Otto Zarek

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Otto Zarek (born February 20, 1898 in Berlin , † August 21, 1958 in West Berlin ) was a German dramaturge , director , writer , critic and journalist . After early expressionist works, he mainly wrote entertainment novels and historical-biographical narratives.

Life

Zarek was born the son of a factory owner and grew up in Berlin and Plauen . After graduating from high school in 1916 , he first began studying law in Munich, which he soon neglected in favor of his literary and artistic ambitions. Instead of legal lectures, he attended the literature seminar of the Germanist Arthur Kutscher , where he met Ernst Toller and Eugen Roth . Zarek wrote his first drama, Charles V , in 1916 , which was published in 1918; a year later, stories appeared under the title Die Flucht . In 1920 he switched entirely to the theater. He studied directing with Otto Falckenberg and briefly became a member of the Max Reinhardt Ensemble in Berlin in 1920 . From 1920 to 1922 he worked as a dramaturge at the Münchner Kammerspiele . He then returned to Berlin, where he initially worked as a literary critic for the Neue Rundschau . In 1925 he became chief dramaturge of Heinz Saltenburg's seven theaters in Berlin , which at the time included the German Art Theater , the Lessing Theater and the Theater am Kurfürstendamm .

During these years Zarek wrote plays, novels, short stories, essays and radio plays. In 1919 he received an honorable mention at the Kleist Prize and in 1921 for his play David (1921) the honorary prize “Young Germany”. While in Munich, Zarek met Klaus and Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht , among others . In 1922 in Berlin, Zarek gave Brecht the opportunity to perform in the cabaret “ Wilde Bühne ” and also introduced him to Arnolt Bronnen . Zarek himself caused quite a stir in 1930 with his novel Desire , in which he dealt with the subjects of eros and homosexuality . His novel Theater um Maria Thul (1932) is considered a key novel from the theater environment. The model for the main character Maria Thul was probably the actress Elisabeth Bergner , who Zarek saw as her discoverer.

Zarek was actually an apolitical author. But especially as a Jew and homosexual, whose writings were banned, he left Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933. He emigrated to Hungary , where he soon felt at home. In Budapest he worked as a correspondent for the Basler National-Zeitung until 1938 and published the historical and biographical stories Kossuth (1936) about the Hungarian national hero Lajos Kossuth , Moses Mendelssohn (1936), a history of Hungary and under the pseudonym “Ferdinand Mayr -Ofen “a study on Ludwig II of Bavaria (1938). Some of his books have also been translated into Hungarian and English. He was able to extend his residence permit during the five years in Hungary through skillful entry and exit, protection and opportunism.

In June 1938 Zarek went to England on a scholarship. Here he wrote his autobiographical report German Odyssey (1941) and became a member of the PEN Club. He joined the British Army in 1940 and served in the British Army Pioneer Corps until 1942 . In 1943 he received the rank of captain in the Political Intelligence Division . Most recently he worked in the prisoner-of-war division . Between 1945 and 1948 Zarek worked as a senior translator in the BBC's Germany department . After he failed to establish himself in New York in 1948 , he headed public relations for Children's and Youth Aliyah in London until 1954 .

In the same year Zarek finally returned to Berlin to take over the press department of the Berlin Schiller-Theater and the Schlossparktheater . As early as 1950 he made contacts with the Jewish Community Gazette for the British Zone . He also contributed regularly to its successor, the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland . Until his death he also worked for various German radio stations, wrote articles for Jewish magazines and organized voluntary cultural events for the Berlin Jewish community. His literary legacy is lost.

effect

Zarek's early work was characterized by expressionism. “Art cannot be a means,” said Zarek in 1919 in an article in the magazine Der Weg. Monthly magazine for expressionist literature, art and music . “It is: expression; it presupposes essence, it is the expression of the ultimate sense; she says: That's up to you! ”His later novels and biographies were aimed at a wider audience. In the study "German Kultur" (1942/1946) he tried to explain the contradiction between German culture and National Socialist barbarism through the idea of ​​Faustian ambivalence, which later became central to Thomas Mann's work ( Doctor Faustus ).

Especially during his time as a dramaturge in Berlin, Zarek was one of the most influential personalities on the theater scene. He saw himself as the discoverer of Brecht and used the term "epic theater" in connection with a drama by Bronnens. Brecht himself judged Zarek: “He's not as smart as I imagined. He also has a damned unplastic style. "

Works

  • Emperor Karl V. A drama . Munich 1918.
  • The escape. Novellas . Munich 1918.
  • David. A dramatic poem in 5 acts . Munich 1921.
  • Desire. Novel of a cosmopolitan youth . Berlin 1930.
  • Theater around Maria Thul . Berlin 1932.
  • Loyalty . Zurich 1934.
  • Kossuth. The love of a people . Zurich 1935.
  • Love on the Semmering. Zurich 1935.
  • Moses Mendelssohn. A Jewish fate in Germany . Amsterdam 1936.
  • [as Ferdinand Mayr oven]: Ludwig II of Bavaria. The life of a tragic fanatic . Leipzig 1937.
  • The history of Hungary . Zurich 1938.
  • German Odyssey . London 1941.
  • German culture . London 1942.
  • The Quakers , London 1943.

literature

  • Réné Geoffroy: Hungary as a place of refuge and place of work for German-speaking emigrants (1933-1938 / 39) . Frankfurt / M. 2001, pp. 198-226. ISBN 978-3-631-38276-9 .
  • Wolf Borchers: Male Homosexuality in the Drama of the Weimar Republic . Diss. Phil. Cologne 2001.
  • Anat Feinberg : »What? Dramaturge? Never heard of it, what is it? «: Jewish dramaturges in the German theater in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic . In: Aschkenas 17 (2009), pp. 225-271.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jürgen Hillesheim, Augsburger Brecht Lexicon . Würzburg 2000, pp. 182-184.
  2. ↑ René Geoffroy: Hungary as a place of refuge and place of work for German-speaking emigrants (1933 - 1938/39) . Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2001, p. 49
  3. ↑ Otto Zareck [sic!]: Our way . In: Der Weg , No. 1 (January 1919), p. 4.
  4. ↑ Jörg Später: Vansittart. British Debates on Germans and Nazis 1902–1945 . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2003, pp. 210-213.
  5. ^ John Fuegi: Brecht & Co .. Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama . New York 1994, p. 156.
  6. ^ Hillesheim, Augsburger Brecht-Lexikon , p. 184.
personal data
SURNAME Zarek, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dramaturge, director, writer, critic and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1958
Place of death West Berlin