Paul Wenz (writer)

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Frédéric Wenz: Paul Wenz (1905)

Paul Wenz , pseudonym Paul Warrego (born August 18, 1869 in Reims ; died August 23, 1939 in Forbes , Australia ) was a Franco-Australian writer , wool merchant and farmer.

Life

Paul Wenz was the third of five children of the wool merchant Emile Wenz (1834-1926) and Marie Dertinger (1839-1925), who had emigrated to Reims from the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1858 . The aerial photographer Émile Wenz (1863–1940) was one of his brothers, as was the painter Frédéric Wenz (1865–1940). He attended the Lyceum in Reims and from 1879 to 1888 the Protestant Ecole Alsacienne in Paris , where he made a lifelong friendship with his classmate André Gide , another classmate was the writer Pierre Louÿs .

Wenz learned the wool trading business in the family business and spent eight months in the London branch. He then made a world tour to the Australian branches and was a trainee ("Jackaroo") in Victoria , New South Wales and Queensland for two years . In 1896 he moved on to New Zealand and across the Pacific Islands to South America before returning to France in 1897.

Wenz bought 900 hectares of land on the Lachlan River near Cowra in New South Wales in 1898 for a farm which he successfully managed. Wenz also supervised the Australian affiliates of the wool trading company Wenz & Co. He married the Australian Harriet Dunne (died 1959) in 1898, they remained childless.

Since 1900 he published short stories in the French magazine L'Illustration , some of them appeared in 1905 under the title A l'Autre Bout du Monde and in 1910 as Sous la Croix du Sud . Until 1910 his works appeared under the pseudonym "Paul Warrego". In 1908, Wenz's only book, Diary of a New Chum , written in English, was printed in Melbourne . Gide published his story Le charretier in the Nouvelle Revue Française in 1910 .

“Wenz is an attentive and compassionate observer of the Australian outback, especially the everyday life on the sheep farms. In his stories he describes a wide range of individuals among the "station hands, new chums, swagmen, boundary riders, Aborigines, Chinese cooks", and ... especially children. "

Wenz also translated some works from English into French, including the 1914 short story Love of Life by his friend Jack London .

His first novel, L'homme du Soleil Couchant , was published in 1915 as a newspaper novel in the Revue de Paris and in 1923 as a book. Since he was in Europe with his wife in 1914, he was drafted as a French soldier and was a liaison officer between the French, British and Australian troops during World War I. In 1916 he accompanied an Australian mission to French Morocco . They returned to Australia in late 1919.

In 1919 he published his novel with war experiences Le Pays de Leurs Pères and in 1929 another novel with Australian themes, Le Jardin des Coraux . The book L'écharde , published in 1931, describes his childhood in France.

In Australia he sought to have his books published in English translation and he became part of the literary scene of white Australia formed by Miles Franklin , Dorothea Mackellar , Nettie Palmer , GB Lancaster and Frank Clune .

In 2008 a street in Reims was named after him.

Works (selection)

Un Australia tout neuf (1908)
  • with Frédéric Wenz: L'élevage du mouton en Australie: Décrit en vue de son application dans les colonies françaises . Larose, Paris 1925.
Fiction
  • Paul Warrego: À l'autre bout du monde, aventures et moeurs australiennes . Short stories. Librairie universelle, Paris 1905.
  • Diary of a new chum . 1908.
  • Un Australia tout neuf . 1908.
  • Sous la Croix du Sud . Short stories. Paris 1910.
  • Contes of Australia . Plon, Paris 1911.
  • Bonnes Gens de la Grande Guerre . Berger-Levrault, Nancy 1919.
  • Le Pays de Leurs Pères . 1919.
  • Choses d'here . Berger-Levrault, Nancy 1919.
  • Le Jardin des Coraux . Novel. Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1929.
  • Il était une fois un gosse . Éditions de la Vraie France, Paris 1930.
  • L'Écharde . Novel. Paris 1931.
  • L'homme qui resta debout . Illustrations by Léon Carré . Christmas 1935 edition of L'Illustration.
  • L'Homme du soleil couchant . Novel. La Petite Maison, 1993.
  • Le Pays de leurs pères . Novel. La Petite Maison, 1996.
  • Récits du bush. Trois nouvelles australiennes . La Petite Maison, 1998.
  • Maurice Blackman (Ed. And Translator): Diary of a New Chum and Other Lost Stories . 1990.

literature

  • E. Wolff: A French-Australian Writer: Paul Wenz . Ph.D. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1948.
  • Joachim Schulz: History of Australian Literature . Hueber, Munich 1960, p. 155 f.
  • Jean-Paul Delamotte: à la recherche d'un écrivain perdu: Paul Wenz, français et australien . Le Lérot rêveur, Aigre 1987.
  • Maurice Blackman: Wenz, Paul (1869-1939) . In: Australian Dictionary of Biography , Volume 12, 1990.
  • Helen Elizabeth Politi: La France aux antipodes: Paul Wenz (1869–1939) et l'image de l'Australie dans la littérature française . Univ. Diss., Paris 1993/94 (microfiche, 494 pages).
  • Wenz, Paul. In: William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton, Barry Andrews: The Oxford companion to Australian literature . 2nd ed. Oxford Univ. Press, Melbourne 1994, ISBN 0-19-553381-X , p. 805.
  • Jean-Paul Delamotte: Paul Wenz (1869–1939), sa vie, son œuvre . La Petite Maison, 1998 ISBN 978-2-907052-18-4 ( notice bio / bibliographique par Jean - Paul Delamotte / avec deux textes de Paul Wenz sur l'amitié de Jacques London et l'acquisition de Nanima )
  • Michaël Tilby: Paul Wenz and André Gide. In: Bulletin des Amis d'André Gide. January 2001.
  • Jean-Paul Delamotte: Écrivains d'Australie. In: La Nouvelle Revue Française. June 2003, p. 109f. (also a text by Wenz in the selection)
  • Marie Garrigue: Double Bush Binding, de Sydney à Reims. Exhibition review, in: Art & métiers du livre. Vol. 257, 2006, ISSN  0758-413X , p. 25
  • Peter Pierce (Ed.): The Cambridge history of Australian literature . Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-88165-4 , pp. 171 f. (very brief mention).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Jackaroo": (Aust. Coll.) Trainee worker on sheep or cattle station , in: The Penguin English Dictionary, 1969, p. 401. See also: en: Jackaroo (trainee) in the English Wikipedia
  2. ↑ partially translated section from The Oxford companion to Australian literature. , 2nd edition 1985, p. 736.
    “station hands”: workers on a cattle or sheep farm
    “chum”: close friend , in: The Penguin English Dictionary, 1969, p. 129f. Here svw. Newcomer among the buddies
    "swagmen": (Aust.) Vagrant, tramp; itenerant laborer; pedlar , in: The Penguin English Dictionary, 1969, p. 709. Here svw. migrant workers
  3. ↑ L'Amour de la vie at Wikisource (French).
personal data
SURNAME Wenz, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Warrego, Paul (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franco-Australian farmer, wool merchant and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Reims
DATE OF DEATH August 23, 1939
Place of death Forbes (New South Wales)