Svend Borberg

Svend Borberg (born April 8, 1888 in Copenhagen ; † October 7, 1947 there ) was a Danish writer , editor, publicist and theater critic. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Sigurd Hjaltland and Mr. Stick.

Life

Svend Borberg came from the small nobility of North Jutland on his mother's side, and his father worked as a doctor in Copenhagen. Svend Borberg, a supporter of Sigmund Freud's theories , studied from 1907 at the Metropolitan Koln in Copenhagen and graduated in 1908 as cand. Phil. from. He traveled to Paris , among other places, and wrote his first poem Verdensspejlet in 1908 . Its first publication in 1910 was the prose poem Liliths bog (Eng. The Book of Lilith ), which was written in the old Danish Bible style.

In 1920 he wrote his first play Ingen (Eng. Nobody ), which was one of the first Danish plays to break with the traditional form and treat the inhumanity of war as a modern version of the Odysseus legends. In the following years Svend Borberg worked for various newspapers and magazines in Copenhagen. From 1924 he wrote theater reviews and philosophical and cultural-historical essays and in the late 1920s came into contact with Ruth Berlau , who later became Bertolt Brecht's lover , whom he adored. He promoted her career as an actress and helped her write early reports.

In 1934, Cirkus Juris was a satirical piece about justice that also dealt with Freud's theory of the psyche . The tragedy Synder og Helgen (Eng. Sinner and Saint ) from 1939 dealt with a meeting between Don Quixote and Don Juan . The latter is portrayed as the eponymous sinner with the dream of a saint who confronts women with unattainable ideal demands. The tragedy made Borberg known beyond Denmark's borders. The German premiere of Sinner and Saint took place on April 4, 1941 at the State Playhouse in Hamburg with Stig von Nauckhoff and Helmuth Gmelin in the leading roles. At the Schillertheater in Berlin, Will Quadflieg took on the role of Don Juan in a second production in 1942. In 1942 Svend Borberg wrote a biography about the Danish actress Bodil Ipsen .

In 1940 Denmark was occupied by the German Wehrmacht . Svend Borberg was culturally committed to Nazi Germany until 1945 . In March 1942 he was the signatory of the deed of foundation of the European Writers' Union for Denmark in Weimar , which Joseph Goebbels was supposed to build up as a competitor to the PEN Club . Svend Borberg acted as spokesman for Denmark within the ESV. At the same time, he saw himself in the 1940s as a mediator between Nazi Germany and Denmark and was awarded the Humboldt Medal of the German Academy in Munich in 1940 for services to German-Danish relations.

In the course of the review of members of the Danish Writers 'Association ( Dansk Forfatterforening ) by the Association's so-called Court of Honor ( Æresretten ) from December 1945, Svend Borberg was expelled from the Danish Writers' Association in 1947. As early as 1946 he had been excluded from the Danish Dramatists Association ( Danske Dramatikeres Forbund ).

Svend Borberg died in Copenhagen in 1947 and was buried in the Mariebjerg Cemetery in Gentofte . After his death, Borberg's work was viewed negatively for a long time in connection with his followers. It was not until the 1970s that he began to work again with his oeuvre.

family

Svend Borberg was married to Jonna Bülow for the first time , their child Claus von Bülow was born in 1926. The divorce took place in 1930. Svend Borberg's second marriage was from 1932 to Eleonara Ibsen, a granddaughter of the writers Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson .

plant

• Liliths bog ( The Book of Lilith , Novelle, 1910)
• Ingen ( nobody , drama, 1920)
• Cirkus juris. Eller, de siamesike Tvillinger. Et Tankespil (1935)
• Synder and Helgen. Tragedie. (1939)
  • Sinner and saint (Ü. Hermann Kiy and Herbert A. Frenzel ; 1942)
• The boat. Play from the Faroe Islands in 4 acts (Herbert A. Frenzel; 1943)
• Bodil Ipsen (biography, 1942)

Awards

• 1934: 2nd prize in the playwright competition with Cirkus Juris
• 1940: Humboldt Medal from the German Academy in Munich for services to German-Danish relations
• 1941: Henrik Steffens Prize
• Emma Bærentzen's legacy

literature

• Herbert A. Frenzel: About the poet and his work . In: Svend Borberg: sinners and saints . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1944, pp. 9-13.

Web links

• Svend Borberg's grave at gravsted.dk