Oskar Rosenfeld

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Oskar Rosenfeld (born May 13, 1884 in Koryčany , Austria-Hungary ; died presumably in August 1944 in Auschwitz ) was an Austrian writer, journalist and Zionist .

Life

After Oskar Rosenfeld had successfully completed his Matura at the grammar school in Hungarian Hradiste , he moved to Vienna, where he began to study art history and philology in 1902. Rosenfeld met Theodor Herzl in Vienna . Thanks to him, he became enthusiastic about the Zionist ideology and advocated a cultural Jewish identity. After receiving his doctorate on " Philipp Otto Runge in Romanticism " in 1908, he devoted himself entirely to his literary and artistic interests.

While still a student, Rosenfeld wrote reviews and comments on literature, art and theater for leading Jewish magazines and newspapers. In 1907 or 1908 he founded a Jewish theater initiative in Vienna together with Adolf Stand , Egon Brecher , Hugo Zuckermann and Leo Goldhammer . The main goal of this ensemble, which performed in the Intimate Theater at Praterstrasse 34, was to stage sophisticated Jewish plays in German. Here he worked as a director and dramaturge as well as an actor. Rosenfeld was already active as a writer during his high school years, but it was not until 1910 and 1920 that his prose texts, which are known to this day, appeared: the novel “The fourth gallery. A Viennese novel ", the novella" Mendl Quiet. A story from Moravian ghetto life ”and the collection of short stories“ Days and Nights ”. After Austria's annexation in 1938, Rosenfeld emigrated to Prague with his wife Henriette in 1938, from where he continued to work as a journalist. On November 4, 1941, Rosenfeld was deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto . There he worked in the archive of the statistical department, which wrote a daily chronicle between 1941 and 1944. Rosenfeld was deported to Auschwitz in August 1944, where he was presumably murdered immediately.

Recognition by contemporaries

The honors on the occasion of his 50th birthday give an impression of the life and work as well as the recognition by contemporaries. On June 28, 1935, the “ Jewish Artists Games ” organized a “Dr. Oskar Rosenfeld evening ”. A one-act play by Jizchok Leib Perez and Jewish folk songs by Glücksmann were played. On May 17, 1935, Rosenfeld was honored with an article that not only summarized his previous career, but also drew attention to his special characteristics:

“A complete journalist, and yet fundamentally different from the type of journalist of today. A sworn enemy of the banal, a hater of all 'bustle', of all sensationalism. A man of intellect and literary character who finds expression in the treatment of the smallest detail. Dr. Oskar Rosenfeld enriches Jewish and Zionist life and literature. "

plant

Oskar Rosenfeld was already active as a journalist and writer before the First and Second World Wars. At the same time, he advocated Jewish culture and lectured at cultural evenings. He translated texts by other authors into German, and was particularly committed to the dissemination of Eastern Jewish literature. During the Second World War and during the ghetto period he continued to write private and public texts.

Journalistic activity

Between 1902 and 1938 Rosenfeld worked for the following (Jewish) magazines and newspapers:

  • The world (1904–1906, 1910–1911)
  • Our hope. Journal for the more mature Jewish youth (1905–1909)
  • The marker. Austrian magazine for music and theater (1911, 1913)
  • Pester Lloyd (June – August 1918)
  • Frankfurter Zeitung (July 1918)
  • Ezra (1919)
  • Menorah (1923)
  • Wiener Morgenzeitung (1923–1927)
  • The New World (1928–1938)
  • Jewish News Gazette (1940–1941)

Today there are over 800 newspaper and magazine articles, stories and translations from other authors by Oskar Rosenfeld identified by the employees of the Holocaust literature department and as part of the FRONTIER project "Writing in the Holocaust" carried out between 2008 and 2010 at the University of Heidelberg the above time. He wrote literary, theater and book reviews as well as essays with a Zionist character. During the First World War he stayed in Sofia, from where he wrote for the " Frankfurter Zeitung ", among others . Rosenfeld also sent reports from Sofia to “ Pester Lloyd ”. From 1923 Rosenfeld worked as an editor for the “ Wiener Morgenzeitung ” and from 1929 in a leading position for “Die Neue Welt”. After the latter was banned by the National Socialists and Rosenfeld and his wife emigrated to Prague on March 12, 1938, he continued to write for the press. There are several of his texts from 1940 and 1941, which were published in the " Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt " Prague. He wrote his last report on April 25, 1941, about seven months before his deportation to the Litzmannstadt ghetto.

novelist

Rosenfeld's prose texts, which have survived to this day, were published between 1910 and 1920: the novel “The fourth gallery. A Viennese novel ”about Gustav Mahler's epoch in Viennese musical life (1910), the novella“ Mendl Ruhig. A story from Moravian ghetto life ”(1914) and the collection of short stories“ Days and Nights ”(1920). The focus of these texts is on “ Conditions of Existence for Jewish People in Austria”: His protagonists are always confronted with their own Jewish identity. Another motif in the novel “The fourth gallery” is the “dying culture of the city” of Vienna. But not only the city is on the verge of disintegration, the individual characters in the novel turn out to be z. B. as incapable of love, a pose accompanies many of the lives of the people depicted. The novel "Mendl Ruhig" is set in a Jewish shtetl in Moravia . Your protagonist and at the same time the title figure, Mendl Ruhig (actually Emanuel Schindelmacher), is a loner and idler, an orphan who takes on several tasks one after the other in the small community without actually doing them successfully: he does not prove himself at his apprenticeship, he can still be successful as a parish servant , even as tenth. When his position is taken over by another parishioner, he withdraws into nature. On the Day of Atonement he sets out to “see the big city”. He succeeds, and so he proves to be the “wise fool” who manages to conquer the confines of his homeland. In doing so, he also overcomes the isolation of the Jewish community.

Lectures and translations

In addition to his writing and journalistic activities, Rosenfeld worked as a translator for other authors and lectured at the cultural evenings organized by the Vienna Jewish Associations. In the years 1925–1938 he gave at least 17 lectures on various topics such as Jewish culture, Jewish theater, but also in general on Jewish life in Europe. References to these events can be found in the advertisements of the “Wiener Morgenzeitung” and “Der Neuen Welt”. Between 1917 and 1937 Rosenfeld worked as a translator from French, American, Czech and Yiddish and translated works by other Jewish contemporary authors into German.

Writing in the Lodz Ghetto / Litzmannstadt

In November 1941, Oskar Rosenfeld was deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto. His wife Henriette was able to emigrate to England in time.

In the Litzmannstadt ghetto, the second largest Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland, one of the largest projects of the Jewish ghetto residents began on January 12, 1941 in the “archive”, a department of Jewish self-government: the chronicle of the Lodz / Litzmannstadt ghetto . Initially in Polish, then in Polish and German, and finally only in German, the most important events in the life of the ghetto were recorded in the form of daily reports. The archive staff researched their information themselves on site. The work was carried out in secret and was under the control of the Jewish elder, Chaim Rumkowski . From the beginning, the Chronicle was not intended for contemporary readers, but for readers of the future. The employees of the archive and chroniclers were Oskar Rosenfeld, Oskar Singer (1893–1944), Bernhard Heilig (1902–1943), Peter Wertheimer (1890-presumably 1944), Alice Chana de Buton (1901–1944), Julian Cukier- Cerski (1904–1943), Bernard Ostrowski (1908–1945 emigrated to Israel ), Józef Klementynowski (1892–1944), Szmul Rozensztajn (1898–1944) and Abram Kamieniecki (1874–1943). Oskar Rosenfeld worked for the archive from June 1942.

The initially somewhat dry style of writing in which the first articles were written changed over time and especially after the death of the first Polish chronicle director. In January 1943, Cukier-Cerski, the main Polish author of the "Chronicle", fell ill. This made Oskar Singer the acting head of the project. The change not only resulted in a linguistic change (from November 1942 the entries appeared in greater numbers, from January 1943 only in German). Singer also introduced new forms of journalism, including a. the “small ghetto mirror”, “a rubric that was more suitable than any other to fulfill the mediation function described. Here Singer and [...] Rosenfeld condensed their ghetto experiences into literary miniatures or feuilletonistic scenes. "

At the beginning of 1944 another project was started: the "Encyclopedia". On index cards in Polish, German and Yiddish, the authors created a lexicon in which they - apparently retrospectively - introduced important personalities and institutions and explained terms that were either newly created or had a different meaning under the specific conditions of the ghetto. Oskar Rosenfeld wrote at the end of 1943:

“Nowhere in the world was there a community of people that could be compared to that of the ghetto. The change in all social, intellectual and economic functions also resulted in a change in most of the terms. "

This means:

“The change in the forms of life forced the change in the forms of concepts. Word and word sequences no longer met the demands of the ghetto world. "

During his time in Vienna as an active Zionist, Rosenfeld not only wrote journalistic texts but also gave lectures, he withdrew almost completely into private life in the ghetto. However, this did not mean that he was not interested in the ghetto and the people who lived there. Rather, he processed the events and the collective fate of the Jews who were also captured "on paper". Rosenfeld's last private text was written in the ghetto, his diary "Why still the world", which, like the "Chronicle", was intended for readers from the future. The first entry is from February 17, 1942, the last one that has survived bears the date of July 28, 1944. The exercise books in which Rosenfeld wrote his personal notes, drafts, sketches, motifs for planned literary stories and notes on the history of the ghetto , were buried and recovered in the summer of 1945. In 1970 they came to the survivor Abraham Cykiert in Melbourne , who sent them to Israel in 1973; they are now in the Israeli Yad Vashem memorial .

A few texts were taken directly into the "Chronicle". But most of the entries contain straightforward "descriptions of everyday life and the internal conflicts of the ghetto, of hunger, forced labor and deportations, of efforts for cultural, social and religious life, of the struggle for the preservation of human dignity and its ongoing destruction."

Selected literature

Primary literature

  • Mendl Ruhig , Heidelberg: Saturn Verlag Hermann Meister, 1914.
  • Days and Nights , Leipzig: Ilf-Verlag, 1920.
  • The fourth gallery. A Viennese novel , Vienna: Heller, 1910.
  • Why still world. Notes from the Lodz Ghetto , ed. by Hanno Loewy, Frankfurt am Main: New Critique Publishing House, 1994.

Secondary literature

  • Andrea Löw: Jews in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. Living conditions, self-perception, behavior . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0050-7
  • The Chronicle of the Ghetto Lodz / Litzmannstadt , 5th vol., Ed. by Sascha Feuchert , Erwin Leibfried and Jörg Riecke , Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007.
  • Sascha Feuchert : Oskar Rosenfeld and Oskar Singer. Two authors of the Lodz Ghetto . Studies on Holocaust literature, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004 (= Gießener Papers on Modern German Literature and Literary Studies, 24).
  • Josef Fränkel : Dr. Oskar Rosenfeld - 50 Years , in: Die neue Welt, Vol. 9 (1935), H. 164 (May 17, 1935), p. 2.
  • Kronika Getta Lodzkiego / Litzmannstadt Ghetto 1941–1944 . Opracowanie i redakcja naukowa Julian Baranowski, Krystyna Radziszewska, Jacek Walicki, Ewa Wiatr, Piotr Zawilski u. a. 5 volumes. Lodz: Archivum Panstwowe w Lodzi / Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego, 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Feuchert, Sascha: Oskar Rosenfeld and Oskar Singer. Two authors of the Lodz Ghetto. Studies on Holocaust Literature, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004 (= Gießener Papers on Modern German Literature and Literary Studies, 24), p. 56.
  2. ↑ See ibid., P. 80.
  3. ↑ Cf. Fränkel, Josef: Dr. Oskar Rosenfeld - 50 Years, in: Die neue Welt, Vol. 9 (1935), H. 164 (May 17, 1935), p. 2.
  4. ↑ The special event was invited several times within “The New World”, including in issue 473 (June 26, 1935), p. 4 or issue 475 (June 28, 1935), p. 6 u. 7th
  5. ↑ Fränkel, Josef: Dr. Oskar Rosenfeld - 50 Years, in: Die neue Welt, 164 (May 17, 1935), p. 2.
  6. ↑ See Feuchert 2004, p. 61.
  7. ↑ See ibid., P. 163.
  8. ↑ See the article: Dr. OR: "Retraining - vocational guidance mental and technical retraining", in: "Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt" Prague Jg. 3 (1941), no. 17 (April 25, 1941), p. 2.
  9. ↑ Feuchert 2004, p. 84.
  10. ↑ Rosenfeld, Oskar: The fourth gallery. A Viennese novel, Vienna: Heller, 1910, p. 46.
  11. ↑ See Feuchert 2004, pp. 88–90.
  12. ↑ The novella appeared u. a. 1914 in the Saturn Verlag Hermann Meister, Heidelberg, in the magazine "Menorah", vol. 1 (1923), issue 3, pp. 17-23 and in the newspaper "Die Neue Welt", vol. 5 (1931), booklets from July 3, 1931 to August 7, 1931 (weekly). The other quotations follow the book edition from 1914.
  13. ↑ Rosenfeld 1914, p. 27.
  14. ↑ See Feuchert 2004, p. 104.
  15. ↑ Cf. u. a. “Eaten”, by David Frischmann (from Yiddish from or), in: Die Neue Welt, vol. 10 (1936), issue 598 (October 7, 1936), p. 9.
  16. ↑ Cf. Feuchert 2004, p. 169 and 444.
  17. ↑ The complete chronicle has been available in German since 2007. Cf. The Chronicle of the Ghetto Lodz / Litzmannstadt, 5th vol., Ed. by Sascha Feuchert, Erwin Leibfried and Jörg Riecke, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007.
  18. ↑ Cf. Feuchert, Sascha: Introduction, in: Die Chronik des Gettos Lodz / Litzmannstadt, 5th vol., Ed. by Sascha Feuchert, Erwin Leibfried and Jörg Riecke, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007, here vol. 1: 1941, p. 7 as well as the same: The Ghetto Chronicle: Origin and Tradition. A project sketch, in: ibid, here Vol. 5: Supplements, pp. 173f.
  19. ↑ See Feuchert 2004, p. 253.
  20. ↑ Feuchert, Sascha: “The Ghetto Chronicle: Origin and Tradition. A project sketch ”, in: The Chronicle of the Ghetto Lodz / Litzmannstadt, 5th vol., Ed. by Sascha Feuchert, Erwin Leibfried and Jörg Riecke, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007, here vol. 5: Supplements, p. 180.
  21. ^ O [skar] R [osenfeld]: Encyclopedia of the Ghetto: YIVO, RG 241/859.
  22. ↑ Ibid.
  23. ↑ Cf. Rosenfeld, Oskar: Why still world. Notes from the Lodz Ghetto, ed. by Hanno Loewy, Frankfurt am Main: New Critique Publishing House, 1994.
  24. ↑ See Feuchert 2004, pp. 256f.
  25. ↑ Andrea Löw: Jews in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. , P. 41
  26. ↑ See Loewy, Hanno: Vorwort, in: Rosenfeld, p. 7.
  27. ↑ Ibid.
personal data
SURNAME Rosenfeld, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, journalist and Zionist with Herzl character
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Koryčany
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: August 1944
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp