Paul Adler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Adler (born April 4, 1878 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; died June 8, 1946 in Zbraslav near Prague) was an Austro-Czech writer, journalist and translator, a. a. by Paul Claudel , Max Elskamp, Gustave Flaubert and Camille Lemonnier .

Life

Paul Adler was born in Prague as the second child of a Jewish merchant family. He attended the German Kk Staats-Obergymnasium Am Graben , studied law and economics at the German Charles University in Prague ( doctorate to Dr. jur. 1901) and acted for several semesters as secretary and chairman of the department for literature and art of the reading and speaking hall of the German Students in Prague. At the same time he was familiar with and was close to the ideas for a spiritual renewal of Judaism from Martin Buber , whom he knew personally. However , he did not join the Prague Zionist student group around Hugo Bergmann (to which Max Brod also belonged): Adler was a cosmopolitan.

Since Adler had no interest in his father's business, the older sister Hedwig (1876–1942, Theresienstadt) continued with her husband Ignaz Hübscher (1861–1942, Theresienstadt), while Adler - after a brief position at the Imperial Court of Justice in Vienna, ran it he resigned due to a conflict of conscience - in 1903 began a journey through Europe lasting several years, accompanied by his publisher and friend Jakob Hegner . In 1908, in Paul Peterich's house near Florence, a bohemian meeting place, he met his partner, Anna Kühn (née Dušik; 1874–1950), with whom he had lived since 1910 and was married from 1925. The relationship resulted in two children: Elisabeth (born 1912 – unknown) and Johann Josef (1914–1975).

In 1911 the couple settled in Berlin, where Adler joined the group of authors in the Neue Blätter around Erich Baron and Carl Einstein . From 1912 he lived with his family in Hellerau , the first German garden city (near Dresden), in which an artist and craft colony had formed that was close to the life reform . Franz Kafka visited him there. Durs Grünbein set a literary monument to this visit and Adler's time in Hellerau in his memorial book Die Jahre im Zoo (2015). - In Hellerau, Adler published his main poetic works Elohim , Namely and The Magic Flute in the short period from 1914 to 1916 . But he still belonged to the circle of authors of various expressionist magazines, especially the Berliner Aktion founded by Franz Pfemfert . In 1917 he was awarded the Berlin Fontane Prize .

Adler was a staunch pacifist. He was able to avoid being called up for military service in World War I with a medical certificate attesting to mental disorders. - During the November Revolution in Dresden, Adler became politically active: He was a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany , a founding member of a socialist group of intellectual workers and an elected member of its propaganda committee - together and a. with Conrad Felixmüller , Camill Hoffmann and Friedrich Wolf . In this function he also worked with the Dresden Workers 'and Soldiers' Council around Otto Rühle and tried to mediate between the warring parties during the street fights.

In 1921 Adler and his family moved for a short time to the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic and worked as a columnist for the Prague press founded by Masaryk . Disappointed about the growing Czech nationalism, he returned to Hellerau as early as 1923 and from then on financed himself mainly through translations; Adler spoke 14 languages.

After a violent attack by the SA in his Hellerau house, reported by Conrad Felixmüller, Adler had to flee Germany in March 1933. He survived the Holocaust - paralyzed on one side and bedridden since a first stroke in July 1939 - with the help of his wife in a hiding place near Prague. He died in 1946 after a second stroke.

His grave is in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague .

In his works, Adler shows himself to be a forerunner of modern narrative methods. His work received critical acclaim from, among others, Carl Einstein , Albert Ehrenstein and Mynona .

bibliography

Novels and short stories
  • Elohim. Stories. Hellerauer Verlag, Hellerau 1914.
  • Namely. Novel. Hellerauer Verlag, Hellerau 1915.
  • The Magic Flute. Novel. Hellerauer Verlag, Hellerau 1916.
Non-fiction
  • From the spirit of economics. Barger, Berlin 1917.
  • Non-fiction dictionary on Japanese literature. Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, Frankfurt a. M. 1925.
  • with Michael Revon: Japanese Literature. History from the beginning to the most recent. Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, Frankfurt a. M. 1926.
Reprints in anthologies
  • The gate of Plato. In: Otto Pick: German storytellers from Czechoslovakia. , Heris, Reichenberg 1992, pp. 1-25.
  • Namely and The Magic Flute. In: The Empty House. Prose by Jewish poets. Edited by Karl Otten , Cotta, Stuttgart 1959, pp. 153-201 and 355-447.
  • Elohim (excerpt from the Elohim of the same name ) in: Ego and Eros. Edited by Karl Otten. Goverts, Stuttgart 1963, pp. 264-280.
  • The fake book of the Johanniden (excerpt from Elohim ) in: Anung and Aufbruch. Expressionist prose. Edited by Karl Otten. Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1977, pp. 525-538.
  • Absolute prose: Elohim, namely, The Magic Flute and other texts. Edited and with an afterword by Claus Zittel. CW Leske, Düsseldorf 2018, ISBN 978-3-946595-06-9 .
Work edition

literature

  • Ludo Abicht: Paul Adler, a poet from Prague . Humanitas, Wiesbaden 1972.
  • Hartmut Binder (Ed.): Prager Profiles. Forgotten authors in the shadow of Kafka . Berlin 1991.
  • Kasimir Edschmid : The double-headed nymph. Berlin 1920, p. 122 ff.
  • Albert Ehrenstein : The other Vienna. In: Zeitgeist. Supplement to the Berliner Tageblatt (1912), No. 47.
  • Jürgen Egyptien: Myths-Syncretism and Apocryphal Kerygma. P. Adler's work as a project to resacralize the world . In: Klaus Amann, Armin Wallas (ed.): Expressionism in Austria. The literature and the arts . Böhlau, Vienna 1994, pp. 379-395.
  • Daniel Hoffmann: Paul Adler. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-476-01682-X .
  • Daniel Hoffmann: A vision of the Jewish kind. Paul Adler's novel “The Magic Flute” from 1916. In: Trumah 13, yearbook of the College for Jewish Studies. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-8253-1561-4 , pp. 209-226.
  • Erich Kleinschmidt : Writing on the border between world and language. Radical poetics in Paul Adler's “Namely” (1915) . In: German quarterly for literary studies and intellectual history . Volume 73, No. 3 (1999), pp. 457-477.
  • Karl Otten : The Empty House: Prose by Jewish Poets. Stuttgart 1959, pp. 625-628 (biography and bibliographical references).
  • Markus Rassiller: Schizopoetics. Schizophrenia and poetological constellation in Paul Adler's “Namely” . In: Jan Broch, Markus Rassiller (Hrsg.): Schrift-Zeiten. Poetological constellations from early modern times to postmodern times . USB, Cologne 2006, pp. 129–155.
  • Annette Teufel: The “incomprehensible” prophet. Paul Adler, a German-Jewish poet . Thelem, Dresden 2014, ISBN 978-3-942411-57-8 .
  • Meir Wiener : Paul Adler. In: Gustav Krojanker (ed.): Jews in German literature. Berlin 1922, pp. 251-259.
  • Adler, Paul. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 1: A-Benc. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-598-22681-0 , pp. 69-72.
  • Adler, Paul. In: Nessun Saprà: Lexicon of German Science Fiction & Fantasy 1870-1918. Utopica, 2005, ISBN 3-938083-01-8 , p. 31 f.
  • The action . Special issue Paul Adler. 6th year, issue 22/23 (June 3, 1916). In it: Faith from our time and other texts by Adler ( digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3DDieAktion06jg1916~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn160~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to the entry in the “Birth Book of the City of Prague for the Year 1878, Boys Department”. See also the copy in: Ludo Abicht: Paul Adler, a poet from Prague . Wiesbaden 1972, p. 43. In the literature, April 3rd can also be found occasionally, for example in:
    • Desider Stern: Books by authors of Jewish origin in German . Agora, Darmstadt 1967
    • Wilhelm Sternfeld and Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933–1945 . 2nd edition, Schneider, Heidelberg 1970
    • Gero von Wilpert : German poet lexicon. Biographical-bibliographical dictionary on German literary history (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 288). 3rd, expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-520-28803-6 .
    The 4th of April as a birthday can be found in:
    • Kürschner's German Literature Calendar. Nekrolog 1936-1970 . Gruyter, Berlin 1973
    • Biographical handbook of German-speaking emigration after 1933 . Volume 2, Saur, Munich 1983.
    • Paul Raabe: The Authors and Books of Literary Expressionism . Metzler, Stuttgart 1985
    • Walther Killy (Ed.): Literature Lexicon . Volume 1, Bertelsmann, Gütersloh [et al.] 1988.
  2. ↑ Cf. Annette Teufel: The 'incomprehensible' prophet. Paul Adler, a German-Jewish poet . Thelem, Dresden 2014, p. 30 .
  3. ↑ Cf. Annette Teufel: The 'incomprehensible' prophet. Paul Adler, a German-Jewish poet . Thelem, Dresden 2014, p. 104-122 .
  4. ↑ Cf. Frank Almai: Expressionism in Dresden. Centers for the literary avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century in Germany . Thelem, Dresden 2005, p. 219 f .
  5. ↑ See Ludo Abicht: Paul Adler, a poet from Prague . Humanitas, Wiesbaden 1972, p. 22 .
  6. ↑ Cf. Conrad Felixmüller: People ... experienced, drawn, painted. An autobiographical fragment. In: Die Horen . tape 33 (1988) , no. 152 , p. 139 .
personal data
SURNAME Adler, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer of Jewish origin
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1878 or April 4, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1946
Place of death Zbraslav near Prague