Werner Kraft

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Werner Kraft (born May 4, 1896 in Braunschweig , † June 14, 1991 in Jerusalem ) was a German-Israeli librarian , literary scholar and writer of Jewish origin. After emigrating from Hanover, he lived in Jerusalem from 1934 until his death and, as a writer who wrote exclusively in German, embodied the “life of the German language in Jerusalem” alongside his friends Gershom Scholem , Ludwig Strauss and Ernst Simon .

Life

origin

Werner Kraft comes from both his mother and father's side from a Jewish family. “My father was a good man and he was everything to me. He comes from Calbe an der Saale ”, he writes at the beginning of his memoirs“ Spiegelung der Jugend ”. “My mother comes from Hanover . She was powerful. Because my father had no luck in the shops, she was responsible for the family. "Eduard Kraft (1855–1916) initially lived as a merchant in Elberfeld . Melancholy visited him, precisely because he was so happy and spent a long time on the Rhine had lived ”. The mother Else, b. Isenstein (1868–1923) was the daughter of the Hanoverian merchant Julius M. Isenstein (1834–1914) and his wife Anna Isenstein, b. Rosenhain (1839–1926), whose grave is preserved in the Jewish cemetery on the Strangriede . The grandfather's "silk, manufactory and fashion goods store IM Isenstein" was located in the center of Hanover from 1871 to 1881 at Packhofstrasse 13 (previously, from 1866, at Seilwinderstrasse 12). The "Hannoversche Holzstifte-Fabrik Isenstein", which also belonged to the grandfather, was located in the Hanoverian Oststadt (in Cellerstraße 135, from 1887 in Nikolaistraße 14 and 1909–1914 in Steinriede 4). In 1896, his father, Eduard Kraft , ran a "glass, porcelain and earthenware, gold and toy store" in the city center of Braunschweig , in Bohlweg 39/40 (corner of Hagenscharrn ). It is the birthplace of Werner Kraft.

Childhood, youth and school days

“I was born in Braunschweig in 1896, in the center of the city, on Bohlweg, but I have no vivid memories of this city and was only there for days later. When I was five years old, my parents moved to Hanover. I was at home there, I grew up there, plant-like. "

In Hanover, the Kraft family lived mainly in the Oststadt district: Rambergstrasse, Alte Celler Heerstrasse, Lavesstrasse and Fundstrasse were the addresses. In contrast to his rather practical brother Fritz Kraft (1894–1917), who was two years older than him, the dreamy Werner developed a passion for reading:

"I read and read, Sigismund Rüstig, the cabin boy from Norderney, Karl May (...), the Count of Monte Christo , I read the ' Battle for Rome ' by Felix Dahn breathlessly (...), the 'Wiskottens' by Rudolf Herzog ( ...). I read 'Jörn Uhl' by Gustav Frenssen and was thrilled. (…) I also read the wretched novels by Annie Wothe , who conveyed the gilded life of the officers, the Uhlans and the citizens, including me. The highest chief of this Uhlan regiment was Wilhelm II. The Kaiser came to Hanover once a year and traveled through the city on horseback at the head of his regiment. (...) I didn't just read, I lived. In winter the meadows of the marsh were flooded and we skated in wide arcs. In summer we went to the Eilenriede on Sunday , after tax thief , to the Kirchröder tower, in the zoo . The deer in the zoo ate out of hand, the chestnut trees were in bloom. There was dinner there, from a large package with sandwiches, someone had to carry it and didn't want to, then back through the dark forest, singing. "

From 1906 to 1914 he attended the Leibniz School in the Alte Celler Heerstraße (next to the court prison, on today's Weißenkreuzplatz) and passed the Abitur in 1914. His classmates included u. a. Ernst Blumenthal (later a businessman in Stockholm) and the later doctor Harald Berkowitz . In his memoirs, Kraft wrote about his school days:

“At the beginning of the quinta, I went to the Leibniz School on Alte Cellerheerstrasse. (...) I see my classmates on a class picture. Some fell in World War I. (...) I see myself with a student hat and brown hair bulging out. I was a rather shy boy. Everything fell to me, except drawing and singing, at the same time I learned with pleasure. (...) The school stood next to the prison, which was surrounded by high walls, it wasn't one. At one point on the wall a little tree had taken root and held up. Through the class window you could see the courtyard where the convicts were walking. "

The reading of the child and adolescent Werner Kraft gradually changed in a certain direction:

“I devoured all of the literature and poetry of that time, but gradually two figures emerged from the many figures, some of whom were important and some - because I did not yet have the right judgment - two figures that were of decisive importance for my entire intellectual life Have become life. The first was the poet Rudolf Borchardt , whom I read with real enthusiasm and whom I still consider to be a very great poet, regardless of his ideas of German cultural nationalism (...). And the second of these characters was Karl Kraus , whom I found at what I would say was a decisive moment in world history, namely in 1914, at the beginning of the war, when I was 18 years old. I had read individual issues of the ' Fackel ' before, like so many other things, but with this first issue that I read and in the 1914 speech 'In this great time that I still knew, how it was so small was' appeared, my position on this man was decided. "

Military service, studies and training as a librarian

In 1913 he made the acquaintance of Theodor Lessing in the bookstore Ludwig Ey at the Hanoverian Steintor , who gave the pupil decisive impetus and with whom he would remain connected until his death in 1933. Lessing also brokered Kraft's first publication in the journal Die Aktion , edited by Franz Pfemfert , a review of Rudolf Borchardt's poem Wannsee and Stefan George's poetry book Der Stern des Bundes . For half a year he tried his hand at an apprenticeship as a banker at Dresdner Bank in Hanover, whose director Julius L. Isenstein (1856–1929) was a relative on his mother's side:

“The apprentices first worked in accounting. One sat on high swivel chairs in front of enormous account books in which infinite numbers had to be entered. That was sad enough, at least for me, for others it was the beginning of the ascent. The end of the month was the saddest, when errors appeared in the huge columns of numbers, which then continued page after page. They were called tapeworms, they had to be found, and the search lasted until late at night. I only lasted half a year ... "

In 1915 he began studying German and French philology and philosophy in Berlin with his cousin, the poet Paul Kraft (1896–1922).

“In Berlin we, Paul and I, heard everything you hear together, as long as you haven't finally decided. [...] We read, lived, loved. We sat in the grand round room of the Prussian State Library . We exchanged books after books. There were also books that you did not get, so that, Yearbook for intermediate sexual stages ' of Magnus Hirschfeld , with an essay on George, and never later I got this essay, whose subject matter was certainly strange read. "I can't give you that," said the very amusing officer in the check-out, "otherwise I'll be shot like Robert Blum."

In Berlin he also made friends with Walter Benjamin and Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem . Here he met the writer Rudolf Borchardt, whom he admired, for the first time . In 1916 he became a soldier, although he was spared the so-called steel bath at the front. From 1916 to 1919 he served as a medical soldier in Hanover, most of the time in the Wahrendorff institutes, in the so-called hospital for war hysterics and war neurotics (now the Wahrendorff Clinic ) in Ilten near Hanover, a service that brought the twenty-year-old to the verge of suicide. His friendship with Theodor Lessing and reading the magazine Die Fackel by the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus , as well as the books by Rudolf Borchardt helped him to survive - Kraus and Borchardt soon became his spiritual guiding stars - both are known to be men of Jewish origin who only relate to this of their origin would like to confess:

“Everything pulled at me: Borchardt with his enthusiasm for war, Karl Kraus with his radical rejection of war, George , who in his poem 'The War' was both for and against, Paul in his instinctive security, Theodor Lessing, who gave me his hateful poems read against the German intellectuals who had committed themselves to the war, especially against Thomas Mann. "

His older brother Fritz Kraft, active in the Zionist movement in Hanover at an early age, also became a soldier. As a member of the Imperial Levant Corps , he fought against British troops in Palestine. In 1917 he did not return from a patrol near Jerusalem and went missing.

After the war, Werner Kraft was able to continue his studies in Freiburg im Breisgau from 1919 to 1920 together with the sisters Toni and Erna Halle, whom he had met in 1916 in the circle of Gerhard Scholem in Jena ; u. a. he heard philosophy from Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger :

“I didn't get to know Husserl personally, I was too young for that. But I've been in his lectures, and those lectures have been a real revelation to me. It was there that I learned for the first time - even if I did not continue it later - what philosophy is in the strict sense. This man's sober passion just had a tremendous effect on me. (...) Heidegger was completely ascetic. No political word came out of his mouth. (…) While speaking, his gaze was directed to the earth, with slow development of the trains of thought. And in the end, to everyone's surprise, he sometimes pointed out something mysterious that was at the center of philosophy, something like: Eros. Which of course gave rise to extraordinary amusement among us young students. (…) These lectures were very enriching and complemented what Husserl offered in a completely different sense. Because Heidegger made term analyzes that were very fruitful. "

In order to learn a bread-and-butter profession, he trained as a librarian from 1920 to 1926 , initially in the upper class. In 1922 he married Erna Halle (their son Paul Caspar [later: Shaul] was born in 1923). From 1922 to 1926 he worked at the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig . In Leipzig, Werner and Erna Kraft lived together with Erna's sister Toni Halle - at that time a teacher at the Leipzig Israelite Girls' School - on Floßplatz. In 1925 he received his doctorate in Frankfurt am Main on The Popess Johanna , an investigation into the history of the subject (with a focus on Rudolf Borchardt's drama 'Annunciation') with Professor Franz Schultz (1877–1950), in which Walter Benjamin failed his habilitation in the same year, and completed that Higher library service exam.

Library council in Hanover

His position at the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig was not extended, but in 1928 - surprisingly - his application to the formerly Royal and Provincial Library (today's Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library ) in his hometown of Hanover was successful. After his application to the State Library in Lisbon for a position in Coimbra had been unsuccessful, he wrote in his memoirs:

“In 1927 I didn't find a job as a librarian in Coimbra, but in Hanover. She was life sentence and quit in 1933. I owe it to two staunch Democrats. One, a senior German official in Hanover, took his own life when Hitler came to power. "

He was appointed library councilor under director Otto Heinrich May , who, for anti-Semitic reasons, did not approve of his position, but it was enforced by the provincial committee, the highest service authority. The enlarged family - their daughter Else (later Alisa) was born in 1929 - moved into a new apartment in Hanover's Tiestestrasse near Geibelplatz. There followed five maybe happy, but definitely satisfied years in Hanover. He resumed the friendly relationship with Theodor Lessing , met the Eckernförde writer Wilhelm Lehmann , in Berlin he attended the revered poet Else Lasker-Schüler and the lectures of Karl Kraus . And during this time he began to publish a series of magazine articles about his 'favorites' among German poets, such as the Swabian peasant poet Christian Wagner , Goethe, Stefan George, Karl Kraus, Franz Kafka and the Baltic German enlightener Carl Gustav Jochmann , whose forgotten work he rediscovered in the library. Even so, the Jewish Library Council felt isolated:

“In my office you were collegial, but the distance was always palpable, especially at the regulars' table, where librarians, archivists and museum directors met once a month for beer and politics and jokes that made you cry rather than laugh. Here again, although on the smallest scale, I saw that the individuals were what they were, more or less serious people who inevitably turned into the collective of the masses when they met. "

Dismissal from service and emigration - exile and home in Jerusalem

Dismissed from service as a Jew in 1933 under the law for the restoration of the civil service , he emigrated with his family via Stockholm and London, initially to Paris , where he met Maximilien Rubel , who later came from Czernowitz and would later become the French editor of Marx . Together they published a small magazine. In the Bibliothèque nationale he happened to meet Walter Benjamin , now also an exile:

“I saw him again in the Year of Terror, 1933, in Paris in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and wrote to him. We were both changed, changed. The past was the thousand years for which Hitler prepared himself, life was mentally and physically restricted to a minimum. Everything was deeply serious, hopeless, but also ripe for a start. No more aesthetics, everything society and politics. [...] We saw each other almost every day, pieces of paper wandered from table to table. We also saw each other in the café, we walked through the streets. "

They soon found that they were dealing with the same writer: Franz Kafka . Benjamin wrote to his friend Gershom Scholem in Jerusalem in 1934 :

“Kafka's name prompts me to write to you that I have taken up - aloof - contact with Werner Kraft. He saw me at the Bibliothèque Nationale and then wrote to me. I was surprised to read some of his works that I cannot deny approval or respect. Two of them are attempts at commentary on short Kafka's pieces, cautious and by no means insensitive. No doubt that he understood a lot more about the matter than Max Brod . "

From 1934 he lived with his family in Jerusalem , on Alfasi Street in the Rechavia district . He found work only with difficulty in his bread-and-butter job as a librarian (1936–1942 as a librarian at the Center de Culture Française and from 1947 to 1956 in the antiquities department of the Rockefeller Museum) and was only able to establish himself as a freelance writer and essayist in German from 1956 after his retirement .

He seems to have had little reference to the pioneer life and the kibbutz movement . In May 1935 I was invited to Beth Sera , a kibbutz founded by German Jews in the Jordan Valley south of the Sea of ​​Galilee . Kraft was supposed to give a lecture on Franz Kafka there . In two letters to Maximilien Rubel he described his impressions: “Beth Sera. A forced, senseless, heroic community life in which I couldn't live. Everything about these people is admirable at such commitment, but their minds are in danger of withering. Everything about me is ordinary, but my spirit is strengthened. ”(May 4, 1935) With this community life, which remains so alien to the intellectual, the landscape does not reconcile him. “Palestine is a very beautiful country. The light, in the appearance of the simple, cold colors of the landscape, is no less heroic than the life of the people in the Kewuzot, one of whom - Bath Sera at Daganja near Tiberias - I've seen babe! And yet I couldn't live like that. "(May 9, 1935)

The force, more inclined to city life, had a circle of friends of predominantly German-speaking Jews (mostly " Jeckes " ) in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv . a. Gershom Scholem , the poet Ludwig Strauss , the pedagogue Ernst Simon , the "street-sweeping philosopher" Gustav Steinschneider (1899–1981, grandson of the founder of the scientific Hebrew bibliography Moritz Steinschneider ), his wife Toni Halle (1890–1964) (founder and director of the “New high school” in Tel Aviv, today's Tichon Hadash High School), which belonged to Ludwig Wittgenstein's friend and architect Paul Engelmann , Else Lasker's pupil , Martin Buber , the librarian Harry Timar and the poet Tuvia Rübner .

A letter that the Swiss diplomat and historian Carl Jacob Burckhardt wrote to his friend, the writer Max Rychner , on November 19, 1962 , reflects the mood in this group of German-Jewish emigrants. It is a report on Burckhardt's visit to Israel in the fall of 1962 and describes a meeting with Gershom Scholem, Ernst Simon, Werner Kraft and Kurt Blumenfeld in Scholem's library in Rechavia:

“There, in the precious library of the thoroughly experienced, witty [Gershom] Scholem, a dozen professors and writers are gathered, all of them speak German, all of them speak of Germany, of German memories, German literature, yes, German literary policy […], they each destroy any former or still living opponent and raise any chosen one to the stars. It's like it was 50 years ago, they know just as much as they did then, they are brilliant and formulate strikingly, but something completely new has been added that they don't want to admit: homesickness, a deep homesickness that transfigures even their critical utterances. Even the cautiously distinguished W [erner] Kraft, the shiny Krausianer, who greets you [= Rychner] with many others, is wistful and his definitions made of sharp-edged material are very soft on the edges. There is no need for vengeance in the people of this group. It is not the case with everyone. "

German-language writer and essayist in Jerusalem

Werner Kraft did not return to Germany or even to Hanover - except on numerous trips; he became an Israeli citizen in 1948.

“In Palestine and then later in Israel I continued the poetic existence that I developed as a poet of the German language, or originally that was my own as a poet of the German language, and felt unable to change the language. My close friends like Gerhard Scholem and Ernst Simon and others regretted this, but they gradually accepted it in silence. And when they then heard that in 1945 I did not immediately flee to return to Germany, but continued my life here, even they were satisfied. "

Several visitors from Germany have described the “enchanted overgrown apartment on the ground floor, to which an external staircase led down steeply” from Alfasi Street. As an Israeli citizen and German poet who “had no longer found the connection to Hebrew poetry and literature” , he lived a life in Jerusalem devoted exclusively to the German language. His friend, the pedagogue Rudolf Lennert , characterized this 'island existence' in an article in the magazine “Neue Sammlung”, a review of Kraft's essay volumes “Word and Thought” and “Moments of Poetry” as follows:

“Most of these essays are aperçus 'on the occasion of ...', but they are never done for the sake of ingenuity, but in the way you can suddenly 'pause' and look up to your bookshelf when reading slowly and intensely; semi-loud meditations, but in their sum an unheard-of 'school of reading'. It is half of German literature, between Klopstock and Brecht, that passes this lonely reader in the city of Jerusalem, with few glimpses of what is even older and what is non-German; no longer actually 'literature', but language itself, which the speaker can seize even without their will. "

These visitors from Germany, which have been increasing in number since the 1970s, include: a. the librarian Paul Raabe , the literary scholar and translator Friedhelm Kemp (Munich), the Karl Kraus editor and museum director Friedrich Pfäfflin (Munich / Marbach), the Germanist and critic Jörg Drews (Bielefeld / Munich) - he took care of between 1974 and 1986 the publication of four books by Krafts in the Munich publisher edition text + kritik -, the Germanist Uwe Pörksen (Freiburg / Breisgau), the writer Peter Härtling , the chief editor of the Munich CH Beck publishing house Ernst-Peter Wieckenberg, the Cologne photographer Georg Heusch and the Collector Volker Kahmen, the later founders of the Werner Kraft Archive (see below), the Munich literary scholar and lawyer Reinhard Merkel , the photographer Herlinde Koelbl , the journalist Ariane Thomalla, the Lüneburg literary scholar Werner H. Preuss, the Braunschweig poet Georg Oswald Cott and the Göttingen publisher Thedel von Wallmoden . in one way or another encouraged the publication of Kraft's works in Germany.

As a German-language writer living in Jerusalem, Werner Kraft's regular trips to Germany, but also to Austria, Switzerland and other countries in Central Europe, where his friends lived and where he tried to establish his first publishing connections, were important, because his drawers in the Alfasi Street were, so to speak, full of manuscripts, created during the period of isolation from 1934 to 1945. Since the first trip to Europe after the war in 1951, which took him and his wife Erna to Lüneburg (to his friend Hubert Breitenbach), Hanover (to regulate his pension claims ) and Klein-Wittensee (to Wilhelm Lehmann ), these several months of trips were repeated regularly between 1953 and 1982. With numerous writers, friends and acquaintances, but also strangers who wrote to him after reading his articles, essays or books to Jerusalem, he began a lively correspondence. He often wrote his letters on aerograms , these feather-light airmail letters whose space was limited and whose margins he also provided with comments in his legible handwriting.

Since 1955, over 40 book publications have been recorded in German-speaking countries: poetry, prose, essays, literary criticism (about Kraus, Borchardt, Kafka, Jochmann, Hofmannsthal, George, Heine, Goethe). His autobiography Spiegelung der Jugend was published in 1973. He was editor of writings by Heine, Kraus, Lasker-Schüler, Ludwig Strauss, Johann Gottfried Seume and Carl Gustav Jochmann . Approx. 500 publications in German-language magazines and newspapers are listed in the Werner Kraft Bibliography (see below): reviews, essays, poems, prose and aphorisms. Numerous prizes and honors crowned his life's work in his later years, so u. a. 1966 the literature prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and in 1971 the Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose of the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt. Werner Kraft died at the 'biblical age' of 95 years. His grave is in the cemetery of Kibbutz Tzora (20 km from Jerusalem near Bet Shemesh ), where his daughter Alisa Tibon lives. In 1983, German readers of his works (around Georg Heusch and Volker Kahmen) founded the Werner Kraft Archive e. V. in Cologne and Rheinbach, which has been in the Hombroich Literature and Art Institute ( Stiftung Insel Hombroich ) in Neuss since 2003, and since 1996 also as part of the estate in the German Literature Archive in Marbach . Between 1983 and 1996, Georg Heusch Verlag published collected works in individual editions in nine volumes and one record . In the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover, his place of work from 1928 to 1933, the Werner Kraft Bibliography has been an online database since 2003 listing the literature by and about Werner Kraft (see web links). Exhibitions on his biography and work took place in 1986, 1996, 2000 and 2008 in Hanover, Marbach, Berlin, Wolfenbüttel, Braunschweig and Leipzig. In 1997, the state capital Hanover named a street in the Misburg district - near Heinrich-Böll-Weg and Kafkastraße (which would have made him happy) - after Werner Kraft. However, it is currently (2015) not yet built on (access from the “Kafkastraße” tram station on line 7).

As the maxim of an 'Israeli citizen of the German language', Werner Kraft described his life experience in his memoirs "Spiegelung der Jugend" in the following words:

“Only after 1933 did I finally and forever know that I was not a German, that I was a Jew. He was now dictated by a criminal force that the Jews belong to the German people only through language. What a sign on the wall that was already smeared with blood! Just through the language that murdered that violence before it murdered people! I have never given up this language, I have always considered it to be a commission, against which there was no objection, to lead my life within the German spirit. "

Awards and honors

Works

  • Word from the void. Selected poems. [I.] Jerusalem: Manfred Rothschild Verlag 1937.
  • Poems II . Jerusalem: self-published 1938.
  • Poems III . Jerusalem: Palestine Literary Guild 1946.
  • Figure of hope. Selected poems 1925–1953 . Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider 1955.
  • Karl Kraus . Contribution to the understanding of his work . Salzburg: Otto Müller 1956.
  • Word and thought. Critical reflections on poetry . Bern, Munich: Francke 1959.
  • The confusion. A novel . Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 1960. - Italian edition: Il garbuglio. Un romanzo. Traduzione di Claudio Magris e Maria Donatella Ponti. Milano: Adelphi 1971.
  • Rudolf Borchardt . World of poetry and history . Hamburg: Claassen 1961.
  • Moments of poetry. Critical considerations . Munich: Kösel 1964.
  • Conversations with Martin Buber . Munich: Kösel 1966.
  • Franz Kafka . Penetration and mystery . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1968. (Library Suhrkamp. Volume 211.)
  • Rebels of the spirit . Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne, Mainz: Kohlhammer 1968.
  • Time out of joint. Records . Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 1968.
  • Carl Gustav Jochmann and his circle. On German intellectual history between the Enlightenment and the Vormärz . Munich: CH Beck 1972.
  • Coped with the present. Old and new poems . Darmstadt: Bläschke 1973.
  • Reflection of the youth . With an afterword by Jörg Drews . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1973. (Library Suhrkamp. Vol. 356.) New edition: Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verl. 1996. (Fischer Taschenbuch. 12723) ISBN 3-596-12723-8
  • The naysayer's yes. Karl Kraus and his spiritual world . Munich: edition text + kritik 1974.
  • The dying poem. 1972-1975 . Frankfurt am Main: Corvus Verlag 1976. (Colloquium poeticum. Volume 4.)
  • The Chandos letter and other articles on Hofmannsthal . With a bibliography of all publications by Werner Kraft, compiled by Manfred Schlösser. Darmstadt, Berlin: Agora Verlag 1977. (Erato-Druck. 16.)
  • A handful of truth. 1967-1974 . Salzburg: Otto Müller 1977.
  • About poetry and prose. Essays on literature . Frankfurt am Main: Corva Verlag. 1979. (Colloquium criticum. Vol. 1.)
  • Stefan George . Editor: Jörg Drews. Munich: edition text + kritik 1980.
  • Heine the poet . Munich: edition text + kritik 1983.
  • This world. Late poems 1976–1983 . Bonn: Heusch 1984.
  • Austrian lyric poet. From Trakl to Lubomirski. Essays on literature . Eisenstadt, Vienna: Edition Roetzer 1984.
  • Fine things in poetry and prose . Bonn: Heusch 1985.
  • Little things . Bonn: Heusch 1985.
  • 36 contemporaries . [Poems.] Bonn: Heusch 1985.
  • Goethe. Repeated reflections from five decades . Munich: edition text + kritik 1986.
  • Scraps of truth. Records 1985–1987 . Bonn: Heusch 1988.
  • Heart and mind. Collected essays on German literature . Vienna, Cologne: Böhlau 1989. (Literature and life. New series. Vol. 35.) ISBN 3-205-05010-X
  • Kafka again . Bonn: Heusch 1990.
  • Sentences and approaches . Bonn: Heusch 1991.
  • Nothing. Last poems . Bonn: Heusch 1996.
  • One fine day: poetry and prose . Selected by Volker Kahmen and Friedrich Pfäfflin. With pictures by Ulrich Erben. Marbach am Neckar: German Schiller Society 1996. (Marbacher Magazin. 75th booklet)

Published correspondence

  • Martin Buber : Correspondence from seven decades in 3 volumes . Ed. And incorporated. by Grete Schaeder . Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider.
    • Vol. 1: 1897-1918 (1972). With a foreword by Ernst Simon and a biographical outline as an introduction by Grete Schaeder. In it Martin Buber to Werner Kraft: Letter No. 345 (Buber to Kraft, Heppenheim, March 15, 1917), No. 350 (Buber to Kraft, Heppenheim, March 20, 1917). Werner Kraft to Martin Buber: Letter No. 344 (Kraft to Buber, Ilten, March 11, 1917), No. 346 (Kraft to Martin Buber, Ilten, March 17, 1917).
    • Vol. 3: 1938-1965 (1975). In it Martin Buber to Werner Kraft: Letter No. 83 (Buber an Kraft, Jerusalem, May 17, 1946), No. 327 (Buber an Kraft, Jerusalem, March 12, 1955), No. 329 (Buber an Kraft, Jerusalem, March 17, 1955.). Werner Kraft to Martin Buber: Letter No. 86 (Kraft to Buber, Jerusalem, June 22, 1946), No. 328 (Kraft to Buber, Jerusalem, March 12, 1955.), No. 533 (Kraft to Martin Buber, Jerusalem , November 6, 1963).
  • Walter Benjamin : Letters . Edited and annotated by Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno . Vol. 1-2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1966. ISBN 3-518-40540-3 . - New edition: 1978 (edition suhrkamp. 930). 2nd edition 1993. - In it Benjamin to Werner Kraft: letters nos. 239, 243, 246, 252, 259, 270, 271, 274, 275, 281 from the years 1934 to 1936.
  • Benjamin about Kafka . Texts, letters, records. Edited by Hermann Schweppenhäuser . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981 (Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. 341) - Darin pp. 93–99: From the correspondence with Werner Kraft (pp. 93–97: Kraft an Benjamin, September 16, 1934). ISBN 3-518-07941-7 .
  • Gershom Scholem : Letters to Werner Kraft . Ed. [And with a foreword] by Werner Kraft. With an afterword by Jörg Drews . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1986.
  • Rudolf Borchardt : Collected Letters . Edited by Gerhard Schuster and Hans Zimmermann. Munich: Ed. Tenschert at Hanser.
    • Vol. 4: Letters 1914-1923. Text. Arranged by Gerhard Schuster. 1995. Therein letter No. 277 (Borchardt to Werner Kraft, Monsagrati, June 29, 1914, first printing: Neue Schweizer Rundschau. NF Vol. 22, 1954/55, pp. 254–255), No. 320 (Borchardt an Kraft, Meiningen, May 13, 1916), No. 330 (Borchardt to Kraft, Berlin, November 12, 1916), No. 336 (Borchardt to Kraft, Müllheim, September 17, 1917), No. 358 (Borchardt to Kraft, Berlin, October 23, 1918), no.367 (Borchardt to Kraft, Fallingbostel, November 19, 1919), no.440 (Borchardt letter to Kraft, Monsagrati, February 15, 1923, not sent).
    • Vol. 5: Letters 1924–1930. Text. Arranged by Gerhard Schuster. 1995. In it: Letter No. 502 (Borchardt to Kraft, end of 1925, not sent).
    • Vol. 6: Letters 1931-1935. Text. Arranged by Gerhard Schuster. 1996. Therein Letter No. 761 (Borchardt to Kraft, Saltocchio, April 13, 1933).
  • Between Jerusalem and Hanover. The letters to Curd Ochwadt . Edited by Ulrich Breden and Curd Ochwadt. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004, ISBN 3-89244-745-4 - 78 letters by Kraft from 1962 to 1986. Publishing information from Wallstein-Verlag Review: Thomas Böning in: Die Zeit, February 24, 2005
  • Werner Kraft and Wilhelm Lehmann : Correspondence 1931–1968. Edited by Ricarda Dick. Two volumes. Göttingen: Wallstein 2008. (= 89th publication of the German Academy for Language and Poetry. ) ISBN 978-3-8353-0235-8 . ( [Crisis festival: The correspondence between Werner Kraft and Wilhelm Lehmann. Review.] FR , review. StZ , review. FAZ , review. SZ . )
  • Robert Mächler : "We are all poor devils ...". Letters from and to Robert Mächler about God and the world . Edited and introduced by Gabriele Röwer. Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna: Haupt 2010, ISBN 978-3-258-07531-0 - Darin pp. 367–376: Werner Kraft (1896–1971): librarian, literary scholar and writer (pp. 367–369: Röwer, Gabriele : Introduction: Vita and work; p. 369–370: Werner Kraft in conversation with Robert Mächler; p. 370–374: Letters from Werner Kraft to Robert Mächler (selection) [letters from June 3, 1967, September 4, 1967, 3 October 1967, December 9, 1967, July 27, 1969, March 29, 1970 and May 19, 1971, all from Jerusalem]). Long version of the correspondence as a PDF document on the homepage of the main publishing house
  • Ludwig Greve : Autobiographical writings and letters . Edited by Friedrich Pfäfflin and Eva Dambacher. With an essay by Ingo Schulze. Vol. 1-3. Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag 2013. ISBN 978-3-8353-1216-6 In volumes 2 and 3, 21 letters to Werner Kraft from the years 1958 to 1990 are printed, in the explanations excerpts from letters from Kraft to Ludwig Greve (of which there are 103 received letters in Greve's estate, cf. vol. 3, p. 1023).
  • Friedrich Jenaczek : Draft letter to Werner Kraft, April 6, 1963 . In: Annual literary scholarship of the Josef Weinheber Society. Essays, interpretations, messages from research . Vol. 2 (2010–2012 [2014]) pp. 259–283. ISBN 978-3-643-50445-6 .

Published diaries

  • Conversations with Martin Buber . Munich: Kösel 1966.
  • Diaries 1915–1940, pertaining to Walter Benjamin . Ed .: Volker Kahmen. In: For Walter Benjamin: documents, essays and a draft . Edited by Ingrid and Konrad Scheurmann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1992, pp. 40-54.
  • Diary entries from the years between 1933 and 1940 (about Walter Benjamin ) . In: "What was still buried". Documents, essays and a draft . Edited by Geret Luhr. Berlin: Bostelmann & Siebenhaar 2000 (akte exil. Vol. 2), pp. 175–204. ISBN 3-934189-47-4
  • Excerpts from the diary (1979) for reading Bobrowski . In: Tgahrt, Reinhard: Johannes Bobrowski or Landscape with People . An exhibition of the German Literature Archive in the Schiller National Museum in Marbach am Neckar. Marbach am Neckar 1993 (Marbacher catalogs. 46), pp. 661-662 and p. 705.
  • Else Lasker-Schüler in the diaries 1923–1945 . Selected by Volker Kahmen. In: Klüsener, Erika; Pfäfflin, Friedrich: Else Lasker-Schüler 1869–1945. Marbach am Neckar 1995 (Marbacher Magazin. 71), pp. 337-363.
  • From Paris to Jerusalem. From the diaries 1933–1936 . Selected by Volker Kahmen. In: Werner Kraft. 1896-1991. Arranged by Jörg Drews. Marbach am Neckar. Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1996 (Marbacher Magazin. 75), pp. 51-64.
  • “Borchardt's dream”. From the diary entries 1915–1991 . Zsgest. [and with a preliminary remark] by Gerhard Schuster. In: Rudolf Borchardt . Edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold and Gerhard Schuster in Zsarb. with the Rudolf Borchardt Archive. Munich 2007 (text + review, special volume 2007 = 11/07), pp. 235–247.

As editor

  • Heine . Poem and thought . Selection and epilogue by Werner Kraft. Berlin: Schocken 1936. (Schocken Verlag library. 57.)
  • Else Lasker-Schüler . An introduction to her work and a selection by Werner Kraft. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner 1951. (Lost and Forgotten. 4.)
  • Karl Kraus . An introduction to his work and a selection by Werner Kraft. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner 1952. (Lost and Forgotten. 6.)
  • Recovery. German poetry and prose . A selection by Werner Kraft. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider 1954. (Publication by the German Academy for Language and Poetry, Darmstadt. 4th) - 2nd, expanded edition. 1962.
  • Ludwig Strauss : drive and experience. Stories and records . Introduced and ed. by Werner Kraft. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider 1959. (Publication of the German Academy for Language and Poetry Darmstadt. 18.)
  • Else Lasker-Schüler : Verses and prose from the estate . With an afterword and notes, ed. by Werner Kraft. Munich: Kösel 1961. (Else Lasker-Schüler: Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 3.) - New edition: Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1996. - Paperback edition: Munich: dtv 1986. (German 10648.) (Else Lasker-Schüler: Collected works in eight volumes. Vol. 8.)
  • Johann Gottfried Seume : prose writings . With an introduction by Werner Kraft. Cologne: Melzer 1962. New edition: Darmstadt: Melzer 1974.
  • Ludwig Strauss : seals and writings . Edited by Werner Kraft. (Foreword by Martin Buber.) Munich: Kösel 1963.
  • Carl Gustav Jochmann : The setbacks of poetry and other writings . Edited by Werner Kraft. Frankfurt a. M .: Insel Verlag 1967. (collection insel. 26.)
  • Gershom Scholem : Letters to Werner Kraft . Ed. [And with a foreword] by Werner Kraft. With an afterword by Jörg Drews. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1986.
  • Julien Green : Christine . Translated from the French by Werner Kraft. Bonn: Heusch 1987.

Literature (selection)

  • Ernst Simon : The yes from the no. Werner Kraft on his 70th birthday (May 4, 1966) . In: Simon: Decision on Judaism. Essays and lectures . Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 283-292 (First in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Fernausgabe, May 5, 1966).
  • Rudolf Lennert: About the life of the German language in Jerusalem . In: Neue Sammlung 6 (1966), pp. 617–627 (about Ludwig Strauss , Ernst Simon and Werner Kraft).
  • "I'm banned to my point". Werner Kraft in conversation with Jörg Drews . - Munich: edition text + kritik 1978.
  • Werner Kraft, self-thinker . Ed .: Raimund Dehmlow. Barsinghausen: C & P Druck und Verl. 1986. (Laurentius special edition 1986).
  • Herlinde Koelbl : Jewish portraits. Photographs and interviews . Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 1989 (paperback edition 1998). In it: pp. 139–141: Werner Kraft (interview and portrait). P. 286: Short biography.
  • "What thinks in me, marriage from work and prayer ..." Georg Oswald Cott in conversation with Werner Kraft . In: Die Horen . Jg. 35 (1990), H. 159, pp. 187-198.
  • Jürgen Nieraad: Word and essence. The writer Werner Kraft. On his 95th birthday on May 4, 1991 . In: active word . 41 (1991), pp. 88-101.
  • Werner Kraft, 1896–1991 . Arranged by Jörg Drews . With contributions and texts by Thomas Blume ... With letters, poems and prose texts by Werner Kraft as well as excerpts from his diaries, selected by Volker Kahmen. Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1996. (Marbacher Magazin. 75) (With booklet: One beautiful day.)
  • From Hanover to Jerusalem. Werner Kraft (1896–1991). A biographical approximation of his Hanoverian years . Exhibition on the 100th birthday in the Lower Saxony State Library, May 9 to June 29, 1996. Booklet. Arranged by Ulrich Breden. Hanover 1996.
  • Johannes Graf: From Braunschweig to Jerusalem. The German-Jewish writer Werner Kraft (1896–1991) . In: Gerd Biegel (ed.): Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, information and reports 3-4 / 1996 , pp. 34–45, ISSN  0937-0994
  • Norman-Mathias Pingel: Werner Kraft . In: M. Garzmann, W. Schuegraf (Ed.): Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon - supplementary volume , Braunschweig 1996, p. 83
  • Uwe Pörksen : The dowser. Memory of Werner Kraft . Stuttgart: Steiner 1997 (Treatises of the Class of Literature, Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz. 1997 year, No. 2).
  • Walter Helmut Fritz : Werner Kraft . In: Fritz, Walter Helmut: What once lived in the spirit. Records . Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn 1999 (Künstlerhaus edition), p. 57.
  • Jörg Drews : Kraft, Werner. In: Christoph König (Ed.), With the assistance of Birgit Wägenbaur u. a .: Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950 . Volume 2: H-Q. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-015485-4 , pp. 999-1001.
  • Georg Oswald Cott : The word guard at the shrine of the book. Encounter with Werner Kraft . In: Braunschweigischer Kalender , year 2005, pp. 59–63.
  • Ulrich Breden: "My employment was for life and ended in 1933". Werner Kraft - librarian, poet, literary critic in Hanover. Series: Reading Room, 28. Niemeyer, Hameln 2008, ISBN 3-8271-8828-8 (therein pp. 54–69: detailed life history)

Radio, television, record

  • "I'm banned to my point". Werner Kraft in conversation with Jörg Drews . Munich: edition text + kritik 1978. Text of an interview, conducted in Jerusalem, broadcast on June 24, 1978 on the television program S 3 (SR / SWF / SDF), repeated on the television program of WDR 3 on February 16, 1979, 10:50 pm.
  • Georg Stefan Troller : Interview with Werner Kraft . ZDF (television), aspects. Broadcast on May 2, 1986 (on the occasion of the 90th birthday).
  • Lothar Pollähne: Werner Kraft . NDR 1 (radio), literature at eight. Broadcast on July 8, 1986.
  • Werner H. Preuss: Write in the void? An encounter with the writer Werner Kraft in Jerusalem . WDR 3 (radio feature). Broadcast on April 16, 1990, 10.30 p.m. - 11 p.m. The same broadcast in the SFB, August 24, 1991.
  • Georg Oswald Cott : Figure of Hope. Werner Kraft - a life for poetry . Radio Bremen, feature. First broadcast on October 17, 1990, 8:05 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Repeat on April 14, 1991, 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. - Contains longer excerpts from GO Cotts' interview with Werner Kraft, printed in 'Die Horen', Issue 159 (1990) pp. 190–198.
  • Georg Oswald Cott : Word from the void. A portrait of the poet and linguist Werner Kraft . NDR 3 (radio). Broadcast on October 29, 1991, 9:05 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
  • Ariane Thomalla: For Werner Kraft's 95th birthday . NDR 3 (radio), texts and characters, the literary journal. Broadcast on May 5, 1991.
  • My word. Werner Kraft reads from his own poems . Sound editing: Christian Dreyer. Typography: Hannes Jähn . Photo: Georg Heusch. Rheinbach: Werner Kraft Archive, 1983. 1 long-playing record (33 / min) - page 1: Word from the void. Always brave. While walking. The string. Lonely. Departure. Penultimate verse. Jerusalem. Song (Brown Hills). On the way. Impossible. Consolation attempt. Homecoming. The wind. Young awakening. Karl Kraus. Grave in Spain. The poet. The same thing. The world. After the war. This world. - Page 2: On the Sinai. The night. Later. Ghosts. The dead. Salutation. Wilted leaves. The children. Figure of hope. Weather. Autumn. The sound. Great night music. Goethe's death. The dying poem. Always. The artist. Song (stay home). Terror. Adamant. Song (The Almond Tree). After U.S. - The sound recordings were made between April 11 and 12, 1983 in Werner Kraft's apartment in Jerusalem and were carried out by Volker Kahmen and Georg Heusch.
  • German odes from Weckherlin to Krolow. Weckherlin, Balde, Fleming, Klaj, Klopstock, Hölty, Schiller, Stolberg, Platen, Hölderlin, Lenau, Huch, Schröder, Kraft, Krolow . Speaker: Peter Lühr, Horst Tappert, Marlene Riphahn, Gert Westphal, Peter Brogle. Freiburg / Br .: Christophorus-Verl. 1965. Speech plate (33 / min). - Then: Kraft, Werner: The rest. Artist: Peter Brogle (1:24 min.).
  • Lyric voices. The library of the poets. 122 authors, 420 poems. 100 years of original poetry . Christiane Collorio (inter alia) (ed.). Munich: Der Hörverlag 2009. - 9 CDs (638 min.), Mono with accompanying book (183 pages). - In it: CD 3: Track 37: Werner Kraft - 38: Bald (1981); 39: This World (1981); 40: The Tears of Things (1981). Publishing information

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Lennert : About the life of the German language in Jerusalem. In: New Collection. Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 617–627, an essay that pays tribute to the three friends Werner Kraft, Ludwig Strauss and Ernst Simon. “The point is (…) that a language and its literature carry on their life, far removed from their soil and, after an inner awakening like this, cannot be compared with any emigration or exile in history; a break that wanted to build a new world with a new language and which had to make all personal relationships with the abandoned one impossible for decades, with the exception of those among closest friends ”(ibid., p. 617). Lennert emphasizes that it is a matter of “the still-life, still-working of the German language 'in Jerusalem'” (p. 618) - a statement that is no longer made almost 50 years later when this group of German-Jewish emigrants died out the following applies: The linguistic island of the 'German language in Jerusalem' has finally expired.
  2. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. With an afterword by Jörg Drews. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1973 (Library Suhrkamp. Vol. 356), p. 7, note the hidden quote from Matthias Claudius ' "At the Grave of My Father"
  3. ↑ a b Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1973, p. 7
  4. ^ Address book, city and business manual of the royal residence city of Hanover and the city of Linden.
  5. ↑ Braunschweig address book for the year 1899.
  6. ↑ Johannes Graf: From Braunschweig to Jerusalem. The German-Jewish writer Werner Kraft (1896–1991). In: Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, information and reports 3-4 / 1996, p. 35.
  7. ^ Frederick Marryat : Sigismund Rüstig, the Bremer Steuermann. A new Robinson. After Capitain Marryat edited freely for the German youth. With 94 pictures [by W. Dickes and Nicholls] in two volumes. Leipzig: Teubner 1843. The original 'Masterman Ready or, the wreck of the Pacific' appeared in 1841. The German first edition by Teubner had 20 editions alone.
  8. ^ Reflection of the youth. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 24.
  9. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from December 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ What is meant is the so-called 'Hope Birch' that grew on the wall of the court prison on Alte Celler Heerstrasse. In addition to Kraft and Theodor Lessing , the Hanoverian writer Albrecht Schaeffer also described the tree in his novel Helianth . Behind the 'desolate giant wall made of red bricks' (Lessing), the 24-time murderer Fritz Haarmann ended in the early morning hours of April 15, 1925 with the guillotine of the executioner.
  11. ↑ Power: Mirroring Youth. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 9
  12. ↑ "I'm banned to my point". Werner Kraft in conversation with Jörg Drews. Munich: edition text + kritik 1978, p. 3
  13. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp. 28-29.
  14. ↑ Werner Kraft: The "Stern des Bundes" and "Wannsee". In: The Action. Vol. 4 (1914), May 3, columns 394-397
  15. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp. 41-42. Kommerzienrat Isenstein's grave is preserved in the Stöcken city cemetery in Hanover (Dept. A 25, No. 8, on the pond near the bridge).
  16. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 41.
  17. ^ Thomas Piotrowski: Kraft, Paul. Born April 28, 1896 Magdeburg, died March 17, 1922 Berlin, poet. In: Magdeburg biographical lexicon. 19th and 20th centuries. Magdeburg: Scriptum Verl. 2002, p. 381
  18. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 42.
  19. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp. 52-64.
  20. ↑ "A young man [= Werner Kraft] somewhere near Hanover, currently a nurse, writes a letter in which the words: '... a soul that has written' mission 'is not vulnerable'." Letter from Karl Kraus to Sidonie Nádherný from Borutin, December 28, 1916. In: Karl Kraus: Letters to Sidonie Nádherný from Borutin 1913–1936. Based on the edition by Heinrich Fischer and Michael Lazarus, new ed. and supplemented by Friedrich Pfäfflin. Göttingen: Wallstein (Library Janowitz. Vol. 6), Vol. 1, p. 470, letter no. 515.
  21. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 51.
  22. ↑ In the preaching hall in the Jewish cemetery on Strangriede in Hanover, large plaques remember the names of 124 war dead, including Fritz Kraft. The war memorial site bears the inscription: "In honor of their sons who died in the World War - the Hanover synagogue community" .
  23. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp. 86-94.
  24. ↑ "I'm banned to my point". Werner Kraft in conversation with Jörg Drews. Munich: ed. Text + kritik 1978, p. 25f.
  25. ↑ Thomas Blume: Intermezzo in Leipzig 1922–1926. In: Werner Kraft. 1896-1991. Arranged by Jörg Drews. Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1996 (Marbacher Magazin. 75), pp. 19-21.
  26. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book. The teachers of the Leipzig Jewish School Works 1912–1942, presented in biograms. Leipzig: Leipziger-Univ.-Verl. 2006 (Leipzig calendar, special volume 2006.1), p. 163f.
  27. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 132.
  28. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp. 132–142 and Ulrich Breden: “My employment was for life and ended in 1933” - Werner Kraft - librarian, poet, literary critic in Hanover. Hameln: Niemeyer 2008 (reading room. Issue 28).
  29. ↑ Photography "Residential buildings of the civil servants' housing association on Tiestestrasse" in: Karl Elkart: Neues Bauen in Hannover. Hanover: Transport Association 1929
  30. ^ [Carl Gustav Jochmann:] About language. Heidelberg: CF Winter 1828. Jochmann's book was published anonymously. - It wasn't until 40 years later, after a long search for a publisher, that Beck Verlag brought out Kraft's Jochmann book: Werner Kraft: Carl Gustav Jochmann und seine Kreis. On German intellectual history between the Enlightenment and the Vormärz. Munich: CH Beck 1972.
  31. ↑ to which u. a. the archive director Georg Schnath and the museum director Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen belonged. Cf. Georg Schnath: An old archivist's memories of the Hanover State Archives from 1920 to 1938. In: Contributions to the history of the state of Lower Saxony. For Hans Patze's 65th birthday. Hildesheim 1984, p. 464.
  32. ↑ Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 133.
  33. ↑ Werner Kraft: From Paris to Jerusalem. From the diaries 1933–1936. Selected by Volker Kahmen. In: Werner Kraft. 1896-1991. Arranged by Jörg Drews. Marbach am Neckar 1996 (Marbacher Magazin. 75), pp. 51-64.
  34. ↑ Werner Kraft: Walter Benjamin behind his letters. In: Mercury. Vol. 21 (1967), Heft 228, p. 230. Cf. also Werner Kraft: Spiegelung der Jugend. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 78.
  35. ^ Benjamin to Scholem, January 18, 1934, in: Walter Benjamin; Gershom Scholem: Correspondence 1933–1940. Edited by Gershom Scholem. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1985 (Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch. 1211), p. 121.
  36. ↑ Kraft, Werner. In: International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945. Editor: Herbert A. Strauss, Werner Röder (among others). Vol. II, Part 1. Munich: Saur 1983, p. 655
  37. ↑ Both quotations from: Ulrich Breden: Werner Kraft - a life outline , in: Between Jerusalem and Hanover. The letters to Curd Ochwadt , ed. by Ulrich Breden and Curd Ochwadt, Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-745-4 , p. 188. For the term Kewuzot used by Kraft, see the etymology of the term kibbutz .
  38. ^ Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem. Childhood memories. Extended version. From the Hebrew by Michael Brocke and Andrea Schatz. Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verl. 1994. In it: p. 81: about Toni Halle, p. 116: about the friendship with Werner Kraft in 1917 and p. 147–148: about Gustav Steinschneider. See also: Gershom Scholem: Letters to Werner Kraft. Edited by Werner Kraft. With a post from Jörg Drews. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1986.
  39. ↑ Ludwig Strauss wrote a beautiful dedication poem to his friend in the mid-1930s: “Yes and no. To Werner Kraft ”. In: Ludwig Strauss: Secret Presence. Poems 1933–1950. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1952. - Werner Kraft later published his works: Ludwig Strauss: Dichtungen und Schriften. Edited by Werner Kraft. With a foreword by Martin Buber. Munich: Kösel 1963.
  40. ↑ Ernst Simon: The yes from the no. Werner Kraft on his 70th birthday (May 4, 1966). In: Simon, Ernst: Decision on Judaism. Essays and lectures. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1966. (Library Suhrkamp; Vol. 641), pp. 283-292.
  41. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book. The teachers of the Leipzig Jewish School Works 1912–1942, presented in biograms. Leipzig: Leipziger-Univ.-Verl. 2006 (Leipziger Calendar, special volume 2006,1), pp. 162–164.
  42. ↑ Elazar Benyoëtz: Paul Engelmann, The Other. A carpet made of names, rolled up in his memory. In: Wittgenstein yearbook. 2001/2002 (2003), pp. 369-427. - See also: Paul Engelmann and Central European Modernism. The way from Olomouc to Israel. Exhibition catalog. Judith Bakacsy (ed.). Vienna, Bozen: Folio Verl. 1999, pp. 68–72: Engelmanns Palestine (Engelmann's circle of acquaintances in Palestine: Friedrich Pater, Werner Kraft, Emil Stein, Elazar Benyoëtz and Gustav Steinschneider).
  43. ^ Else Lasker-Schüler in Werner Kraft's diaries 1923–1945. Selected by Volker Kahmen. In: Erika Klüsener, Friedrich Pfäfflin: Else Lasker-Schüler 1869–1945. Marbach aN 1995 (Marbacher Magazin. 71), pp. 337-363.
  44. ^ Werner Kraft: Conversations with Martin Buber. Munich: Kösel 1966.
  45. ↑ Harry Timar: Heinrich, the car breaks. Poems. St. Michael: Bläschke 1980. The volume is dedicated to Werner Kraft.
  46. ↑ Tuvia Rübner: Speech given on the occasion of Werner Kraft's 85th birthday at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in June 1981. In: Werner Kraft. 1896-1991. Arranged by Jörg Drews. Marbach am Neckar. Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1996 (Marbacher Magazin. 75), pp. 161–168. Tuvia Rübner's memories: “A long short life. From Pressburg to Merchavia ”(Aachen: Rimbaud-Verl. 2004) contain numerous mentions of Werner Kraft: pp. 52–54: First encounter with Werner Kraft, 1942 or 1943; Pp. 59–65: About Werner Kraft and Ludwig Strauss; Pp. 108–109: About Ernst Simon and Gershom Scholem; Pp. 128–132: About the Israeli poet Dan Pagis ; P. 141–142: About the Israeli edition of Werner Kraft's selected essays: “From Lessing to Kafka”, ed. by Tuvia Rübner, Jerusalem 1988 and especially pp. 167–170: the detailed memory of Werner Kraft after his death in 1991.
  47. ^ Carl J. Burckhardt, Max Rychner: Letters 1926–1965. Edited by Claudia Mertz-Rychner. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 1970, pp. 240-244
  48. ↑ "What thinks in me, marriage from work and prayer ..." Georg Oswald Cott in conversation with Werner Kraft. In: Die Horen. Vol. 35 (1990), issue 159, p. 192.
  49. ↑ Arianne Thomalla: "Write to me from Germany". In: Stuttgarter Zeitung, February 17, 1990, p. 50.
  50. ↑ “I'm banned to my point”: Werner Kraft in conversation with Jörg Drews. Munich: Ed. Text & criticism 1978, p. 29
  51. ^ Rudolf Lennert: About the life of the German language in Jerusalem. In: New Collection. 6 (1966), pp. 617-627, here p. 621.
  52. ^ Paul Raabe: Visiting Max Brod. Impressions in Israel 1965. Hameln: Niemeyer 2004 (reading room. Issue 13), p. 24f. (with the facsimile of a letter from Werner Kraft to Paul Raabe from April 19, 1965). The passage about Kraft also changed slightly in: Paul Raabe: My Expressionist Decade. Beginnings in Marbach am Neckar. Zurich 2004, pp. 257–258.
  53. ↑ wallstein-verlag.de
  54. ↑ Uwe Pörksen: The dowser. Memory of Werner Kraft. Stuttgart 1997 (Treatises of the Class of Literature, Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz. 1997, No. 2)
  55. ↑ Peter Härtling: The Wanderer. Darmstadt: Luchterhand 1988, pp. 76–82: contains the description of a visit by Härtling to Werner Kraft in Jerusalem in 1968
  56. ^ Ernst-Peter Wieckenberg: Find again. About an anthology by Werner Kraft. In: Munich Contributions to Jewish History and Culture. 2009, H. 2, pp. 81-97.
  57. ↑ See his dissertation at the University of Munich 1992: Reinhard Merkel: Criminal law and satire in the work of Karl Kraus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1998 (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. 1345. - First edition: Baden-Baden 1994). It bears the printed dedication: “In memoriam Werner Kraft / sine quo non”.
  58. ↑ Herlinde Koelbl: Jewish portraits. Photographs and interviews. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 1989, pp. 139-141.
  59. ↑ Ariane Thomalla: “Write to me from Germany!” A visit to the ninety-three year old writer Werner Kraft, who lives in Jerusalem . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . February 17, 1990, p. 50.
  60. ↑ Werner H. Preuß: Glück auf! Greetings from the depths, Werner Kraft on his 100th birthday. In: stylus. 1996, H. 3 (May), pp. 10–12, a slightly revised excerpt from the radio feature “Writing into the Empty? An encounter with the writer Werner Kraft in Jerusalem ”, WDR 3 (April 16, 1990) and SFB (August 24, 1991).
  61. ↑ Georg Oswald Cott: “What thinks in me, marriage from work and prayer!” Georg Oswald Cott in conversation with Werner Kraft. In: Die Horen. Vol. 35 (1990) H. 159, pp. 187-198. On pp. 190–198: In Hoffen und Harren: Interview with Werner Kraft, conducted on January 5, 1990 in Jerusalem.
  62. ↑ One of the first books of the newly founded Wallstein publishing house in Göttingen was: Leopold Friedrich Günther v. Goeckingk: Songs of Two Lovers and Selected Poems . Edited by Matthias Richter. With an essay by Werner Kraft. Göttingen: Wallstein 1988.
  63. ^ Werner Kraft, Wilhelm Lehmann: Correspondence 1931–1968. Edited by Ricarda Dick. Vol. 1-2. Göttingen: Wallstein-Verl. 2008 (Publications of the German Academy for Language and Poetry. 89)
  64. ↑ Examples and facsimiles in: Werner Kraft: Between Jerusalem and Hanover. The letters to Curd Ochwadt. Edited by Ulrich Breden and Curd Ochwadt . Göttingen 2004. wallstein-verlag.de - Nicolas Berg sees in these aerograms the material form of “paper air conversations” by the emigrant Werner Kraft. Nicolas Berg: Air people. To the story of a metaphor. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2008 (Toldot. 3), p. 177.
  65. ↑ Joav Tibon [Kraft's son-in-law]: Speech at Werner Kraft's funeral, June 16, 1991. In: Werner Kraft. 1896-1991. Arranged by Jörg Drews. Marbach am Neckar. Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1996 (Marbacher Magazin. 75), pp. 180-182.
  66. ↑ Alisa Tibon: My father Werner Kraft. In: Werner Kraft. 1896-1991. Arranged by Jörg Drews. Marbach am Neckar. Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1996 (Marbacher Magazin. 75), pp. 117–121.
  67. ^ Ludwig Janssen: Literature Atlas NRW. An address book for the literary scene. Ed .: Literaturrat Nordrhein-Westfalen e. V. Cologne 1992, p. 477 (Werner Kraft-Archiv) and p. 498 (Georg Heusch Verlag).
  68. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  69. ↑ judentum.net
  70. ^ Helmut Zimmermann: Hanover's street names. Changes since 1997. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter. Vol. 54 (2000 [2002]) pp. 177-189
  71. ^ Reflection of the youth. Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 14.
  72. ↑ Johannes Graf: From Braunschweig to Jerusalem. The German-Jewish writer Werner Kraft (1896–1991) , Braunschweig 1996, p. 44
  73. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Kraft, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German librarian, literary scholar and writer of Jewish origin
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH June 14, 1991
Place of death Jerusalem