Maxwell Bodenheim

Maxwell Bodenheim (born May 26, 1892 in Hermanville , Mississippi , † February 6, 1954 in New York City ) was an American writer . Especially in the 1920s he was known as the "King of the bohemians of Greenwich Village ".

Born as Maxwell Bodenheimer, he later shortened his name to Bodenheim and was called Max or Bodey by his friends . His father Solomon Bodenheimer (born in July 1858 in Germany) emigrated to the USA in 1888, his mother Carrie (born in April 1860 in Alsace-Lorraine ) in 1881. In 1900 the family moved to Chicago .

Bodenheim met Ben Hecht in Chicago around 1912 . They became friends and started a magazine together. Sherwood Anderson and Charles MacArthur were other members of their group. Bodenheim published his first verses in Poetry Magazine in 1914 . In the following ten years he established himself as one of the leading authors in the USA . He published ten volumes of poetry containing many features of imagism , as well as 13 novels .

Bodenheim had a total of three wives: Minna Schein (1918 until their divorce in 1938), Grace Finan (1939 until their death in 1950) and Ruth Fagin (1952 until their joint death in 1954). With Minna he had a son who was born in 1920.

After being a leading figure in the Greenwich Village art scene for many years , Bodenheim's living conditions deteriorated rapidly in the 1920s and 30s. Before he married his second wife, Grace, he had become a beggar . After her cancer death, he became a drinker and lost reputation. He has been arrested and hospitalized several times for vagrancy and drunkenness.

Bodenheim's third wife, Ruth, was 28 years younger than him. She shared his shabby way of life. They were homeless and slept on park benches. He begged with a sign that read "I'm blind," and she wrote short poems for money or drinks. Ruth slept with other men too, which Bodenheim didn't seem to mind.

Bodenheim and Ruth were murdered in 1954 by the 25-year-old mentally disturbed dishwasher Harold “Charlie” Weinberg, whom they met on the street. He offered them to sleep in his room as he was interested in Ruth. When the two became sexually active right next to Bodenheim , he challenged the rival to a fight, in the course of which he was shot by him. Weinberg then stabbed Ruth with a knife. When captured, he confessed to double homicide. He was declared insane and admitted to a psychiatric clinic .

Bodenheim's memoir My Life and Love in Greenwich Village (published 1954) was partly written by a ghostwriter . Ben Hecht's play Winkelberg (1954) is based on the life of the poet. A biography by Jack B. Moore entitled Maxwell Bodenheim was published in 1970.

Maxwell Bodenheim is buried in Cedar Park Cemetery in Emerson, New Jersey .

Major works

Minna and Myself (poems), 1918
Advice (poems), 1920
Introducing Irony (poems), 1922
Against This Age (poems), 1923
Blackguard (novel), 1923
The Sardonic Arm (poems), 1923
Crazy Man (novel), 1924
Replenishing Jessica (novel), 1925
Ninth Avenue (novel), 1926
Returning to Emotion (poems), 1927
Georgia May (novel), 1928
The King of Spain (poems), 1928
Sixty Seconds (novel), 1929
Bringing Jazz! (Poems), 1930
Naked on Roller Skates (novel), 1930
A Virtuous Girl (novel), 1930
Duke Herring (novel), 1931
Run, Sheep, Run (novel), 1932
New York Madness (novel), 1933
Slow Vision (novel), 1933
Lights in the Valley (poems), 1942
Selected Poems , 1946
My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village , 1954
Cutie A Warm Mamma (Hecht Ben and Maxwell Bodenheim)

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personal data
SURNAME	Bodenheim, Maxwell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bodey
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American author
DATE OF BIRTH	May 26, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hermanville, Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH	February 6, 1954
Place of death	New York City