Rudolf von Kapri

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rudolf von Kapri (born January 9, 1887 in Neumarkt in Styria , Austria-Hungary , † August 31, 1946 in Graz ; according to the baptismal register: Rudolfus Zador Ferdinandus von Kapri de Merecey ) was an Austrian journalist, writer and poet . Since the nobility annulment law in 1919, his name was Rudolf Kapri .

Life

Kapri's birthplace in Neumarkt i. Styria (2010)
Kapri's last station in life: Graz, Kroisbachgasse 16 (today: Wastiangasse). (2010)

Rudolf Freiherr von Kapri was the son of the kuk district court adjunct in Neumarkt Ferdinand Freiherr von Kapri de Merecey and his wife Henriette, née. Neuwerth. He is the descendant of a noble Bukovinian family of Armenian origin.

He inherited his literary talent from his grandmother Mathilde von Kapri , who was also a writer. After graduating from high schools in Graz and Leoben, he studied philosophy in Graz and Vienna . He was interested in literature from a young age, as the correspondence with Hermann Hesse and other contemporary writers shows.

After completing his studies, he initially worked as a journalist and editor; 1912–1919 for the Wiener Wochenschrift Die Zeit , for which he also reported as a front soldier in the First World War 1914–1918; 1921–1923 press officer of the Grazer Messe ; at the same time employee of the Grazer Tagespost and from 1923 its editor, from 1934 deputy editor-in-chief until 1938.

After the Dollfuss Putsch in 1933 and the introduction of press censorship, an article criticizing the government was published in the daily newspaper Abendblatt on June 28, 1933, the state authorities brought charges against Kapri and confiscated 10,000 copies of the 10,000 copies that had not yet been delivered. However, the criminal proceedings were discontinued because the allegations were unfounded and an article with the same content was allowed to appear in the Salzburger Volksblatt without objection from the authorities. Kapri's political newspaper comments brought him into conflict with the authorities on several occasions in the 1930s for violating Section 30 of the Press Act.

After Austria was annexed to the German Reich in 1938, the new National Socialist rulers removed him from the editorial service and imprisoned him. Kapri's right-wing Catholic sentiments and his political comments made him an active opponent of National Socialism. His work as government commissioner and confidante of the Styrian Deputy Governor and later Minister of Justice and Foreign Affairs Berger-Waldenegg (1934–1936 in the Schuschnigg government ) made him suspicious of the Nazis.

After his release from prison he survived the war as an employee of a death fund, later its head. He was only allowed to write in public again after the liberation of Austria in 1945. He published poems in the Neue Steirische Zeitung , in 1945 he was commissioned as the first editor-in-chief by the state party leadership of the ÖVP to build up the party's own newspaper Das Steirerblatt . In spring 1946 he resigned the post to Helmut Schuster, who remained his deputy and cultural editor. In addition to this activity, Kapri was also a correspondent for the news agency Reuters .

In April 1946, Kapri suffered a stroke from which he did not recover. He died on August 31 of the same year. The burial in the St. Leonhard Cemetery in Graz took place with great sympathy from journalists and representatives of church and state, such as cathedral pastor Rochus Kohlbach , police president Anton Jaklitsch and the later Federal Chancellor Alfons Gorbach .

Characteristic

In his poems one finds “home and foreign, nature and culture, divine and human”. Rudolf List , culture editor and writer, remembered the literary work of the writer in the Südost Tagespost at the end of 1970 and placed Kapri in the ranks of well-known Graz poets in order to save him and his work from oblivion. In her dissertation on literature and journalistic literary criticism in Styria in 1978, the Germanist and art historian Elisabeth Welzig counts Kapri among the most important Styrian literary critics after the World War.

Works

As the Austrian Biographical Lexicon writes, Kapri was a subtle poet who was trained in Rilke's cultivation of language. He emerged in 1923 with formally strict poems that showed him at home in a narrow, but surely dominated area of ​​fantastically delicate mood poetry. Based on religious motifs, two of his poetry collections are named after well-known images of the Madonna. He also wrote war poems (1914–1918), as well as atmospheric images from town and country and from trips. Some poems written during the Second World War express the hope of an early liberation ( No Star in the Dark , 1942; Dream of Bethlehem , 1943; In der Zeiten Irrsal , 1944). They are also of great value for contemporary history. The poem Ewiges Österreich , written in 1945, is one such testimony, which expresses the joy at the end of the war and the liberation of Austria from oppression and terror. For Kapri it was not only the regaining of national freedom, but personally the fulfillment of his longing to be able to write freely again after the years of forced silence.

His poems have appeared in the following volumes:

  • Armenian Madonna. Ulrich Moser Publishing House, Graz 1923.
  • The zingarella. Poems and thoughts Verlag Ulrich Moser, Graz 1926.
  • The colorful bird cross section publishing house, Graz 1946.

Poems were also published in literary magazines (for example “Die Aktion” Berlin 1917 and 1918) and in books (for example “Art in Austria”, an artist almanac from 1934, Leoben). In the “New Soldiers Calendar 1932”, Leykam Graz, he appears with The Deeds of the Belgians , a story of the former Austro-Hungarian Styrian Infantry Regiment No. 27 (nickname “King of the Belgians”), and with the war story From the seven communities . His novella Shots at the Latin Bridge about the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne in Sarajevo in 1914 appeared in the soldiers' calendar of 1934 .

Composer Konrad Stekl (1901–1979)

The acquaintance with the versatile Austrian composer, conductor and music teacher Konrad Stekl led to compositions based on four poems by Kapri:

  • Gentle evening to the orchestral song, op.2a, no.1 (around 1925)
  • Moving Night to the Orchestra Song, op.2a, No. 2 (around 1925)
  • June night to a madrigal for 4-part male choir, op.19, no.2 , 1931
  • Im Morgenglanz to two madrigals for mixed choir and for 4-part male choir (as an appendix), op.19, no.4, both 1931

Another Austrian composer, Otto Siegl (1896-1978), wrote three pieces of music for voice and piano (op. 40) based on texts from Kapri's poems Im Morgenglanz , Osterland and Glockenspiel by Riva .

At a young age he was in correspondence with Hermann Hesse . Kapri admired Hesse. On his 50th birthday on July 2, 1927, he dedicated an article to the writer in the Grazer Tagespost . He maintained contacts with the German-speaking Bohemian writer Camill Hoffmann .

literature

  • Kapri, Rudolf Frh. Von , In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950. 3rd volume (Hüb-Knoll), 2nd unchanged edition, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1993, p. 226 u. 227.
  • Elke Hammer: The Graz press in 1945 . In: Historical yearbook of the city of Graz 1994 , p. 579 u. 580.
  • Friedrich Hausjell: Austrian daily newspaper journalists at the beginning of the Second Republic (1945–1947). A collective biographical analysis of their professional and political origins. 3 vol. Dissertation Salzburg 1985, vol. 2, p. 564.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the Styrian k. u k. Infantry Regiment No. 27 for the period 1914-1918 by Hermann Fröhich, Graz 1937, ISBN 0707455413 , Vol. 2, pp. 165 and 181 as well as the personal file in the war archive of the Austrian State Archives in Vienna.
  2. ↑ Grazer Tagespost / Abendblatt of June 23, 1933, to No. 176, 78th year, p. 4: last news. Minister a. D. Dr. Hueber leaves Homeland Security .
  3. ↑ Kleine Zeitung of January 6, 1957, page 16: In memoriam Rudolf von Kapri by Prof. Dr. Heribert Schwarzbauer
  4. ↑ Südost Tagespost from December 31, 1970 / January 1, 1971, page 40: Unforgotten companions of Rudolf List
  5. ^ Elisabeth Welzig: Literature and journalistic literary criticism, examined on the Styrian daily newspapers 1945-1955. Academic publishing house Hans-Dieter Heinz, Stuttgart 1979, series of Stuttgart works on German studies , No. 60, p. 216
  6. ^ Grazer Tagespost / Abendblatt dated July 2, 1927, to No. 179, 72nd year: The unknown Hesse. For the poet's 50th birthday .
personal data
SURNAME Kapri, Rudolf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian editor, writer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Neumarkt in Styria
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1946
Place of death Graz