Robert Plank (social worker)

Robert Plank (born Robert Pollak in 1907 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died July 15, 1983 ) was an Austro-American lawyer, social worker and literary scholar.

Life

Robert Plank organized himself as a student in the Association of Socialist Middle Schools and was elected chairman in 1924/25. He studied law at the University of Vienna , received his doctorate and worked as a lawyer. In 1932 he married the Montessori teacher Emma Spira (1905–1990). He wrote a treatise on the social philosophy of Josef Popper-Lynkeus . After the annexation of Austria in 1938 they fled to England and from there to the USA in the same year. He studied psychiatric social work at the University of California at Berkeley and then worked as a social worker in San Francisco and then in Cleveland , where he also lectured at Case Western Reserve University . Plank has written essays for the International Record of Medicine , the American Imago, and the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry .

After his work on Popper-Lynkeus, Plank continued to work on science fiction literature and wrote about it in the Partisan Review, among others . In his book The Emotional Significance of Imaginary Beings in 1968 he dealt with the then father figures of SF literature, but the book was published by a specialist medical publisher and was therefore no longer noticed. A sequel about the thinkers and authors of the SF of (his) presence remained unfinished.

Fonts (selection)

• Josef Popper-Lynkeus, the company engineer . Vienna: Saturn, 1938
• Lighter than Air, but Heavy as Hate: An Essay in Space Travel . Partisan Review, Winter 1957
• The Emotional Significance of Imaginary Beings: A Study of the Interaction Between Psychotherapy, Literature, and Reality in the Modern World . Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1968
• with Frederick Philip Hellin: The plan of Josef Popper-Lynkeus . Foreword Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi . Bern: Lang, 1978 ISBN 978-3-261-03097-9
• George Orwell's guide through hell: a psychological study of nineteen eighty four . San Bernardino, Calif. : Borgo Press, 1986
  • George Orwell's "1984": a Psychological Study . Translation of Leopold Spira . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1983 ISBN 978-3-518-37469-6

literature

• Plank, Robert , in: Handbook of Austrian Authors of Jewish Origin, 18th to 20th Century , 2002, p. 1044

Web links

• Literature by and about Plank, Robert in the bibliographic database WorldCat , unadjusted stock
• Robert Plank , at ONB
• Franz Rottensteiner : A Memorial to Robert Plank , in: Science Fiction Studies, November 3, 1983 (en)