Paul Zech

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Heinrich Splieth : Paul Zech (1920)

Paul Zech (born February 19, 1881 in Briesen , West Prussia , † September 7, 1946 in Buenos Aires ) was a German writer .

Life and work

Preliminary remark

Zech had a habit of manipulating his résumé at will. That is why practically all older short biographies that can be found in anthologies, literary stories, encyclopedias, blurbs and the like contain. finds numerous inaccuracies. After research by Brigitte Pohl (1977, see below), Arnold Spitta (1978, see below), Matías Martínez (1989, see below), Uwe Eckardt (1996, see below), Bert Kasties (1999, see below) and above all Alfred Hübner (whose Results so far only partially accessible in exhibition catalogs, but have already been included to a certain extent in the present Wikipedia article), the following picture emerges:

Origin and beginnings

Zech was the eldest of the six surviving children (out of a total of 22) of a Briesen-born Seiler and his wife, who was born in Müncheberg (East Brandenburg). When he later writes about himself in Kurt Pinthus ' anthology Menschheitsdämmerung (Berlin 1919), " I am not a Vistula (although born at Thorn ), but rather thick skulls made of peasant Westphalian blood", then this is fiction.

When he was about five years old, he was taken care of by relatives on his mother's side in Müncheberg. At about ten he returned to Briesen, where he graduated from elementary school at fourteen. Then he probably began an apprenticeship as a baker, which he broke off. He did not get a higher education, contrary to the statement that he had “with bad exams” in addition to “athletics” and also “Greek” (cf. Pinthus). In the surviving student lists of the grammar school in Graudenz in West Prussia , which he claims to have attended, he is just as little recorded as in those of the Wuppertal grammar schools, which have also been thought of. His alleged studies at various universities and the doctorate to Dr. phil. are also invented.

Around 1898, like so many young people from his region, he moved west, certainly looking for work and hardly out of the “desire to experience the misery of the lower classes”, as stated in Wilhelm Haas' anthology Face of Time. Symphony of modern industrial poetry (Berlin 1925) writes about himself. Here he apparently stayed for some time - rather shorter than the alleged "two richest years [of his life]" (see Pinthus) - in the Belgian coal district, probably in Charleroi . The fact that he also worked in “Bottrop, Radbod , Mons, Lens” (cf. Pinthus) or “Belgium, Northern France, England” (cf. Haas) is just as untrue as the claim that he worked as a trade unionist during his time as a miner traveled to Paris, or that he was a "mining officer".

From around 1901 he can be found in Barmen , apparently exempt from military service, and from around 1902 in Elberfeld , districts of today's Wuppertal . What brought him there is unknown. In any case, his statement is inaccurate (cf. Haas) that he grew up here as the child of a “peasant schoolmaster” “on a mountain [...] with a rugged rock face” above the river and had “around 1890-1894” the stories of a grandfather, the "old Steigers Karl", listened to.

However, it is documented that he had been writing poetry since 1901 at the latest: some poems dated this year have been preserved in a poetry album. Statements from acquaintances at the time have also come down to us, according to which he tried to connect with people and circles interested in literature.

In Elberfeld he married the shoemaker's daughter Helene Siemon in July 1904, whom he had impregnated. He moved in with her and her widowed mother and became a father in October. On the marriage certificate and the birth certificate of his son he figures as a "warehouse clerk"; on the birth certificate of his daughter, who was born in 1906, he is a “confectioner”.

In addition to his professional activity, he wrote poems with considerable diligence, which from 1904 onwards were increasingly taken from him by the features of local and regional magazines. In 1907 he was invited to the annual poetry competition "Kölner Blumenspiele" and received an "honorable mention" there. 1910 to 1912 - in the meantime he was in the Elberfeld address book as a " correspondent " or "newspaper correspondent" - he also wrote numerous book reviews for an Elberfeld newspaper, without being an editor there, as he later stated. During these years (since 1906) he had a probably only platonic relationship with the young Elberfelder and then, from 1911, with the Essen teacher Emmy Schattke.

The main theme of his early poetry was traditionally nature, such as B. the anthology Schollenbruch shows (1912). It was only from around 1909, apparently encouraged by the working-class poet Heinrich Kämpchen , that he began to work with increasing frequency on the subjects of the big city and the world of work in an expressionist manner. In doing so, he tried to be an innovator, even if he continued to use conventional forms, especially the sonnet . Around the same time he began to write stories in an expressionist style, which are set in the milieu of the miners, but the reality represented by the inclusion of mythical-mystical elements, such as the "black Baal", the evil god of the firedamp , in an often oppressive way alienate.

The time of recognition

In 1909 Zech entered into correspondence with his alleged "Elberfeld city neighbor" and childhood friend Else Lasker-Schüler , who had lived in Berlin since 1894 and whom he only met personally in 1910 when she visited Elberfeld. She encouraged him on his new path and opened up for him, through her husband Herwarth Walden, publication opportunities in his literary magazine Der Sturm and other literary papers. In this context, Zech found z. B. Entrance to Der Kondor , the first anthology of poetry of expressionism published by Kurt Hiller in 1912 .

On Lasker-Schüler's advice, he dared to jump to Berlin in June 1912 (initially without a family, whom he brought up in November), where she made his first steps easier. He joined literary circles, where he also met his pen friend of many years, Franz Werfel . In 1913 he co-founded a magazine, Das neue Pathos , which, however, never appeared regularly and was discontinued in 1920. Also in 1913 he published the volume of poetry Das Schwarze Revier and Sonnets from Exile , the latter of which probably reflects less homesickness for Elberfeld than the separation from his muse Emmy Schattke. The first adaptations of French poems ( Émile Verhaeren and Léon Deubel ) also appeared in 1913. It is fiction that he knew both authors from meetings in Paris. Because his financial situation was precarious and did not allow any major trips. The Schiller Society's scholarship, which he received in 1914, was at best a subsistence level.

In 1914, the volumes of poetry Die eiserne Brücke and Die rotdurchrasten Nights were published . The latter pretends - perhaps because of the z. Some of the erotic poems it contains - transmissions of the little-known Léon Deubel, who ended up suicide in the Seine in 1913, but mainly consists of original texts by Zech. It is the first of several cases in which he presented largely or entirely independent texts as transcriptions.

After the beginning of the war in 1914, Zech also wrote patriotic poems . He was checked out but put on hold. In 1915 he was drafted, initially as a desk soldier in Berlin. A little later he came to the front, first to the Eastern , then to the Western Front . After giving experience in mining, he was mainly concerned with digging and securing trenches. In a letter to Stefan Zweig he describes his experiences from the " Hell of Verdun " and the Battle of the Somme . In the summer of 1916 he suffered injuries when buried in the trenches and received the Iron Cross.

In the same year he caused a stir with a letter allegedly addressed to him from Verhaeren, in which the Belgian author, who had recently died in an accident, no longer appeared as the German hater he had become in 1914, but as a pacifist willing to reconcile. The alleged translation of the letter printed in the Berliner Vossische Zeitung was quickly recognized as a forgery by Zech and even sparked a German-Belgian controversy in which politicians and the press took part.

From 1917 Zech again served as a soldier, but thanks to a recommendation only behind the front, this time with the Supreme Army Command, which resided in Laon , France . Here he wrote propaganda texts , but was also able to work on his own works. He also succeeded in organizing a performance of Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm at Laon .

In 1917 he had published the partially patriotic collection of poems Heroes and Saints , but in 1918 he left (as a private print) the war-critical volume Before Cressy on the Marne. Poems by a soldier from the front appear, albeit under the pseudonym "Michel Michael". The increasingly pacifist diary entries that he made during the war years only appeared in 1919 as The Grave of the World. A passion against the war .

The years immediately after the war marked the climax of Zech's literary career. In 1917, his volume of short stories, The Black Baal , earned him recognition as a narrator. In 1918 he received the Kleist Prize for his poetry , and in 1919 he was well represented in K. Pinthus' legendary expressionist anthology of poetry, Menschheitsdämmerung, with twelve texts. In 1919 a new edition of The Black Baal was published with additional novellas .

In economic terms, too, his situation was encouraging, at least temporarily. Because after the revolution of November 1918 he was back in Berlin, but officially still a soldier, head of one of the SPD and USPD- related "Advertising Service for the Socialist Republic", which was financially very well funded. In this position, “Dr. Zech ”, as he liked to call himself, was very good for a while. At the same time, with the help of an advance on his salary, he was able to buy a house with a lake plot in today's Bestensee, southeast of Berlin, which he moved into with his family in October 1919.

Soon, however, his job at the advertising service ran out, and he also got into trouble because of financial discrepancies. In 1921 he was only able to work for the Deutsche Eisenbahnreklame for a short time because he had to spend a few months in a psychiatric clinic due to psychological problems. In the following years, too, he was treated as an inpatient several times. Since 1919 he led a double life, increasingly only giving guest roles with his family, but mostly lived in Berlin, where he was in a relationship with the singer Hilde Herb, but was again short of money and stayed in a shabby Berlin guesthouse. From 1923 he lived with his partner, whom he now liked to pass off as his wife.

Despite his various difficulties, he was extremely productive in the post-war years. As always, he wrote poetry (e.g. the poems in the volume Allegro der Lust , published anonymously in 1921 , whose erotic sonnets are inspired by his young relationship with Hilde Herb). Above all, he wrote other stories, e.g. B. in the anthology Das förichte Herz (1925) or in the apparently strongly autobiographical volume Die Reise um den Kummerberg (1925). There were also numerous literary essays and dramas. In the autumn of 1924, thanks to his acquaintance with the artistic director Wilhelm Dieterle, he was a dramaturge at the Berlin Dramatic Theater for a short time and, after its bankruptcy, in 1925 a brief freelance lecturer at the Leipziger Schauspielverlag , whom he turned his back on in anger.

Of his own, a total of well over 20 pieces, only a few were performed. Only one thing , The Drunken Ship , a dramatization of the famous poem Le Bateau ivre by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud , was somewhat successful in the production by Erwin Piscator and with a stage design by George Grosz (premiere: Volksbühne Berlin, May 21, 1926).

Zech Rimbaud also lyrically adapted from 1924 onwards in very free “post-poems”, which appeared in 1927 in one volume under the title Rimbaud. The collected work . The relative success of the book did not begin until after 1963, however, in a version that was heavily revised in 1944. This has been reprinted quite often until recently, although the texts are extremely freely transposed and are more typical of Zech than Rimbaud.

The descent

Memorial plaque on the house at Naumannstrasse 78, in Berlin-Schöneberg

The real breakthrough, however, was denied him. Perhaps one reason for this was that all too often he gave his texts prematurely to print and regularly changed them so much when they were included in anthologies or in possible new editions that ultimately everything he published seemed unfinished and provisional. He also fell out with several of his publishers.

His financial situation remained correspondingly bad. In 1925 he got a position as assistant librarian in the Berlin city library through Hilde Herbs' relations , where he was often involved in the inventory of valuable private libraries bought en bloc. That gave him a fixed salary, but of course less time to write. In 1925 and 1927 there were allegations of plagiarism , among others by his old friend and co-editor of the New Pathos Robert Renato Schmidt . In 1929 he was expelled from the Writers' Union.

Cover of The Ballads and Latliche Lieder of Mr. François Villon in a German adaptation by Paul Zech

At the beginning of 1931 Zech's most successful and perhaps best work in the long run came out, The Ballads and Vicious Songs of Mr. François Villon . However, the reactions to this have been negative. He was accused of dealing too freely with the original and too crude language. In fact, contrary to the assumption of many Zech specialists, it is not a congenial transmission, but an extremely free rewrite, because Zech's knowledge of the old French author was mainly based on the German version of KL Ammer . The Villon also includes numerous fictitious texts in the style of Villons or what Zech thought they were. All in all, on closer inspection, the work contains many allusions to Zech's own disappointing situation around 1930 and at times seems like an attempt to cope with it literarily. Here, however, he managed to create memorable verses, such as the well-known poem I am so wild for your strawberry mouth , which Villon has no role model. The essay about Villon, which Zech placed in front of the texts, shows his strong identification with his figure. The biographical part of the essay is largely a fantasy product.

Another adaptation, probably composed between 1925 and 1930, is that of the 24 sonnets by the Renaissance author Louise Labé . As with his Villon , Zech did not use the original French text from 1555 as a basis, but a translation, namely the Rainer Maria Rilkes published in 1917 . Zechs little work was only published posthumously in 1947 in Berlin and was reprinted in 1956 and again in 1978 and 1988 in Rudolstadt / Thuringia.

In March 1933, Zech was given leave of absence from his position in the library due to his closeness to the SPD (of which he was never a member), ie, de facto dismissed. However, he stayed in Berlin and even applied for his admission to the new Reichsschrifttumskammer in July , but was rejected because he was considered a politically left-wing author.

The book theft

Zech was caught up in a matter that had already been covered up by unbelieving or benevolent superiors in 1927, namely the book theft on duty, which was initially accused of the Social Democratic library director Gottlieb Fritz , who was then also dismissed. It was about the estate of the literary scholar Otto Pniower , from which more than 8,000 volumes were missing when the library arrived, including valuable first editions that were decisive for the estimate. In a lengthy investigation, Fritz 'innocence was found. When copies of this kind turned up in antiquarian bookshops in Berlin, Fritz filed a complaint against Zech that Zech had stolen the volumes before they were inventoried and then sold them. A surprising house search at Zech uncovered 37 valuable books from this estate. In response to a summons from the Kripo, Zech disappeared headlong from Berlin at the beginning of August 1933 and traveled to Trieste with a stay in Vienna . There he embarked for Montevideo and then went on to Buenos Aires . His family and girlfriend Hilde Herb stayed in Germany, Herb committed suicide on the night of September 5th to 6th, 1940.

Zech in Argentina

In Buenos Aires he was accepted by a brother who emigrated there in 1923. He frequented the city's German colony and quickly found access to the German-language Argentinian weekly newspaper, as well as other German-language exile magazines. When at the same time the German colony increased by numerous refugee anti-fascists and Jews and split into opponents and admirers of Hitler , Zech posed as a persecuted and expatriated left-wing intellectual whose books were even burned . His articles, which he (also for security reasons, because he had once been threatened) z. Some of them wrote under pseudonyms such as "Timm Borah", "Paul Robert", "Rhenanus" or "Manuel Sachs", represented a clearly anti-National Socialist point of view and gave him special sympathy in German-Jewish circles. In 1935 a play by him, Nur ein Judenweib , was translated into Yiddish and performed.

In addition, he continued to write poetry, primarily addressing his situation as a stranger in a strange environment and nature. His volumes of poetry Trees on the Rio de la Plata (1935) and New World (1939) remained practically unsaleable.

The long expeditions he claims to have made in the 1930s, including to Brazil, Peru or Chile, are, with the exception of a three-month trip to northern Argentina, sheer fiction. The numerous and extensive “travel reports” that he wrote, certainly with a view to later publication in Germany, are largely based on printed sources or the stories of acquaintances. His stays with Indian tribes are also invented. The two legends of his little book The Green Flute from the Rio Beni (posthumously 1947) are in any case adaptations of recent German-language works on the subject.

After falling out with his brother in 1937, he lived on the low fees for his magazine articles and on donations from various people, including the film director Wilhelm Dieterle, who was now working in Hollywood. In addition, he successfully solicited support from US aid organizations for emigrated German artists and authors. He spent his last years as a guest in the house of a German-born widow and her son. Overall, he was always short of money, but undoubtedly suffered no direct hardship. His complaints against acquaintances were mostly exaggerated, and fiction was e.g. B. his statement that he plays the piano for money in pubs.

He was also very productive as a narrator in Argentina. The longer texts that he wrote, including seven novels, remained almost all unpublished during his lifetime. B. the "factual novel " Germany, allegedly still written in Berlin , your dancer is death or the socially critical novel The Children of Paraná . Only I looked for Schmied ... and found Malva again. It was printed in Buenos Aires in 1941.

As a rule, his revisions of older, already published works also remained in the drawer. These included an expanded, restructured and linguistically softened version of Villon from 1931, which he created in 1943 (first printed in 1952), as well as the novel-like Villon biography, which he wrote in 1946, perhaps the last work before his death, from the biographical part of Developed essays from 1931 and which since 1962 (as an appendix to the very successful paperback edition of Villon ) in Germany has largely determined the image of the medieval author as a proletarian powerhouse.

Grave of Paul Zech and his son Rudolf

By the way, Zech did not try to write in Spanish until the end, because he did not want to endanger his German. At least he seems to have acquired a reasonable knowledge of the language. Apparently he would have liked to return to Germany after the war , although the contact with his family, who had survived the Nazi era unscathed in Bestensee , had long been completely broken. But neither his scarce resources nor his rapidly deteriorating health allowed the trip. On the morning of September 7, 1946 he collapsed on his doorstep when acquaintances returned home and died at noon in the hospital.

His urn was moved to the Schöneberg III cemetery in Berlin-Friedenau in 1971 . The grave is one of the honor graves of the State of Berlin.

Zech posthumously

After he had come to the brink of the literary scene as early as 1930 and, as a former SPD sympathizer, had fallen victim to National Socialist conformity after 1933, Zech shared the fate of many exiled authors who did not make a comeback after the war . This is true at least for the old Federal Republic, because the efforts of his son Rudolf, who reprinted his father's works from 1947 to 1960 in his own small West Berlin publishing house or republished from the estate, were ultimately unsuccessful. Zech fared much better in the GDR , where Greifenverlag in Rudolstadt, Thuringia, reprinted works and published others posthumously from 1952 to 1956 and again in the 1980s, because the anti-fascist Zech was supposedly persecuted by the National Socialists.

One of the first works by Rudolf Zech to be reissued in 1947 was Villon from 1931. It fell into the hands of Klaus Kinski around 1950 , thanks to whose impressive recitations the figure of Villons became known in the Federal Republic of that time. Villon was also printed in Rudolstadt in 1952 , albeit in the toned-down version from 1943. In 1962, this version, somewhat restructured and, above all, expanded to include the biography of 1946, was published as a dtv paperback. In the meantime (as of 2009) this has brought it to more than 320,000 copies in 29 editions and posthumously made Zech a successful author - albeit tragically not under his own name, but under the label "Villon". The same applies to Zech's Rimbaud revision from 1927, which was also published by dtv in 1963 in the heavily revised version from 1944 and reprinted in several editions until 1996. After all, four editions, including three in Rudolstadt, experienced posthumously from 1947 to 1988 Zech's rewriting of the sonnets by Louise Labé , written around 1555 .

Zechs poems Who is on the run, like us and Im Twilight (In the black mirror of the canals) were included in Reich-Ranicki's anthology Der Kanon .

Fonts

A list of the entire work can be found in: Ward B. Lewis, Poetry and Exile. An Annotated Bibliography of the Works and Criticism of Paul Zech

Original writings (excerpt)

The list of Zech's book publications alone includes many dozen titles.

  • The black territory . Poems. AR Meyer, Berlin 1912.
  • The foolish heart . JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin 1925, DNB  578466139 .
  • The Fiery Bush: New Poems (1912–1917) . Musarion-Verlag, Munich 1919, DNB  578466058 .
  • Afternoon dream of a Fauns / Stéphane Mallarmé L 'Aprés-midi d'un faune. German adaptation by Paul Zech . Berlin 1922, DNB  577271687 .

Posthumous publications

Only those works are listed below that have been reprinted or reissued in the past three decades.

  • Selected works by Bert Kasties. 5 volumes, Aachen: Shaker, 1998–1999. Volume I (pp. 8–42) contains an excellent biographical introduction, which, however, is in need of correction again due to the latest research by Alfred Huebner.
  • The vicious ballads and songs of François Villon. Adaptation by Paul Zech. With a biography of Villon . Munich, dtv, 1962 u.ö., ISBN 3-423-00043-0 (This is a heavily revised new edition of The Ballads and Vicious Songs of Mr. François Villon in a German adaptation by Paul Zech , Weimar 1931)
  • From the Black Territory to the New World - Collected Poems. 1983, ISBN 3-446-13576-6 .
  • Germany, your dancer is death. A factual novel . Greifenverlag, Rudolstadt, 1981; again Fischer, Frankfurt 1984, ISBN 3-596-25189-3 (series: Verboten und burned)
  • Michael M. wanders through Buenos Aires . Greifen, Rudolstadt 1985.
  • From the Meuse to the Marne . A war diary. Greifen, Rudolstadt 1986.
  • The black Baal. Novellas . Edited and with an afterword by M. Martínez. Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-89244-007-7 .
  • Paul Zech reading book. (= Nylands Small Westphalian Library. 12). Compiled and provided with an afterword by Wolfgang Delseit. Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-936235-13-9 Online edition of the reader
  • Wuppertal. Bergische Dichtungen / Encounters with Else Lasker-Schüler . Ed. And with an afterword by Christoph Haacker. Arco, Wuppertal 2013, ISBN 978-3-938375-28-0 .
  • What will be behind the dark The most beautiful poems by Paul Zech. Edited by Oliver Fehn. Pandaemonium, Söhrewald 2017, ISBN 978-3-944893-15-0 .

Radio plays

Bilingual edition

  • Yo soy una vez Yo y una vez Tú (sometimes I am me and sometimes you), translated, selected and provided with a prologue by Héctor A. Piccoli ; Editorial Serapis, Seria traslaciones, Buenos Aires 2009, ISBN 978-987-24892-6-7 (Original title: Paul Zech, Yo soy una vez Yo y una vez Tú: antología poética ; (edición bilingüe) / Prólogo, notas y versión española de Héctor A. Piccoli, Goethe-Institut Buenos Aires)

Letters

  • Donald G. Daviau (Ed.): Stefan Zweig - Paul Zech. Letters 1910–1942. Frankfurt am Main 1986.

media

  • Rolf Blank, Veronique Friedmann: Notes of an Emigrant. Paul Zech in exile. Insel-Film Produktion 2001. (45-minute film feature about Zech in Argentina)
  • Klaus Kinski : I'm so wild about your strawberry mouth. Deutsche Grammophon, 2004 (981 587-1) (new edition; Klaus Kinski reads ballads from Zech's Villon adaptation)
  • Wolfgang Neuss and Fatty George : Neuss Testament. The Villon Show. Fontana, 1965 (LP). Conträr Musik, 1997 (CD). (Partly very free cabaret transmission based on Paul Zech's adaptations and other sources.)

literature

  • Fritz Hüser (Ed.): Paul Zech. February 19, 1881 to September 7, 1946. (= poets and thinkers of our time. 28). Wuppertal 1961. (Contains the first Zech bibliography)
  • Alfred Hübner: The world view in the drama Paul Zech. (= European university publications. Series I. Volume 130). Bern / Frankfurt am Main 1975.
  • Ward B. Lewis: Poetry and Exile. An Annotated Bibliography of the Works and Criticism of Paul Zech. Frankfurt 1975.
  • Brigitte Pohl: Studies on the biography and poetry of Paul Zech. Dissertation. Jena 1977.
  • Arnold Spitta: Paul Zech in exile in South America 1933–1946. A contribution to the history of German emigration in Argentina. Colloquium-Verlag, Berlin 1978.
  • Uwe Eckardt: Paul Zech in Elberfeld. (With previously unknown poems). In: Romerike Berge. (Solingen), Vol. 46./1996, H. 4, pp. 2-23.
  • Wolfgang Delseit: A "thick skull made from peasant Westphalian grain juice". The writer Paul Zech (1881–1946). In: Literature in Westphalia. Volume 8. Aisthesis, edited by Walter Gödden. Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89528-557-9 , pp. 61-99. (PDF)
  • Arnold Spitta: Paul Zech in exile in Argentina 1933–1946: Legends and Sorrow - a writer without an audience. Ibero-American Institute, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-935656-50-5 . (in full text: Ibero-Online.de , issue 5)
  • Gert Pinkernell: Paul Zech and his “vicious ballads and songs by François Villon”. A “reader fraud”? In: Euphorion. Journal of the History of Literature. Volume 104, 2010, pp. 371-391.
  • Gert Pinkernell: Paul Zech's adaptation of the sonnets by Louise Labé. On the history of a Münchhausiade. In: Euphorion. Journal of the History of Literature. Volume 109, 2015, pp. 459-471.
  • Dieter Sudhoff : The literary modernity and Westphalia. Visiting a neglected cultural landscape. (= Publications of the literature commission for Westphalia. 3). Bielefeld 2002, pp. 254-285.

estate

Zech's estate is pretty scattered. One part is in the manuscript department of the Dortmund City and State Library , another in the archive of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, another in the German Literature Archive in Marbach and another in the manuscript department of the Berlin State Library. The Wuppertal City Library maintains a Zech archive with a considerable collection of Zech's printed books.

On Dortmund see: Fritz Hüser Institute for German and Foreign Workers' Literature (ed.): Directory of the archive holdings on the worker poets Paul Zech (1881–1946), Gerrit Engelke (1890–1918) and Max Barthel (1893–1975) as well Overview of Heinrich Lersch's estate and the catalog for the exhibition Worker Poets on War and the World of Work. Das Institut, Dortmund 1984, 60 pp.

Web links

Wikisource: Paul Zech  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Paul Zech  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Paul Zech  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from Kasties' Zech edition (see below), Volume I, p. 8 f.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Kasties, I, p. 9 f.
  3. ↑ To Zech's time in Wuppertal see above all U. Eckardt.
  4. ↑ Cf. on this the controversy fought out in the Kettwiger Zeitung on April 27 and May 4, 1932 with Günther Mauntz, who did his doctorate on Deubel in Bonn in 1930 and had asked Zech in vain for the original copies of several "transmissions" that he did not know about any text Deubels could assign.
  5. ↑ On Zech's dramas see A. Hübner (see below).
  6. ↑ Le Bateau ivre
  7. ↑ a b See the study by G. Pinkernell (see literature)
  8. ↑ On the following see Kasties (see literature), Volume I, p. 29 ff.
  9. ↑ https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/person/gnd/118536176
  10. ↑ Hermann Stresau, A world separates me from the Nazis - diaries from inner emigration 1933-1939, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta 2021, ISBN 9783608983296 , p. 60 and p. 393 (note 10 and 11)
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Delseit: A "thick skull made from peasant Westphalian grain juice". The writer Paul Zech (1881–1946). In: Walter Gödden (Ed.): Literature in Westphalia. Volume 8, Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89528-557-9 , p. 81, footnote 71. (PDF) ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wodel.de
  12. ↑ See A. Spitta (see below)
  13. ↑ Wilfried Eymer: Eymers Pseudonym Lexikon. Real names and pseudonyms in German literature. Kirschbaum Verlag, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-7812-1399-4 , p. 395.
  14. ↑ a b c Poetry and Exile. An Annotated Bibliography of the Works and Criticism of Paul Zech . Bern and Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-261-01862-3 .
  15. ↑ The afterword gives a very instructive account of Zech as an author; however, many biographical data are now outdated
  16. ^ Zech - records of an emigrant. Part 1. In: filmportal.de . German Film Institute , accessed on July 9, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Zech, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robert, Paul (pseudonym); Borah, Timm (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet, writer and publicist of Expressionism
BIRTH DATE February 19, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Briesen
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 1946
PLACE OF DEATH Buenos Aires