Oskar Maria Graf regulars' table
A regular meeting of Germans and Austrians in New York City is referred to as the Oskar Maria Graf Stammtisch (also known as the Emigrant Stammtisch ) . It has been taking place since 1943.
history
From July 1938, the expatriated German writer Oskar Maria Graf lived in exile in New York. In 1943, he and his friend George Harry Asher (1907–1998) , who came from Vienna , founded a regulars' table for German-speaking emigrants who were mostly expelled by the National Socialists . Exiles and German-Americans came and stayed in contact with each other, the regulars' table initiated by Graf, as a “home oasis”, offered the best opportunity for this; an impending isolation in the big city was counteracted. The regulars' table became a kind of “surrogate family”. The regulars' table was an important part of his life for Graf.
“I actually live like a hermit in New York, nobody cares - then I have my weekly regulars' table, there I meet Germans, Russians, Austrians who all speak German, and then they think they're sitting in somewhere Munich."
The motto of the regulars' table was "We are for everyone and everything". The meetings of the changing, around 15 to 20 participants always take place on Wednesday evenings. One of the original ideas of the Stammtisch is the use of the native language German. Many artists and writers took part in the regulars' table. Lectures and readings will be held, and political issues will also be discussed. The regular participants always included Holocaust survivors. At the meetings, young emigrants or New York visitors could exchange ideas with the Jewish emigrants.
"Here, where young Germans meet former, Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, encounters are possible that could not exist in Germany."
At the beginning, the participants of the regulars' table met in restaurants, also to be able to eat meat that was rationed during the war. Initially the Alt-Heidelberg on 2nd Avenue, later the Alte Blaue Donau , Forester on 84th and Kleine Konditorei (a Viennese coffee house on 86th Street in the Yorkville district ) served as meeting points. The well-known photo of Bertolt Brecht and Graf was taken in one of these restaurants in 1943, in which Graf cheerfully toasted the slender, cigar-holding Brecht who appeared next to him. Later private apartments were used for the meetings. After Graf's death in 1967, Asher led the regulars' table. When Asher's wife Leah died, Gaby Glückselig , Friedrich Glückselig's widow and employee at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York , became the hostess in her apartment on the Upper West Side for 27 years . She died in 2015; since then the regulars 'table has taken place in Trudy (Trude) Jeremias' penthouse .
Most of the participants from the first few years of the Stammtisch have passed away. In the mid-1990s, Yoash Tatari filmed the documentary Glückselig in New York at the New York Stammtisch . The regulars' table for emigrants , which was awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize in 1997 . The film and the media attention gave the regulars' table renewed interest. Today the regulars' table is no longer just a meeting point for emigrants, but has developed into a family get-together for German-speaking New Yorkers of all ages.
Known participants (selection)
- Hilde Berger-Olsen (1914–2011), German resistance fighter
- Ilse Blumenthal-Weiss (1899–1987), German poet
- Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), German poet
- Friedrich Glückselig (1909–1981), art dealer and poet (alias Friedrich Bergammer )
- Leo Glückselig (1914–2003), Austrian artist and graphic designer
- Alfred Gong (1920–1981), Romanian writer
- Wieland Herzfelde (1896–1988), German publisher
- Uwe Johnson (1934–1984), German writer
- Hans Sahl (1902–1993), German literary critic
- Will Schaber (1905–1996), German publicist
- Margot Scharpenberg (* 1924), German writer
literature
- Rainer Hering , German meeting point in Manhattan , in: Damals , issue 12/2002, pp. 70–72
- Emil Rennert and Shani Bar On, almost a ritual. Gaby Glueckselig's regular table for emigrants in New York (illustrated book), Edition Exil, Vienna 2015
Web links
- Oona Kroisleitner, Glueckselig's regulars' table in New York , May 8, 2015, Der Standard
- Stefan Appelius , One is lonely in New York , March 24, 1996, Tagesspiegel
- Heidi Friedrich, hostess of the emigrant get-together in New York: 100 Years of Bliss , April 28, 2014, Der Spiegel
- Emil Rennert, Pancakes in Manhattan , July 7, 2015, Jüdische Allgemeine
- Happy in New York. The regulars' table of the emigrants , at: Film series: 11th Jewish Culture Days: Jewish from New York, 10-23. November 1997 (Wayback Machine)
- Claudia Appelius and Birgit Schreiber, A Stammtisch in New York: Dialogue of Generations and Bridge to the Old Homeland , in: Klaus Holz and Sven Wende (Eds.) The Unease in the "Third Generation": Reflections on the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism and National Socialism , Villigst Profile (Volume 3), ISBN 978-3-82587-281-6 , LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, p. 122
Individual evidence
- ↑ The photo was probably not taken in New York
- ↑ a b Stella Schuhmacher, New York Stories: A Stammtisch for Holocaust Survivors, since 1943 , December 13, 2018, Der Standard
- ↑ Peter Stuiber, review of: Leo Glückselig: Thank God no hero and saint. , June 2, 1999, on the website of the Literaturhaus Wien
- ↑ Michaela Karl , A Bavarian in New York , literature portal Bavaria
- ↑ Manfred Bosch (Ed.), Profiles der Zeit: Encounters in six decades , ISBN 978-3-92501-695-0 , Edition Isele, 1992, p. 221 (template: snippet view)
- ↑ Carola Zinner, Oskar Maria Graf died 50 years ago: A provincial writer in New York , June 28, 2017, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
- ↑ Stella Schuhmacher, Stammtisch der Sehnsucht , May 26, 2019, Der Standard
- ↑ Waltraud Sennebogen, review of: Villigster Research Forum (ed.): Unease in the Third Generation ' , May 18, 2005, H-Soz-Kult
- ^ Robert Stockhammer , Read before the letter: Oskar Maria Graf in New York , in: Eckart Goebel and Sigrid Weigel , "Escape to Life": German Intellectuals in New York: A Compendium on Exile after 1933 , ISBN 978-3-11 -025868-4 , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 188 (in English)
- ↑ Robert Braunmüller, Oskar Maria Graf in the Literaturhaus: With the Lederhosn through the world , June 1, 2017, evening newspaper
- ^ Adolf Grimme Prize 1997: General Programs , March 14, 1997, Die Tageszeitung