Siegfried Abeles

Siegfried Abeles (born January 15, 1884 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died July 1, 1937 in Vienna) was an Austrian educator and writer .

Life

Only a few of Siegfried Abeles biographical data have survived, he grew up in Nikolsburg , a relationship to Otto Abeles , who was born there in 1879, is conceivable. Abeles worked as a teacher. During World War I he worked for the Jewish War Blind Welfare Service and studied Braille for the Yiddish and Hebrew languages. In the Austrian Republic he worked as an inspector of the kindergartens and homesteads of the Association of Jewish Children's Friends. He was married to Sabine Abeles. His son Norbert, born in 1923, was rescued in 1938 on a Kindertransport to England and initially housed in the Whittingehame Farm School . Sabine Abeles was deported to Minsk in 1943 and was a victim of the Holocaust . When Abeles died in 1937 at the age of only 53, he was responsible for the onward journey of those who had fled the German Reich, according to the obituary published by the Vienna Israelite community in refugee aid. According to his son Norbert, he committed suicide in June 1937 by jumping into the Danube Canal for lack of money.

Abeles published on pedagogical issues in the Zionist Wiener Morgenzeitung , in The Truth and in the Jewish National Calendar . From 1923 he designed the children's page in the Menorah , Jewish family paper for science, art and literature, under the pseudonym “Uncle Ben Nathan” . This magazine was discontinued in 1932. Abeles took part in a competition aimed at promoting Jewish children's literature. In March 1921, his fairy tales received the award from the Cultural Office of the Jewish University Committee in Vienna. Abeles included the three submitted fairy tales in the volume Tams Reise , which he published in 1922. With this and two other books, he contributed to establishing Jewish children's fairy tales as a literary genre, something that had been vehemently rejected by German-speaking Jews before 1900.

Works

• Tam's journey through the Jewish fairy tale world: 25 children's fairy tales to southern volkstüml. Motifs. Illustrations FV Kosak. Breslau: JB Brandeis, 1922
• The funny book for the Jewish child . Book cover and illustrations by Willy Braun. Breslau: JE Brandeis, 1926
• Through the world and time: Jewish youth book . Illustrations by Henny Friedek. Breslau: JB Brandeis, 1930
• Benjamin: newspaper for the Jewish child . Vienna: Siegfried Abeles, 1933. Afterwards publication discontinued.

literature

• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography , Czernauti, 1925, Volume 1, p. 10f.
• Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century. Volume 1: A-I. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 2 (number 19) ( limited preview in the Google book search).
• Gabriele von Glasenapp : The fairy tales of the Austrian children's book author Siegfried Abeles. In: Gunda Mairbäurl u. a. (Ed.): Childhood, childhood literature, children's literature: studies on the history of Austrian literature; Festschrift for Ernst Seibert . Vienna: Praesens, 2010 ISBN 978-3-7069-0644-9 , pp. 111–127
• Helge-Ulrike Hyams , Klaus Klattenhoff, Klaus Ritter, Friedrich Wißmann (eds.): Jewish children's life in the mirror of Jewish children's books . Oldenburg: Bis-Verlag, 1998 ISBN 3-8142-0644-4 (three books)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gabriele von Glasenapp: Die Märchenerzählungen , 2010, p. 113
2. ^ Norbert Abeles , at the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism
3. ↑ Albert Lichtblau: Interview with Norbert Abeles (June 28, 1998) ( Freie Universität Berlin ) (accessed March 30, 2018)
4. ↑ Gabriele von Glasenapp: The fairy tale stories , 2010