Salamon Dembitzer

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Salamon Dembitzer (also: Salomon Dambitzer, born January 29, 1888 in Krakow , Austria-Hungary ; died October 11, 1964 in Lugano , Switzerland ) was a predominantly German-speaking writer and journalist .

Life

youth

Salamon Dembitzer was the son of Herschel and Amalia Dembitzer and the grandson of the Talmudic scholar and historian Chaim Nathan Dembitzer . He had three siblings. He spent his childhood in the small village of Lancut near Kraków . The young Salamon opposed his family's plans to become a rabbi at an early age .

In 1903, the fifteen-year-old Dembitzer left his parents' house, fled to Germany and then on to Antwerp . When his family moved to Kassel in 1906 , he rejoined them, began studying in Göttingen , which he soon broke off and worked as a journalist for the Kasseler Volksblatt . In 1908 he published his first poems - these were still in Yiddish in Latin script - and then in 1914 his first short stories under the title ' From narrow streets '.

This was followed by further stays in Antwerp and Amsterdam , where he worked as an editor for the Algemeen Handelsblad and for Het Volk . When the First World War broke out , Dembitzer had to move to Berlin , but soon went back to Holland, where he published several books with stories in Dutch. He was also the war correspondent for Vorwärts .

Weimar Republic

In 1919 or 1920 he returned to Berlin and became an editor for Die Welt am Montag , Berliner Tageblatt and Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung . Many of his short stories have been printed. In 1928 the mother died. In 1930 he published the first novel 'Bummler und Bettler', dedicated to her, and the theatrical text ' Wohlfahrtsamt '. Literary Berlin slowly became aware of him. His literary magazine ' Clique ', newly founded with friends and colleagues , was unsuccessful.

In March 1933, Dembitzer, of Jewish descent, fled from National Socialism to the Netherlands, where he worked briefly as an editor. Here he published - in German - his main work, the novel ' Die Geistigen '. The young Albert Vigoleis Thelen discussed the novel euphorically, besides it rained a few reviews, the novel was hardly noticed. It is an amusing satirical sketch of the cultural scene of the Weimar Republic with the characters Abel Krampf (= Alfred Kerr ) and Abel Driglin (= Alfred Döblin ). A new edition of this novel was published in 2007.

exile

In 1935 Dembitzer moved on to Brussels (Belgium), a little later to Portugal, where he got an American visa in 1940/41 and emigrated to the United States in New York City . In August 1942, his brother Chaim Nussyn Dembitzer and his wife were killed by the Nazis. Another brother who had emigrated to New Zealand supported Salomon financially, as he could hardly find work in the USA.

In 1947 Dembitzer emigrated with his future wife Hertha, b. Knew to Australia and lived in Sydney . Here his self-published books ' Drama in Ostend ' (1950) and ' Visas for America ' (1952), both strongly autobiographical discussions about flight and exile, appeared in English. In 1955 a number of stories from the 1920s were published in English translation under the title ' Adventures in Prague '. In 1958 Dembitzer finally returned to Europe and moved to Switzerland , where he died in Lugano in 1964. In the last ten years of his life he no longer published. Salamon Dembitzer never returned to Germany. The Leo Baeck Institute in New York manages his estate .

Works

  • Lebns klangen (1907), poems
  • Lost Worlds (1910), poems
  • Black sheets (1913), poems
  • From narrow streets (1915), short stories
  • The East (1916)
  • About love (1920)
  • My uncle (1922), short stories
  • Dutch Earth (1924), short stories
  • Nights in the Vondelpark (1924), short stories
  • Loafers and Beggars (1930), novel
  • Welfare Office (1930), drama in 3 acts
  • Reckoning (1931)
  • The intellectuals (1934), novel
  • Drama in Ostend (1950), novel
  • Visas for America (1952), Roman (the German original version with the title "Visum nach Amerika" was published by Weidle Verlag, Bonn, in 2009, with an afterword by Ursula Seeber)
  • Adventures in Prague and Other Stories (1955), short stories
  • Die Geistigen (2007), Roman (new edition, Weidle Verlag, Bonn. With a detailed afterword by Uta Beiküfner )

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Dembitzer, Salamon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dambitzer, Salomon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-speaking writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Krakow
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1964
Place of death Lugano