Morris Wintschewski
Morris Wintschewski ( Morris Winchevsky , lit.Morisas Vinčevskis ; pseudonym of Benzion Novakhovitsch ; born 1856 in Jonava , Russian Empire ; died 1932 in New York ) was a Yiddish and Hebrew writer, poet and socialist of Lithuanian origin. In the 1930s, he was celebrated by his American readers and Soviet literary critics as the “grandfather” of Yiddish socialist literature.
life and work
Morris Wintschewski was born as Lipe Benzion Novakhovitsch in Jonava, a Lithuanian town near Kaunas . From 1870 he worked as a bank clerk in Vilnius. He began his literary career in 1873 as a Hebrew poet and journalist . He often wrote under the pseudonyms "Ben Nets" (son of a hawk) and "Yigal isch ha-Ru'ach" (Yigal, the man of the spirit). He began writing Yiddish poetry in the 1880s.
He lived in Königsberg in Prussia from 1877 , where he absorbed Ludwig Börne's writings and met the Eastern European socialists who had been expelled from Berlin. He wrote for Jewish, Yiddish and Russian newspapers. According to Bismarck's socialist law , he was imprisoned for four months at the end of 1878 and then emigrated via France and England . In London he founded the short-lived Yiddish newspaper Der pojlischer jidl with Eljohu Wolf Rabinovich, targeting the 30,000 Yiddish immigrants in the East End . In 1894 he moved to the United States .
Wintschewski was one of the Jewish representatives of the Comité des délégations juives (Committee of Jewish Delegations) at the Versailles Peace Conference after the First World War . In the 1920s he turned to communism and spent several months in the Soviet Union in 1924 and 1925 , where he was celebrated as the "grandfather" of Yiddish socialist literature in the 1930s.
Wintschewski was a committed socialist who expressed his political stance in his poems. His work is shaped by his humanistic and Jewish commitment. In addition to his work as a writer, he also worked as a journalist for the Yiddish press in the USA, for example for Forverts , Der Emes and Di Tsukunft , which he also published. He was paralyzed from 1927 until his death. 1927-28 a ten-volume edition of his works was published.
literature
- Susanne Marten-Finnis, Heather Valencia: Language islands: Yiddish journalism in London, Wilna and Berlin 1880 - 1930 . Cologne: Böhlau, 1999, pp. 21–52
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Henry J. Tobias, Marc Miller: Vinchevsky, Morris . In: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.): Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. tape 20 . Macmillan Reference USA, Detroit 2007, pp. 535 (English) ( online: Gale Virtual Reference Library ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wintschewski, Morris |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Морис Винчевский |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Writer and socialist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1856 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Jonava |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1932 |
| Place of death | New York City |