Simon Hochberger

Simon Hochberger (approx. 1947)

Simon Hochberger (born April 19, 1906 in Kežmarok , Austria-Hungary ; died December 13, 1947 in Wellington , New Zealand ) was a German- and English-speaking journalist and writer .

Life

Simon Hochberger came from a Jewish family from the Zips . His parents Michael Hochberger (1876–1941) and Frieda (née Storch, 1874–1941) emigrated to Germany shortly after his birth and settled in Essen . The father was there in a commercial position. Sister Selma was born in 1912. Hochberger studied journalism for one semester at the University of Leipzig in 1924 and then switched to the local commercial college , where he trained as an advertising specialist . After studying and training, he is said to have written as a correspondent for various liberal newspapers such as the Kölnische Zeitung , the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung before 1933 . After the seizure of power in 1933, Hochberger moved to Vienna , where he continued to work as a journalist but also as a freelance advertising specialist. Here he married Charlotte Mandowsky (1909–1941) from Hamburg in 1934 , younger sister of the art historian Erna Mandowsky . Shortly after Austria was annexed to Germany in March 1938, Hochberger applied for a visa for the USA for himself and his wife . His parents and sister, who around 1933 from Essen to Leipzig were drawn were, as part of the so-called Poland action as stateless in October 1938 after Poland zwangsausgebürgert and found refuge in Gorlice (formerly in Galicia), where even relatives lived. In March 1939, Hochberger had the chance to flee to England as part of the Jewish Council's rescue operation for persecuted Jewish men in Austria and Germany , from where he tried to continue to emigrate to the USA, but after the start of the Second World War was no longer possible. His wife committed suicide in 1941 when the transports of Jews to the extermination camps began. Hochberger lived a little more than a year in the Kitchener Camp near Sandwich in Kent, which was intended as a reception and transit camp . After the camp was closed and a short stopover in a camp on the Isle of Man , Hochberger was brought to Australia on the Dunera in July 1940 , where he was interned in the Hay , Orange and Tatura camps in South Australia from September 1940 to March 1942 . The prospect of a return transport to England was no longer possible due to the war. From April 1942 to March 1946 he served in a labor battalion in the Australian Army . In July 1946, Hochberger, who had been stateless since the 1920s, was naturalized as a British Subject in Australia . Before his discharge from the army, he was able to resume his journalistic career. When he was offered the position of editor of the New Zealand magazine NZ Jewish Chronicle in the summer of 1947 , he moved to the New Zealand capital Wellington. There he died, completely unexpectedly, on December 13, 1947 of a cardiac thrombosis .

plant

Little is known about Hochberger's early journalistic and literary work. Two columnist articles, a narrative description of the encounter with an Armenian belly dancer in Sarajevo and a humoresque The ominous beard in Austrian magazines that indicate Sid Hochberger as the author, are probably written by him. Works that were important to him, especially those created in Vienna, like almost all of his rescued narrow possessions, were lost on the sea voyage to Australia. After fleeing to England in 1939, Hochberger began to write in English. For the camp magazine The Kitchener Camp Review , he writes a few shorter humorous articles, including a Sketch Illustrated Phrase Book for a show he produced and moderated. In the Australian internment camps, too, he appears to have contributed to the entertainment programs as a writer and director . He wrote lyrics for the German-Australian composer Werner Baer (1914–1992), who came from Berlin and whom Hochberger probably met in the Tatura camp . With the song Sounds of Europe you won a music competition of the Australian Army as a writer and composer in August 1943. Hochberger's songs are dedicated to the struggle against Hitler's army and the hope for the liberation of Europe. In terms of gesture and content, they can be seen as preliminary stages to his epic poem Warsaw Ghetto - Tale of Valor , which he will probably begin to write shortly after the end of the war. In 1946 he became a member of the editorial team at the Jewish monthly The Zionist, published by Aaron L. Patkin in Melbourne . Hochberger also published his own essays there, for example on the Jewish Habima Theater and the pianist Pnina Salzman, who was a guest in Tel Aviv and during a world tour in Melbourne . The poem Warsaw Ghetto - Tale of Valor , published in 1946 by a small Yiddish publisher, attracted further attention for some time in Australia and New Zealand, especially in Jewish communities. Several Australian newspapers had consistently positive reviews. This 'epic poem' - divided into three narrative parts, two short contemplative interim poems and an invoking epilogue - vividly brings to life in several scenes the oppressed life, the brutal terror of the German occupiers and the heroic resistance of the Jewish population imprisoned in the ghetto . The move to New Zealand and the early death meant that this important poem was limited in its effect and that Hochberger and his work, which was fragmented by the circumstances of the time and probably largely lost, was soon forgotten.

literature

• Aron L. Patkin: Simon Hochberger. In: The Zionist. December 1947 / January 1948, p. 23.
• Leonard Bell: The Lost Writer. In: Leonard Bell, Diana Morrow (Eds.): Jewish Lives in New Zealand. Auckland 2012, p. 123.
• Simon Hochberger: Warsaw Ghetto . Ed., Translated and with an afterword by Friedrich Voit. In: Aschkenas , Vol. 30 (1), 2020, pp. 109-149.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On a questionnaire in 1941 Hochberger described his studies and his training: "Studied Economics at the University and Academy of Economics at Leipzig with special courses of technique of commercial propaganda." (National Archive Australia [NAA] A367, C62925, p. 8) .
2. ↑ These newspapers are named by AL Patkin in his obituary for Hochberger ( The Zionist , Dec. 1947 / Jan. 1948, p. 23). The obituary of the NZ Jewish Chronicle (Feb. 1948) also states that he was a member of the editorial team of the Berliner Tageblatt . So far, however, there has been no evidence of these activities.
3. ^ According to (NAA A367, C62925, p. 20).
4. ↑ On Kitchener Camp cf. the excellent website http://www.kitchenercamp.co.uk/ with a lot of documents and information, including some on Hochberger.
5. ↑ The Queen of the Night in Sarajevo. Experience with an Armenian dancer . In: Neues Wiener Journal . October 7, 1934, p. 17f. and the ominous beard . In: Das kleine Blatt (Vienna). May 15, 1935, p. 3f.
6. ↑ A loss list names the last item: "Various books, scripts, literary material / 1934-1938" (Central British Fund for German Jewry, London: A 12361).
7. ↑ http://www.kitchenercamp.co.uk/research/the-kitchener-camp-review/ . Contributions signed by name can be found in the issues for Jun (p. 14), August (p. 16f.), September (p. 13–15 and October (p. 8).
8. ↑ See the hand-made poster for the Hay Fever show , which Hochberger performed in the Hay camp in November 1940, kept in the Jewish Museum of Australia ( http://imu.jewishmuseum.com.au/collections/#browse=enarratives.49 ) .
9. ↑ Werner Baer's estate in the Australian Music Center Archive contains two song compositions based on texts by Hochberger, Underground and Sounds of Europe ( https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6540946 ).
10. ↑ See Albrecht Dümling: The Disappeared Musicians. Jewish refugees in Australia. Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2011, p. 253.
11. ^ The Theater of the Jewish People , in: The Zionist (Melbourne), May 1945, pp. 26f.
12. ^ Notes around Pnina , in: The Zionist (Melbourne), July 1945, pp. 19f.
13. ^ Warsaw Ghetto - Tale of Valor . 'Oyfboy' Publishing: Melbourne 1946, 36 p. (As digital copy: digital.slv.vic.gov.au/dtl_publish/pdf/marc/28/2190005.html).