Max Knight

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Max Knight , real name Max Eugen Kühnel (born June 8, 1909 in Pilsen ; died August 31, 1993 in Berkeley , grave in Kensington ) was a writer and translator .

Life

Born to Jewish parents in Pilsen as Max Kühnel, he grew up in Vienna . While studying law, he made friends with fellow student Joseph (Joe) Epstein (1909–1999). From 1931 to 1938 they published around 200 journalistic texts for Viennese newspapers under the same pseudonym Peter Fabrizius , which they often second and third exploited under other pseudonyms. As a Jew, Max Kühnel recognized the coming disaster early on and in 1936 had the Wiener Tagblatt send him to London as a correspondent, where he was able to make valuable contacts that allowed him to flee from Austria there in 1938. Later his friend also managed to escape to London. From there, Max moved on to Shanghai. He got a job as a journalist for the North China Daily News , where he was even able to put Fabrizius stories into English translation. In the meantime, friend Joe had come to California and got Max papers for immigration to the USA, so that he moved there in 1941. He changed his name to Knight. First a shoeshine worker, then an unskilled worker in a shipyard, then a specialist in Manchuria in the United States Office of War Information , then a financial journalist, he became an academic assistant at the Hoover Institution, where he received his doctorate in political science in 1952. He had so learned the English language that he became editor of American authors and editor of American texts, most recently as editor-in-chief at the University of California Press .

He was always active as a writer. His works include translations of Christian Morgenstern's gallows songs and his Palmström cycle; they were congenial translations into English, published in 1962 by the University of California Press under his name, not Peter Fabrizius. Together with Joe Epstein, they published translations of works by German-language writers such as Bertolt Brecht , Karl Kraus and Johann Nestroy into English, for which they were honored by the Republic of Austria. Together they wrote and published their “ shared autobiography ” under the title One and One Make Three .

Awards

  • for their Karl Kraus and Nestroy translations to Joe Fabry and Max Knight
  • Golden badge of honor for services to the Republic of Austria, 1986

Works (selection)

  • Max Knight: The German Executive 1880-1933. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA [1952] (Hoover Institute studies, series B, elites, 4).
  • Christian Morgenstern: Gallow Songs and Other Poems, Galgenlieder. a selection, translated with an introduction by Max Knight; University of California Press, Berkeley 1963 (text in German and English).
  • Christian Morgenstern: Gallows songs and other poems = Gallow Songs and Other Poems. selected and translated into English by Max Knight; Piper Verlag, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-492-01968-4 .
  • Peter Fabrizius (pseudonym for Max Knight and Joseph Fabry alias Joe Epstein): One and One Make Three. Story of a Friendship. Benmir Books, Berkeley CA 1988, ISBN 0-917883-03-9 .
  • Peter Fabrizius (pseudonym for Max Knight and Joseph Fabry alias Joe Epstein): A Peter Fabrizius Reader. Selected Stories, Exilia, Verses and Essays from Two Worlds. Foreword by Harry Zohn; P. Lang, New York 1994 ( Austrian culture , 12) ISBN 0-8204-2347-5 (texts in English and German).
  • Christian Morgenstern: Gallows songs and other poems = Gallow Songs and Other Poems. selected, translated into English and with an afterword by Max Knight, ed. and with an after-afterword by Niklaus Peter; Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2010 ( Schwabe Reflexe 10), ISBN 978-3-7965-2693-0 .

estate

  • Archive for exile literature, Vienna (half of the estate)
  • University of Albany NY, ME Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives (the other half of the estate)

literature

  • Niklaus Peter: Survival and Translation. In: Christian Morgenstern: Galgenlieder and other poems = Gallow Songs and Other Poems. Selected, translated into English and with an afterword by Max Knight, ed. and with an after-afterword by Niklaus Peter. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2010 ( Schwabe Reflexe 10), ISBN 978-3-7965-2693-0 , pp. 181-187.
  • Stefan Stirnemann: Oh man! Pay attention! What do the deer pray at night? In: Swiss month. Issue 981, November 2010 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Steve Hochstadt: Shanghai Stories, the Jewish Flight to China. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2007.
  2. ↑ Niklaus Peter: Max Knight, survival and translation. In: Christian Morgenstern: Galgenlieder and other poems = Gallow Songs and Other Poems. Selected, translated into English and with an afterword by Max Knight, ed. and with an after-afterword by Niklaus Peter; Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2010 ( Schwabe Reflexe 10), ISBN 978-3-7965-2693-0 , esp. Pp. 181-187.
personal data
SURNAME Knight, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kühnel, Max (maiden name); Fabrizius, Peter (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Pilsen
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1993
Place of death Berkeley