Otto Soyka

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Otto Soyka (born May 9, 1881 in Vienna ; † December 2, 1955 there ) was an Austrian writer and journalist .

Life

Soyka was the son of the lawyer Dr. Heinrich Soyka (around 1847 - June 26, 1888) and his wife Marie nee Porges (born Prague, October 2, 1855). He was born in 1881 but later gave 1882 as the year of his birth. After his father's death he went to boarding school. Due to the renewed marriage of the mother to Dr. Jacob Ehrenstein († November 4, 1917 in Brno) on February 17, 1895 Albert and Carl Ehrenstein became his cousins. After graduating from high school, he studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Vienna and took part in the First World War as a reserve officer. On February 16, 1915, he married the Viennese actress Dora Angel (1889–1984), sister of Ernst Angel . Already on September 24, 1917 the marriage was divorced again, she later became the wife of Heinrich Eduard Jacob (1889–1967). Soyka's daughter Hedwig Soyka came from this connection and was born out of wedlock in Vienna on August 21, 1914. She emigrated to the USA with her mother and died on March 30, 1958 in Barnstable (USA) through suicide.

Soyka was sponsored by Karl Kraus at a young age and worked on his torch . He also wrote for the magazines Der Sturm and Simplicissimus . Above all, he wrote novels and short stories. In his works he combined elements of the crime and detective novel with knowledge of psychology as well as with fantastic motifs. Hermann Bahr praised his novel Der Herr im Spiel (1910): "I only know one criminal who has the style of our time, and he only appears in one novel, in the strange game novel by the young Viennese Otto Soyka."

In 1914 Otto Soyka made the private film adaptation of "The Sons of Power". The location was the Viennese Café Central . Dora Angel, Soyka's future wife, played the female lead, Hans Flesch-Brunningen the detective investigating psychotropic drugs. Between 1915 and 1918, the book was filmed again with top-class cast; however, the film has been lost to this day. In 1933 he was a member of the Association of Socialist Writers .

After the annexation of Austria he tried to emigrate to the United States. Albert Ehrenstein stood up for him, but Soyka's daughter refused the guarantee required in the USA for her father. Instead he emigrated to France in 1939 . In 1948 he returned to Vienna, where he died forgotten and impoverished of a heart attack in 1955. His last address was Vienna VI., Gumpendorfer Straße 11/7. He is buried in the Vienna Central Cemetery , Gate IV, grave site 8A-5-6.

Otto Soyka is also known today for his mentions in Friedrich Torberg's collection of anecdotes, “ Die Tante Jolesch ”.

In 1975 Reinhard Urbach drew attention to Soyka in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung . As a result, the legal successor left him a partial estate and the copyright, which will expire in 2026.

Works

The Sons of Power, original edition
  • Beyond the moral limit . Contribution to the Critique of Morality (1906)
  • Lord in the game . Novel (1910)
  • The herbarium of honor . Novel (1911)
  • The sons of power . A Future Detective Novel (1911) ( online )
  • Revenge . Comedy in 3 acts (1911)
  • Money spell . Comedy in 3 acts (1912)
  • The happiness of Edith Hilge . Detective novel (1913)
  • The love trap (and other short stories) (1916)
  • The unleashed man . Novel (1919)
  • In the yoke of time . Novel (1919)
  • Lord in the second kingdom . Novella (1921)
  • The soul smith . Novel (1921)
  • The dream whip . Novel (1921); New edition 1995 as Suhrkamp paperback, ISBN 3-518-38986-6 .
  • Buyer's honor . Novel (1922)
  • Eva Morsini . Novel (1923)
  • The hotter life . Novel (1924)
  • The experiment . Detective novel (1925?)
  • The man in the backdrop . Novel (1926)
  • The successes of Philipp Sonlos . Detective Grotesques (1926)
  • The film of people , published in the daily newspaper Der Tag , December 1927
  • The Tribune , Drama 1928
    • The tribune. (Fourth act of a Mirabeau drama). In: Die Wage, New Series Vol. 3 (Vol. 25), No. 36, September 30, 1922, pp. 567-574.
  • The chess player Jörre . Narrative (1930)
  • Together with OF Scheuer: The feeling. A sexual psychological and physiological presentation of the role and importance of the sense of touch for human instinctual life (1930)
  • The smith of souls (1931)
  • Don't forget. Serialized novel, Radio Wien, November – December 1932, online
  • Bob Kreit foresees everything . Detective novel (1931); 1952 Portuguese
  • Five grams of love charm . Novel (1931)
  • Hans Zellorin is against it . Detective novel (1934)
  • The Secret of the K. Roman Files (1934)
  • A thousand shillings . Story, Wiener Bilder, March 11, 1934 online
  • The king's detective . Novel (1935)
  • The gem seeker . Detective novel (1936)
  • A thousand marks. Story, Die Muskete , June 24, 1937 online
  • The boy and the movie diva , short story, The Musket , November 4, 1937 online
  • Bob thinks of everything , detective novel (1947) ( online )

Important essays

  • Autobiographical sketch. In: Das literäre Echo , Vol. 21 (1919), Col. 1224–1226. on-line
  • Meeting with Karl Kraus . In: Die Schau , 1st year, no. 19/20 (Vienna 1953); Pp. 9-10 and 21.
  • Remembering the Café Central (meeting Karl Kraus) . In: Lynkeus. Poetry - Art - Criticism (Wiener Festwochen 1981) No. 16/17 (Vienna: May / June 1981), ed. by Hermann Hakel ; Pp. 42-53.

Unpublished

  • In the estate of the writer Gina Kaus (1893–1985) in the German National Library (German Exile Archive 1933–1945 - EB 96/82), in Frankfurt am Main , there is a 199-page typescript Soyka from 1920 with the title Unfrei. A story of the years that contains a subjective description of Soyka's wife Dora Angel-Soyka, which is said to be partially defamatory. Gina Kaus had a brief relationship with Soyka, which she wrote about in her memoirs And what a life ... with love and literature, theater and film (Hamburg 1979): “I had a lover whom I did not love. Otto Soyka was a mediocre writer who is now forgotten ”(p. 6). Soyka himself is said to have had a hard time getting over the separation.
  • Soyka wrote down memories of his escape via Italy to France and his exile there in Paris, Nice and Marseille under the title One Fled from Hitler . The manuscript has been lost to this day.

literature

  • Robert N. Bloch: Otto Soyka - Bibliography . In: Bibliographisches Lexikon der Utopisch-Fantastischen Literatur . (56th delivery January 1999). Corian-Verlag Heinrich Wimmer, Meitingen 1999, pp. 1–16.
  • Siglinde Bolbecher & Konstantin Kaiser (eds.): Otto Soyka . In: Lexicon of Austrian exile literature . Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft, Vienna & Munich 2000, ISBN 3-216-30548-1 , p. 600f.
  • Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century. Volume 3: S – Z, Register. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 1287.
  • Gina Kaus : And what a life ... with love and literature, theater and film . (Life memories). Knaus Verlag, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-8135-0711-4 . As a paperback under the title From Vienna to Hollywood. Memories from Gina Kaus . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-38257-8 .
  • Clemens Ruthner: On the edge. Canon, periphery and the intertextuality of the marginal using the example of (Austrian) fantasy in the 20th century. A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 978-3-7720-3333-9 , (Chapter III-b).
  • Nessun Saprà: Lexicon of German Science Fiction & Fantasy 1870-1918. Utopica, Oberhaid 2005, ISBN 3-938083-01-8 , p. 244 f.
  • Reinhard Urbach: Money and Soul. Reference to Otto Soyka. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , No. 230, 4./5. October 1975, pp. 59-60.
  • Reinhard Urbach: Otto Soyka - biography. In: Bibliographisches Lexikon der Utopisch-Fantastischen Literatur. (56th delivery January 1999). Corian-Verlag Heinrich Wimmer, Meitingen 1999, pp. 1-9.

estate

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Soyka is on the obituary notice of his grandmother Therese Soyka, b. Stein dated January 12, 1881. Accordingly, the mostly mentioned year of birth 1882 can be excluded. See Neue Freie Presse, January 12, 1882 .
  2. ^ German literature lexicon: Biographical-bibliographical manual. 3. Edition. Volume 18. Saur, Bern 1998, column 355 f.
  3. ↑ Austrian National Library: ANNO-Neue_Freie_Presse-18880628-14. In: anno.onb.ac.at. Retrieved July 6, 2016 .
  4. ^ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Library: Kürschner's German literature calendar for the year ... [serial] . Leipzig: GJ Göschen'sche Verlagshandlung, 1904 ( archive.org [accessed on July 2, 2019]).
  5. ↑ Obituary in the Neue Freie Presse. Retrieved August 14, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Austria, Lower Austria, Vienna, registers of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, 1784-1911, "images,  FamilySearch  (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-25798-11129-36?cc=2028320: 20 May 2014), 01. District (Innere Stadt)> Trauungsbücher> Trauungsbuch I 1894-1895> image 156 of 267; Municipal and Provinical Archives of Vienna, Vienna.
  7. ↑ ANNO, Neue Freie Presse, 1910-08-02, page 1. Retrieved on January 12, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Ehrenstein's letter to Oskar Kokoschka January 7, 1942
  9. ^ Obituary in the Viennese newspaper Expressionist and "Psychosoph" ( Memento from April 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Reinhard Urbach: Money and Soul. Reference to Otto Soyka. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , No. 230, 4./5. October 1975, pp. 59-60.
personal data
SURNAME Soyka, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 2nd December 1955
Place of death Vienna