Richard Friedenthal

Richard Paul Caspar Friedenthal (born June 9, 1896 in Munich , † October 19, 1979 in Kiel ) was a German writer.

Live and act

Friedenthal was a son of the physician and anthropologist Hans Wilhelm Carl Friedenthal . He grew up in Berlin-Nikolassee . During the First World War he served as a soldier and suffered a serious wound. After the war he studied literary and art history as well as philosophy at the universities in Berlin , Jena and Munich , among others as a student of Heinrich Wölfflin , Fritz Strich and Max Weber . In 1922 he became a doctor of philosophy doctorate .

His first literary attempts in the 1920s were supported by Stefan Zweig . From 1928 he worked as a publishing editor ; from 1930 he was head of the Knaur publishing house in Berlin. Friedenthal published Knaur's Konversationslexikon there , which embodied the new type of one-volume, folk reference work and was a great sales success. Since 1933 Friedenthal was banned from writing because of his Jewish origins.

In 1938 Friedenthal emigrated to Great Britain. From June 1940 to March 1941 he was interned at the Hutchinson Internment Camp . From 1942 to 1950 he was secretary of the PEN center for German-speaking authors abroad . From 1943 to 1951 he worked for the BBC . From 1945 to 1950 he was co-editor of the New Rundschau published in Stockholm . In addition, he published Stefan Zweig's works and administered his estate. In 1951 Friedenthal received British citizenship . From 1951 to 1954 he lived again in Germany and headed the Droemersche publishing house in Munich. From 1954 he lived permanently in Great Britain. He died in 1979 while visiting Germany.

At first Friedenthal wrote poetry and short stories in the traditional, psychologizing style. He had his first literary success in 1929 with a historical novel about Hernando Cortes . Until the 1960s, he made a name for himself mainly as a lexicographer and essayist . He became best known through a number of biographies . He portrayed Jan Hus , Martin Luther , Denis Diderot and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , among others . The Goethe biography in particular was very popular with the readership. Towards the end of his life he pursued the plan to write a book about the German-speaking emigrants in London in the 19th century. From the studies undertaken for this purpose, a biographical account of Karl Marx emerged .

Friedenthal was Vice President of the PEN Center of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1957 and its Honorary President from 1968. In 1956 he received the Federal Cross of Merit , and in 1961 the Great Federal Cross of Merit for his services to German-British understanding. From 1960 he was a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

tomb

He is buried in the Nikolassee cemetery. His grave is dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honorary grave .

Works

• Dance and Death , Berlin 1918
• Demeter , Berlin 1925
• The fan with the golden cord , Berlin 1925
• The haystack , Stuttgart 1925
• Marie Rebscheider , Leipzig 1927
• The Conqueror , Leipzig 1929
• Bread and Salt London 1943
• Stefan Zweig and the humanitarian thought , Eßlingen a. Neckar 1948
• Goethe chronicle , London 1949
• The legacy of Columbus , Esslingen 1950
• English culture , Bad Godesberg 1956
• The world in a nutshell , Munich 1956
• The party at Mr. Tokaido's , Munich 1958
• Georg Friedrich Handel in personal testimonies and photo documents , Hamburg 1959
• Leonardo , Munich 1959
• London between yesterday and tomorrow , Munich [u. a.] 1960
• Goethe - His life and time , Munich 1963
• Poems for my friends , Munich 1966
• Luther - His Life and Time , Munich 1967
• Discoverer of the I , Munich 1969
• Heretics and Rebels: Jan Hus and the Century of Revolutionary Wars , Munich 1972
• Big stories , Munich [u. a.] 1976
• And suddenly it is evening , Munich [u. a.] 1976
• Karl Marx , Munich [a. a.] 1981 (unfinished and edited for printing by another hand)
• Diderot , Munich [u. a.] 1984
• Duke Heinrich Julius of Braunschweig as a playwright , Braunschweig 1996

Editing

• Knaurs Konversationslexikon , Berlin 1932
• Stefan Zweig: Time and World , Stockholm 1943
• Stefan Zweig: Balzac , Stockholm 1946
• Knaurs Jugendlexikon , Munich 1953
• Stefan Zweig: European Heritage , Frankfurt am Main 1960
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Goethe's English Works , Hamburg 1961
• Stefan Zweig: Die Dramen , Frankfurt am Main 1964
• Stefan Zweig: Silver Strings , Frankfurt am Main 1966
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Goethe wisdom in a serious and cheerful tone , Stuttgart a. a. 1971
• Stefan Zweig: Letters to Friends , Frankfurt am Main 1978

Translations

• Irwin Edman : A Shimmer of Light in the Dark , Stockholm 1940 (translated with Stefan Zweig)

literature

• Hans Wagener: Richard Friedenthal , Gerlingen 2002
• Stefan Zweig : Two historical novels (Richard Friedenthal, "The Conqueror" - Klaus Mann , " Alexander ") , in: Reviews 1902–1939. Encounters with books . 1983 ( E-Text )
• Andrea Reiter: "Sucking honey for your beehive from every experience ..." Richard Friedenthal's "The world in a nutshell" , in: Charmian Brinson , Richard Dove , Marian Malet, Jennifer Taylor (eds.): "England? But where is it? ”: German and Austrian emigrants in Great Britain 1933 - 1945 . Munich: Academium, 1996 ISBN 3-89129-263-5 , pp. 169-180

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Friedenthal in the catalog of the German National Library
• Portrait of Richard Friedenthal