Ruth Marton

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Ruth Marton (born Ruth Philippine Mühsam February 25, 1912 in Berlin ; died June 21, 1999 in New York City ) was an Austro-American writer .

Life

Ruth Mühsam was a daughter of the film critic Kurt Mühsam and the art historian Alice Freymark . Her sister Gerd Muehsam became a librarian in the USA, her brother Helmut Muhsam a statistician in Israel. A nanny was hired for the family, for a while Gertrud Kolmar was employed . Laboriously attended the Fürstin-Bismarck-Schule in Berlin-Charlottenburg and began training as an actress in 1931. In 1933 she passed the exams at the Cooperative of German Stage Members and the German Stage Association , but was not allowed to perform in Germany because of her non-Aryan origins. She had her first role as Phöbe in a German-language production of As You Like It in Strasbourg , and in June 1934 she appeared in the Parisian cabaret Les Sans-Culottes . In Vienna she had a few minor roles and made her way as a costume tailor. She became friends with Alexander Lernet-Holenia , who got her a role in his play Die Frau des Potiphar at the Vienna Volkstheater , to the annoyance of the director Rolf Jahn .

In 1937 she traveled to Hollywood and was forced to stay there after the annexation of Austria in February 1938.

Since she also spoke perfect French, she was able to get by as an interpreter and occasional secretary. At a party among émigré circles in 1939, she met Erich Maria Remarque , with whom she became a long-term friend. Remarque may have helped Marton to get her mother and sister from Germany to the USA in 1940. Another help was the director John Huston and his father Walter Huston , who financially allowed her to concentrate on writing for a while.

Marton wrote a short story, Letter to a Girlfriend , and began working on her first novel, Last Night of All , but couldn't find a publisher for it. She could only accommodate a script for a short film Salto Mortale . In 1944 she received US citizenship and was now called Ruth Marton . In 1949 Marton was an assistant on the set for Max Ophüls in his film The Reckless Moment . From 1950 she lived in New York. In 1951 she wrote a few scripts for the Lilli Palmer TV show .

In the 1950s Marton worked as a literary agent for various European publishers. She managed to find Ullstein Verlag for her own novel The Divorcees in Germany , which published the German translation in 1966, a follow-up edition of which was distributed by Bertelsmann Lesering in 1967 ; the novel also appeared in Danish, Norwegian and Italian translations, but not in the English original. The other two parts of the planned novel trilogy did not find a publisher. An excerpt from the extensive manuscript of her memoir, which deals with the friendship with Remarque, was published in German translation in 1993.

Works

  • Decision in New York: novel . Brigitte Pfeil in Romanian. Berlin: Ullstein, 1966
  • My friend bonuses. Memories of Erich Maria Remarque . Translation Ruth Marton, Susan Schwarz. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mühsam, Alice , in: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical Handbook of German-speaking Art Historians in Exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 447f. At Wendland, her maiden name is Freymarck , which is obviously a missphrase , at Ritchey, Pejša Freymark , the name is also used by Dieter Kühn : Gertrud Kolmar. Life and work, time and death. S. Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 2008. ISBN 978-3-10-041511-0
  2. ↑ Mühsam, Ruth , in: Frithjof Trapp , Bärbel Schrader, Dieter Wenk, Ingrid Maaß: Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933 - 1945. Volume 2. Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11375-7 , p. 685
  3. ↑ on Rolf Jahn see entry Rolf Jahn , at Wienwiki
  4. ↑ Hush money for love letters (1949) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Marton, Ruth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mühsam, Ruth Philippine (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-American writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1999
Place of death New York City