Otto Mainzer

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Otto Mainzer (born November 26, 1903 in Frankfurt am Main , † June 28, 1995 in New York ) was a German-American writer who advocated an unconventional variety of free love that he described .

Life

Mainzer graduated in law and was 1928 in Frankfurt / Main to Dr. jur. PhD. He then worked as a lawyer at the Berlin Higher Regional Court . After he came to power in 1933, his license to practice as a lawyer was withdrawn because of his Jewish origins and a publication ban was imposed. Mainzer emigrated to Paris , where he made the acquaintance of André Gide , Heinrich Mann , Arnold Zweig and Erwin Piscator , who also supported him financially. During his time in exile in Paris, Mainzer became familiar with the writings of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich who had emigrated to Norway . Under the influence of Reich's ideas on sex-economy manuscripts originated at Mainzer's major works The sexual controlled economy and Prometheus . It was not published, although prominent writers such as Thomas Mann and Lion Feuchtwanger advocated it.

In 1941 Mainzer went to the USA, where he met his partner Ilse Wunsch. The couple lived “unmarried, in two different apartments, but in an intimate love affair” for 25 years, but then in 1966 “for political reasons ... gave them the marital papers.” Otto Mainzer was also concerned with an estate arrangement for his assets Activity as a stockbroker . After his death in 1995, his wife Ilse Wunsch-Mainzer set up a foundation in New York that has been awarding the Otto Mainzer Prize for the Science of Love since 2000 . The prize is currently endowed with 2500 euros.

plant

Mainzer's main works, which due to the time situation around 1939 were no longer printed, found no publisher after 1945 and even at the time of the start of sexualibus in 1968 . They had also received encouragement from Wilhelm Reich, who was very popular at the time. It was not until the early 1980s that the publicist Hans Christian Meiser managed to find a publishing house for Die Sexuelle Zwangswirtschaft . The book was presented to a wider audience through a review by Hans Krieger in Die Zeit .

Fonts

  • Equality before the law, justice and justice. Dissertation, Frankfurt 1929.
as reprint : Keip Verlag, Goldbach 1996.
  • The forced sexual economy. An erotic manifesto. (1937) Parabel-Verlag, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7898-0962-4 .
  • The tender advance. In 66 poems. Kirchheim Verlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-87410-017-0 . (Reprint of the Paris 1939 exile edition)
  • Prometheus (Roman, 1939) Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main and Basel 1989, ISBN 3-87877-325-0 .
  • “I want to aim for the highest stars.” Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main (announced for December 2012), ISBN 3-87877-828-7 .

literature

  • Ilse Wunsch-Mainzer: Back to the front. My life with Prometheus. Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main and Basel 1998, ISBN 3-87877-574-1 .
  • Michael Lukas Moeller: On the way to a science of love - dyadology: the doctrine of the dialogue of the dyad. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-61417-0 .
  • Jürgen Egyptien: Mainzer, Otto. 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 , pp. 358-360.

Otto Mainz Prize

Full name: International Otto Mainz Prize for the Science of Love
Previous winners:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Daniela Martin: The affectionate estate administrator Ilse Wunsch-Mainzer about her great love. In: Aufbau (New York), March 15, 2001
  2. ↑ Bernd A. Laska : Review of the sexual forced economy. In: Wilhelm-Reich-Blätter, No. 3/1982, pp. 118–120
  3. ↑ Hans Krieger: Partisan of love . In: Die Zeit, May 28, 1982
  4. ↑ Love is selfish. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 31, 2002
personal data
SURNAME Mainzer, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grund, Peter (pseudonym); Reason, Hellmut (pseudonym); Präger, Ernst (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1995
Place of death New York City , New York , United States