorter articles by contemporary writers such as Robert Musil and Hermann Broch .

After the connection of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, he was forced to leave his bookstore to sell. On the detour via Switzerland, where the prospect of a visa was slim, he fled to Paris with his 14-year-old son Karl, while his wife sought refuge with her family in Czechoslovakia. Temporarily living in Caen , he kept himself and his son afloat by doing casual work. At the beginning of the war in September 1939, like every foreigner of military age who was in France at the time, he was interned. After the attack on France by the Wehrmacht , he fled again with his son. After stops in Bordeaux , Bayonne , Madrid and Algeciras - in contrast to other exiles like Walter Benjamin and Carl Einstein , they managed to escape across the Spanish border, thanks to the help of the Archbishop of Luxembourg - they reached the International Zone of Tangier , where they stayed until the end of the war. In 1945, Flinker received news of the death of his family members here. His parents, his siblings and his wife, who had not emigrated with him, had given their lives in the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz concentration camps .

Memorial plaque for Martin and Karl Flinker (68, quai des Orfèvres in Paris)

After the war, Flinker moved to Paris with his son, where he founded a bookshop on the Quai des Orfèvres in 1947. The bookstore soon became the most important port of call for French writers and scholars who wanted to buy German literature . In addition to his bookselling activity, Flinker also worked here as a publisher. From 1954 onwards, Flinker devoted himself again to the publication of his almanacs, which from then on appeared bilingual, including (for example in the 1958 almanac) with contributions by Max Bense , Joseph Breitbach , Paul Celan , Hans Magnus Enzensberger , Günter Grass , Erich Kahler , Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler , Hermann Kesten , Annette Kolb , Ernst Kreuder , Luise Rinser , Arno Schmidt , Reinhold Schneider , Rolf Schroers , Günther Weisenborn and Arnold Zweig . He himself wrote literary critical essays on Robert Musil, Rudolf Kassner and Joseph Roth .

Martin Flinker died on June 21, 1986 at the age of almost 91 in Paris. Today only a plaque reminds of the literary past of house number 68 on the Quai des Orfèvres. Flinker's private library, which contains some bibliophile treasures, is now in the possession of the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme in Paris, which dedicated an exhibition to him in 2002. The Institut mémoires de l'édition contemporaine (IMEC) manages his estate .

His son Karl Flinker (1923–1991) was one of the most important gallery owners in Paris.

meaning

In his role as bookseller and publisher, Martin Flinker counted a large number of contemporary writers among his customers, including Hermann Hesse , Erich von Kahler , Carl Zuckmayer , Stefan Zweig , Elias Canetti , Arthur Schnitzler , Alma Mahler , Oskar Kokoschka , Franz Werfel - the latter dedicated to him his entire work - as well as in France Henri Michaux , Michel Tournier , Alfred Kastler , Paul Éluard , Louis Aragon , Raymond Queneau , Gabriel Marcel , Paul Celan and Jacques Lacan . He maintained a friendly relationship with Robert Musil, Hermann Broch, Rudolf Kassner, Annette Kolb and especially Thomas Mann, among others .

Flinker and Mann, who met for the first time in Hugo Heller's bookstore, had been close friends since the days of emigration in Switzerland, which lasted until Mann's death in 1955. Flinker processed his last visit to Mann's bedside just a day before his death in the essay La dernière visite . In the same year he had published the commemorative publication L'Hommage de la France à Thomas Mann on the occasion of the writer's 80th birthday. In 1959 he published Thomas Mann's Political Considerations in the Light of Today .

Flinker was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor in 1973. In 1977 he was awarded the Medal of Honor of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. In the acceptance speech he gave on the occasion of the award of this prize, he formulated his credo as a bookseller:

The book trade is not a profession like any other, the book trade cannot only be learned, you have to be born to be a bookseller, just as you have to be born to be an artist, a musician or a painter.

In 1979 he received the Golden Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria .

literature

Works (selection)

• Thoughts on booksellers , in: Almanach of the literary bookstore Dr. Martin Flinker, Vienna 1936.
• The God-Seeker , Amsterdam 1949.
• The death of Virgil. Sketch of an introduction to the work of Hermann Broch , in: Almanach de la librairie Martin Flinker 1954, Paris 1954.
• Robert Musil. The man without qualities. An introduction , in: Almanach de la librairie Martin Flinker 1958, Paris 1958.
• Thomas Mann's Political Reflections in the Light of Today , The Hague 1959.
• Ma dernière visite chez Thomas Mann , Paris 1973.
• Mes souvenirs de Robert Musil , Paris 1981.

As editor or publisher:

• Twenty-five years of BUKUM. Festival literary almanac for 1930 , Vienna 1929.
• Dr. Martin Flinker's New Book Guide , Vienna 1935.
• Almanac of the literary bookstore Dr. Martin Flinker 1936/1937 , Vienna 1936.
• Almanac of the literary bookstore Dr. Martin Flinker 1938 , Vienna 1938.
• Appels aux Allemands. Messages radiodiffusés adressés aux Allemands, 1940-1945 , Paris 1948.
• Almanach de la librairie Martin Flinker 1954 , Paris 1953.
• Homage de la France to Thomas Mann. À l'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire , Paris 1955.
• Almanach de la librairie Martin Flinker 1956 , Paris 1955.
• Almanach de la librairie Martin Flinker 1958 , Paris 1958.

Secondary literature

• Hans Scherer: Martin Flinker, the bookseller. An emigrant life . Frankfurt am Main 1988.
• Murray G. Hall: Paris exhibition in honor of Martin Flinker. A preliminary report . In: Communications from the Society for Book Research in Austria . 2001/1, pp. 25-28.
  • Online at murrayhall.com .
• Martin et Karl Flinker. De Vienne à Paris . Textes réunis par Isabelle Pleskoff, Paris 2002.
• Thomas Mann was not a prophet . In: Die Zeit , No. 31/1960. Review of the book on Thomas Mann's political considerations

Web links

• Literature by and about Martin Flinker in the catalog of the German National Library
• Librairie Martin Flinker , Cote 68FLK, note on the archive holdings of Martin Flinker's estate, which was handed over to the Institut mémoires de l'édition contemporaine (IMEC) in 1995, including a short biography on portail-collections.imec-archives.com (French).
• Martin Flinker, photography, taken in his bookstore on Quai des Orfèvres ( online ) at portail-collections.imec-archives.com .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Scherer 1988, p. 22.
2. ↑ Made a contribution to the book and book trade . In: Börsenblatt No. 55 of July 12, 1977, p. 13f.