Max Tau

Max Tau, lithograph by Emil Stumpp (1929)

Max Tau (born January 19, 1897 in Beuthen OS ; died March 13, 1976 in Oslo ) was a German-Norwegian writer , editor and publisher .

life and work

After studying philosophy , psychology and German in Berlin, Hamburg and Kiel, Tau received his doctorate in 1928 on the “associative factor in the representation of landscapes and places by Theodor Fontane ”.

During his subsequent work as head editor of the Bruno Cassirer publishing house in Berlin, he discovered and promoted, for example, Walter Bauer , Marie-Luise Kaschnitz , Wolfgang Koeppen , Horst Lange , August Scholtis and Josef Wiessalla . He made the Czech writer Karel Čapek famous in Germany and also made contemporary Norwegian literature known, for example by Olav Duun , Johan Falkberget , Sigrid Undset , Tarjei Vesaas and Herman Wildenvey . He was also the editor of the collections Der deutsche Roman and Die deutsche Novelle as well as the collected works of Hermann Stehr .

In 1935 he was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer . According to David Basker, he is said to have been the last Jew remaining in the Chamber up to that point. In 1938 he fled to Oslo, where he worked as an editor at the Johan Grundt Tanum publishing house until the beginning of the German occupation. In 1942 he fled to Sweden.

In Stockholm he was a co-founder of the New Publishing House, which campaigned for newer German literature, such as Lion Feuchtwanger , Heinrich Mann , Alfred Neumann and Arnold Zweig . There he also met Tove Filseth, the Norwegian representative of Nansenhilfe . They married in 1944.

In 1944 he was granted Norwegian citizenship by the Norwegian government in exile. Besides him, she only received Willy Brandt .

In 1945 he returned to Oslo and worked until the end of his life as a lecturer at Tanum and from 1957 at Verlag Aschehoug. Despite personal persecution and the murder of closest relatives by the National Socialists, Max Tau campaigned for an understanding with Germany immediately after the war and helped spread German post-war literature throughout Scandinavia.

For the first time he also wrote his own novels and autobiographical notes. The reconciliation of Jews and Christians, peace between nations, but also between generations, were the subject of numerous lectures, essays, books and letters. Tau was friends with Albert Schweitzer , Trygve Gulbranssen and Nikos Kazantzakis .

In 1956 he founded a "Peace Library" in cooperation with international publishers and in 1960 the German-Norwegian Association in Oslo (from 1988: German-Norwegian Society ).

Honors

Max Tau , far left, in 1974 at the awarding of the Peace Prize of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels to the founder and prior of the ecumenical brotherhood of Taize , Brother Roger , by the head of the Börsenverein Ernst Klett in the presence of Federal President Walter Scheel in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt .

Max Tau and bust in the library of the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel

Max Tau has been honored with numerous prizes, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade , which he was the first to receive in 1950, honorary citizenship of the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel (1965), the Nelly Sachs Prize of the city of Dortmund (1965) , the Schlesierschild (1965), the Lessing-Ring in connection with the Literature and Culture Prize of the German Freemasons (1966), the Great Federal Cross of Merit (1957) with a star (1967) and the Danish Sonning Prize (1970). Two schools were named after him: the Max-Tau-Schule in Kiel (1967), with which he had close personal contact until shortly before his death, and the German School Oslo - Max Tau (1998). In addition, Max-Tau-Strasse in Hamburg was named after him. In 1972 he was awarded the Saint Olav Order for his services in Norway .

A few years after being awarded the Lessing Ring, Tau was accepted into the Eidora zum Schwan Masonic Lodge in St. Peter Ording .

The cataloged estate of Max Tau is in the manuscript department of the Dortmund City and State Library .

Publications

Bruno Arndt. His essence and work (= Die Zeitschriften, Volume 98), published by Fr. Lintz'schen Buchhandlung, Trier 1920
Ed .: The silent ones. Seals. Collected and with a foreword by Max Tau , Verlag der Fr. Lintz'schen Buchhandlung, Trier 1921

Ed .: The Wilhelm Schmidtbonn Book , Otto Quikow, Berlin, Lübeck, Leipzig 1927

Landscape and site depiction Theodor Fontanes , Schwartz, Oldenburg 1928

Ed., Together with Wolfgang von Einsiedel: Vorstoss Prosa der Ungedruckten , Verlag Bruno Cassirer, Berlin 1930

Tro paa mennesket , 1946

Belief in people , Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 1948

For over oss he heaven , 1954

Because above us is the sky , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1955

The country I had to leave , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg, 1961

Landet jeg måtte forlate , Aschehoug, Oslo 1961 (Norwegian edition of Das Land that I Had to Leave , from the German by CF Engelstad)

A refugee finds his country , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1964

En flyktning finder sitt land , Aschehoug, Oslo 1964 (Norwegian edition of A refugee finds his country , from the German by CF Engelstad)

On the way to reconciliation , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1968

In spite of everything! Memories from seventy years , Siebenstern, Hamburg undated

literature

Thomas Diecks: Tau, Max. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-11206-7 , pp. 797 f. ( Digitized version ).
Isabel Pies, In memory of Max Tau in “New Trierisches Jahrbuch 2000”, Verein Trierisch im Selbstverlag, 2000, p. 281, ISSN 0077-7765
Wilhelm Große, Max Tau (short biography) in "New Trierisches Jahrbuch 2000", Verein Trierisch im Selbstverlag, 2000, p. 285, ISSN 0077-7765
Volker Oppmann, Max Tau and the Neue Verlag. A chapter of the history of German exile literature , Dreiviertelhaus Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-96242-107-6
Detlef Haberland: Tau, Max. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , p. 497f.

Web links

Commons : Max Tau - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ https://nbl.snl.no/Max_Tau
↑ David Basker: "Germany lives at the seam, at the breaking point": Literature and Politics in Germans 1933-1950. In: William John Niven, James Jordan (eds.): Politics and culture in twentieth-century Germany , Camden House, Suffolk 2003, 89–106, here 105 ( available from Google Books ).
↑ Laudation from Adolf Grimme for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 1950 to Max Tau: A human being in the age of the inhuman (PDF, 121 kB)

personal data
SURNAME	Dew, max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-Jewish writer, editor and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH	January 19, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bytom
DATE OF DEATH	March 13, 1976
Place of death	Oslo

[1] ttps://nbl.snl.no/Max_Tau

[2] David Basker: "Germany lives at the seam, at the breaking point": Literature and Politics in Germans 1933-1950. In: William John Niven, James Jordan (eds.): Politics and culture in twentieth-century Germany , Camden House, Suffolk 2003, 89–106, here 105 ( available from Google Books ).

[3] Laudation from Adolf Grimme for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 1950 to Max Tau: A human being in the age of the inhuman (PDF, 121 kB)