Robert Bodanzky

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Zygmunt Skwirczyński : Robert Bodanzky (with hat, in front Leo case ), 1911

Robert Bodanzky (born March 20, 1879 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died November 2, 1923 in Berlin ; also called Danton , originally Isidor Bodanskie ) was an Austrian operetta and hit writer, director , journalist , actor and master of the arts . After the First World War he was also politically active as an anarchist and a libertarian communist .

Life

Robert Bodanzky was born in Vienna as the son of the businessman Carl Bodanskie and Hanna Feuchtwang . As a Jewish-assimilated family, the Bodanzkys were connected to German culture, but suffered from modern anti-Semitism in Austria and Vienna, especially after the Great Depression of the 1870s .

Actor and librettist

After finishing school, he did not study as his parents wanted, but instead, like his brother, turned to his passion: music, theater and cabaret. His brother Artur Bodanzky , who was two years older than him, became a violinist and concert conductor and became known as the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York .

After initial failures as a poorly paid traveling actor - including at the Theater an der Wien - he discovered his talent as a director and librettist. Both his cheerful poems and his humorous, socially critical works were well received by the audience. Pierre Ramus wrote : Robert Bodanzky, the smear comedian, became perhaps the most popular librettist of his time, whose funny and easy-going rhyming stanzas were sung and trumpeted everywhere by the youth of carefree happiness and sensual longing.

He began his career as a librettist in 1906. His first libretto, Peter and Paul Reisen ins Schlaraffenland , wrote together with Fritz Grünbaum . In the same year the libretti for the one-act play Phryne and Mitislaw der Moderne followed . The pieces were performed in the Viennese cabaret Die Hölle . Leopold Jacobson and Alfred Maria Willner were among his most important co-authors. With them, over 30 works were created for the composers: Leo Ascher (1880–1942), Ralph Benatzky , Heinrich Berté , Edmund Eysler , Richard Fall and Leo Fall , Jean Gilbert , Bruno Bernhard Granichstaedten , Emmerich Kálmán ( An Autumn Maneuver 1909), Walter Kollo , Franz Lehár ( The Count of Luxemburg 1909, Gypsy Love 1910, Finally Alone 1914), Robert Stolz , Oscar Straus and Carl Michael Ziehrer .

During this phase of life he met his future wife Malva Goldschmied, a cousin of Arnold Schönberg's composer .

Although his success in the silver operetta era helped him to fame and prosperity, he grew tired of writing for the bourgeoisie 's lust, happiness and frightening away worries , according to Ramus . The presence and experiences of World War I accelerated his dissatisfaction with his work and increased his anti-patriotic and anti-militarist attitudes. He rejected the genre of war operettas and criticized the performance of the Singspiel Gold ich gave für Eisen by Victor Léon and the operetta Die Csárdásfürstin by Leo Stein and Bela Jenbach (music by Emmerich Kálmán ). In 1914 he wrote the An den Dichter des "Hate Song Against England" , in which he attacks Ernst Lissauer and his chauvinistic poetry.

Antipatriot and antimilitarist

With the outbreak of the First World War, he came into contact with the incitement to war and the atrocities of war. Bodanzky changed radically. He became more political and in his opinions and works came closer and closer to anti-militarism, pacifism and anarchism. Unlike many other artists, he refused to write “patriotic” works and subsequently became impoverished.

At the beginning of 1917 an intense friendship began between Bodanzky and the writer and “activist of the Austrian anarchist movement Rudolf Grossmann alias Pierre Ramus” (Portmann / Wolf). He takes part in regular meetings of opponents of the war with Ramus, who is under house arrest .

After the fall of the monarchies, he supported the newly formed republics, but at the same time criticized developments that were not democratic enough for him. He criticizes developments such as parliamentarianism , in which the population ultimately has to use their “back as a riding saddle” (Bodanzky) for capital and the elites . With Ramus he founds the libertarian union of domesticated socialists and calls for an election boycott . In his criticism of the state he writes about the right to vote: “What does it mean: exercise a right to vote? That means, in good German, giving up your own will, lending someone else's voice and being voiceless yourself from now on! In the urn is the grave of the people's will; there the individual voices, which some power-hungry nerd got in his favor and for his lowly purposes according to the good old peasant catcher custom, are modern. ”(Bodanzky: It starts again! )

Judaism and Anarchy

Bodanzky linked anarchism with “Jewish early Christianity around Jesus ” and agreed with Immanuel Kant in his definition of anarchy as “law and freedom without violence”. Bodanzky saw himself as a "strict opponent of terrorism and nihilism " and so anarchism is based "in its highest principles on the teaching of Christ, which in no way allowed violence, vengeance and arbitrariness." His " anti-totalitarian criticism of the communist regimes in Russia and Hungary after the First World War was based primarily on the question of freedom and violence."

After the fall of the Danube monarchy , he joined the anarchist-communist-socialist movement. He published revolutionary poetry and political essays in the journal Knowledge and Liberation founded by Fr. Ramus .

End of life in Berlin

The financial hardship forced him to move to Berlin in 1922, but there was no noticeable improvement in his financial situation due to the global economic crisis . Bodanzky was diabetic and suffered from a lung disease. He died on November 2, 1923, a week before his planned return to Vienna.

Revolutionary poetry and political essays

Robert Bodanzky's partner Malva Bodanzky and his anarchist friend Pierre Ramus (Rudolf Grossmann) edited the volume Revolutionary Poems and Political Essays . This is where Bodanzky's plays can be found: Gottsucher , Buchbinder Schwalbe and The Multicolored Uncle , and an obituary saying: What Shelley and Büchner were for their time, Robert Bodanzky of the freedom movement of our time, whom he served under the name Danton, was . A glowing sense of freedom in an unrestrained emanation, a keen eye that cannot be confused by any compromise in pettiness, and an unconditional stand on the side of the rebellion against all domination - that is what we find equally in this triad of poet names, in multiple ways a connection between the past and present of the liberation struggle forming. Pierre Ramus (1882–1942), 1925

Works

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Werner Portmann, Siegbert Wolf: "Yes, I fought". From dreams of revolution, 'air people' and children of the shtetl. Unrast, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-89771-452-3
  2. ↑ http://www.arminberg.at/mitislawprogramm.pdf
  3. ↑ Robert Bodanzky: What is anarchism? In: Revolution! 1, 1919, No. 2. Quoted from Portmann, Wolf
personal data
SURNAME Bodanzky, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Danton; Bodanskie, Isidor (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian cabaret artist, operetta and hit writer, director, actor
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 1923
Place of death Berlin