Otto Pick (writer)

Otto Pick (born May 22, 1887 in Prague , † October 25, 1940 in London ) was a German- Bohemian writer and translator who also used the pseudonym Oldřich Novotný .

Life

Otto Pick was the son of a Jewish trader and grew up bilingual with German as the first and Czech as the second mother tongue . After attending a secondary school, he worked as a bank clerk . From 1911 to 1912, the publishing house of the Johann Gottfried Herder Association in Prague published the Herder papers for one year , edited by Willy Haas and Norbert Eisler. Otto Pick worked on the last two issues (No. 4 and 5). During this time he belonged to the circle around Franz Kafka , Max Brod and Franz Werfel . The author Norbert Abels calls Pick, Werfel and Haas a phalanx of friends because they were ready to defend Schoenberg's composition Pierrot Lunaire in the Rudolfinum concert hall in Prague . Otto Pick had also been friends with Else Lasker-Schüler since 1912 .

Pick was a soldier in the First World War . After the establishment of Czechoslovakia , he worked as a feature editor in the Prague press from 1921 to 1939 . In 1933/34 he was co-editor of the weekly newspaper " Die Welt im Wort ". In 1939 he emigrated to Great Britain and lived in London until his death.

Otto Pick wrote short stories and poems and edited anthologies . He published his literary work in expressionist magazines . Pick's work as a translator is significant: he not only translated a number of modern Czech authors into German , but also German authors into Czech .

Works

• Friendly experience. Juncker, Berlin-Charlottenburg [1912].
• The sample. Saturn (Hermann Meister), Heidelberg 1913.
• When we mean ourselves in the middle of life. Poems. Bookroom, Prague 1926.
• The little luck. Prague 1928.
• Children playing. Prague 1928.
• Villa Bedlam. Prague 1928 (together with Hilde Maria Kraus).
• To the German theater in Prague. Prague 1931.
• Awards . Poems. Werner, Prague 1937.

Editing

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova

• Correspondance with JF Opiz . Co-editor František Khol. 2 vol., Wolff, Leipzig 1913.
• Correspondence with JF Opiz . Co-editor František Khol. Harz, Berlin 1922.

NN

• German narrator from Czechoslovakia . Heris, Reichenberg 1922.
• German poetry from Czechoslovakia . Prague 1931.

Translations into German

Karel Čapek: Stations of the Cross . Kurt Wolff, Leipzig 1919

Otokar Březina

• Hymns . Wolff, Leipzig 1913.
• Builder at the temple . Wolff, Munich 1920.
• Pentecost Sunday . Prague 1937

Josef Čapek

• The son of evil . Stories. The action , Berlin-Wilmersdorf 1918.

Karel Čapek

• Gottesmarter . Berlin 1918
• Ways of the cross . Novellas. Wolff, Leipzig [1919].
• WUR - Westand's Universal Robots . Drama. Prague 1922.
• How a play is made . With Vincy Black. Cassirer, Berlin 1933.
• Hordubal . Cassirer, Berlin 1933.
• Daschenka or The Life of a Young Dog . With Vincy Black. Cassirer, Berlin [1934].

Josef Gočár

• Czech aspirations for a modern interior . Prague 1915

František Khol

• Brother hyacinth. The mirror in the bar . Prague 1927

František Langer

• Angels among us . Prague 1931
• The kidnapping of Eveline Mayer . Heidelberg 1913
• The golden Venus . Berlin 1918
• Periphery . Berlin 1926

Emanuel Lešehrad

• Solstice . Prague 1930

Jan Patrný

• Women don't age . Prague 1927
• Men don't age . Prague 1927

Josef Svatopluk Machar

• Kuk criminal . Vienna [u. a.] 1919

Charles Péguy

• The litany of the crying Christ . Wolff, Munich 1919.

Fráňa Šrámek

• Awakening . Saturn (Hermann Meister), Heidelberg 1913.
• Flames . Rowohlt, Leipzig 1913.
• The silver wind . Ed. Strache, Vienna [a. a.] 1920
• Summer . Heris, Reichenberg [u. a.] 1921
• Hikers in the spring . Khol, Prague 1927.

NN

• Czech narrator . Kiepenheuer, Potsdam (1920).
• The Czechoslovak Republic . Prague
  • 1 (1937)
  • 2 (1937)

literature

• L. Mikoletzky:  Pick Otto. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 8, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-7001-0187-2 , p. 62.
• Pick, Otto. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 18: Phil – Samu. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-598-22698-4 , pp. 55-62.
• Hartmut Binder (Ed.): Prague Profiles: Forgotten Authors in the Shadow of Kafka . Gebrüder Mann, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-7861-1617-2 (published by the Cultural Foundation of the German Displaced Persons ).
• Rudolf M. Wlaschek : Jews in Bohemia: Contributions to the history of European Jewry in the 19th and 20th centuries . (= Publications of the Collegium Carolinum , Volume 66), 2nd edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-56283-5 .
• Norbert Abels ; Wolfgang Müller (Ed.): Franz Werfel with personal testimonies and picture documents (= Rowohlt's monographs , volume 472), Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-499-50472-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Pick in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rudolf M. Wlaschek: Jews in Böhmen . Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, p. 41.
2. ^ Norbert Abels: Franz Werfel . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg, 2002 (EA 1990), p. 23.