Samuel Lewin

Samuel Lewin (born March 5, 1890 in Końskowola near Lublin , Poland , † July 3, 1959 in New York , United States ) was a German- Yiddish writer and publicist .

Life

Samuel Lewin was born into a poor family in a Polish-Jewish family. Some of his siblings died in childhood. From 1893 to 1906 Lewin received traditional Jewish training in the Cheder , Beth Hamidrash and Yeshiva . He then left his hometown and went on a journey that led him through Russia and Bessarabia , among other places . In 1912 he went to Argentina , where he lived as a settler in a Jewish colony, but returned to Poland shortly before the start of the First World War . Here he began his writing in Yiddish under the impressions of the war and was able to publish his first two dramas in 1919 . The move to Berlin in 1920 gave his writing new impetus. In the following years he became a well-known journalist, playwright, critic and mediator of Jewish culture. He wrote essays and articles for newspapers appearing in Germany, including special ones for the Jewish population group such as Yiddish Culture . Lewin wrote in Yiddish throughout his life, and many books were translated into German. This includes the story Chassidische Legende , published in 1921 , in which three rabbis storm the “gates of heaven” to demand the sending of the Messiah from God. Furthermore, the book Demons of the Blood , published in 1926 . A vision in which the author tries to portray the horrors and horrors of the First World War . Also in 1926 the novel Zeitwende was printed, which deals with the confrontation of the old religious generation with the Zionist youth; two years later the epic poem Gesichte , in which, despite the war-torn world that fell to the devil, the hope of creating a new, better, godly world sprouts. The novel And he returned home could no longer appear in Germany after the National Socialists came to power . It was printed in Vienna in 1936 and provided with a foreword by Franz Werfel . This development novel traces the path of an Eastern Jewish singer whose career took off after breaking away from Judaism, but this supposed success did not bring him lasting fulfillment. The singer therefore later finds his way back to his origins and his beliefs.

Even though this book became Lewin's best-known work, it was denied great public recognition and broad impact due to the hostility towards Jews prevailing at the time . At the time of publication, its author was already outside Europe. Publication of the manuscript Boomerang available from Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag was also out of the question.

The rule of the National Socialists in Germany since 1933 meant a deep turning point for Lewin too, because his books were burned . His escape took him through several countries in Western Europe until he finally reached New York by ship in December 1935 and found a safe home for himself and his family there. In literary terms, however, he was never able to tie in with his time in Berlin. Only his lyrical account of the conditions in the world ( faces ) was distributed several times in Yiddish and Hebrew before and after the end of the war , so - depending on the transcription - under the titles Hezyoines , Chesjoines , Khezjojnes or Chesiunoth . The Impatient Sages ( Hasidic legend ) appeared in English in 1948 . Lewin was able to accommodate several stories in various magazines such as The Jewish Forum . Although he could not expect a large readership in the USA, he continued to write in Yiddish. The result was the trilogy Between the Abysses , which describes the fate of Polish Jews in the interwar period before the Holocaust . With these books, which Lewin regarded as his main work, he set a literary monument to the world of the shtetl . Shortly before the first volume was published, Lewin died on July 3, 1959 in a hospital in the Bronx . After the death of her husband and until the end of her life, his widow Miriam Lewin tried to find publishers worldwide for Samuel Lewin's works, including many unpublished dramas, stories and poems.

Works

Epic

• 1921: Hasidic legend (also: Gegen den Himmel or Yiddish Kegn himl )
• 1926: Demons of Blood. A vision ( republished in 2013 as Volume 1 of the series Capital Needs Wars - We Don't! By Edition AV publisher with an afterword by Siegbert Wolf )
• 1926: turning point. Roman (1971 udT In the course of the generations. Roman republished)
• 1936: And he returned home. Roman (published in Vienna)
• 1939: In a cheap kitchen (story, magazine publication)
• 1959: Between two abysses (trilogy of novels: Das große Morden / Black Mountains and Blue Valleys / Concentrated Clouds , in German in five volumes; in Yiddish in three volumes: Tzwišn tzwei tehomen - Beis dos groisse mordn / Šwartze berg un bloie ṭoln / Wolkn-gedrang and 1988 in English translation also in three volumes: Between two Abysses / Dark Mountains and Blue Valleys / Shining through the Clouds )

Drama

• 1919: A fire (Original title: Sreifah )
• 1919: Because of sin (Original title: Far Sint )
• 1950: In Exil (written in 1935, original title variants : In Gouleth , In Guleth , In Golus )

Poetry

• 1928: Gesichte (epic poem, various new editions and language editions)

Autobiography

• 2000: A Distant Voice. An Autobiography of Samuel Lewin (published posthumously, in English only)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Samuel Lewin Archive. In: adk.de. Retrieved April 12, 2017 . 
2. ^ ^{A b} Susanne Marten-Finnis, Heather Valencia: Language Islands. Yiddish journalism in London, Wilna and Berlin 1880–1930 (=  life worlds of Eastern European Jews . Volume 4 ). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-412-02998-X , Chapter IV: "City and Mother Israel" ..., p. 112 f .
3. ^ ^{A b} Samuel Lewin, 69, a Yiddish Author. Writer of Novels, Plays and Poetry Dies. - His Works were Widely Translated . In: The New York Times . 5th June 1959.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Obituary for Samuel Lewin . In: Swiss Zionist Association (Ed.): The new Israel . Journal for politics, culture and economy to promote mutual relations between Switzerland and Israel. No. 4 , October 1959, p. 179 (taken from the structure , New York).

Web links

• Literature by and about Samuel Lewin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Samuel Lewin Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts , Berlin