Wilhelm Sternfeld

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Wilhelm Sternfeld (born February 1, 1888 in Unna , † December 26, 1973 in London ) was a German-British journalist , writer and publicist . With the so-called Sternfeld-Tiedemann handbook , he made an important contribution to research on German exile literature .

Life

After completing secondary school, Wilhelm Sternfeld completed a commercial apprenticeship. In 1914 he volunteered for military service and received the King Ludwig Cross . He joined the SPD in 1916 . In 1918/19 he served as a soldier in the Bavarian Army and was a member of the soldiers' council . After the First World War he worked as a businessman and also worked as a journalist. From 1921 freelance writer, he worked among other things for the Reichsbanner newspaper. From 1931 he was employed by the non-profit settlement trust company as secretary to the sociologist Franz Oppenheimer . In 1933 he was released, Sternfeld fled to France and stayed illegally in Paris, where he worked on the Pariser Tageblatt . In 1935 he was expelled and moved to Prague, where he worked as an editor for several German-language newspapers, including the Prager Tagblatt , the Prager Presse , the Social Democrat , the Paris daily newspaper and the Jewish Revue .

In 1938, Sternfeld became secretary of the Thomas Mann Society, which was primarily committed to improving the situation of writers and journalists in exile in need. After the occupation of Prague by German troops in May 1939, he fled via Poland to England, where he was interned on the Isle of Man in 1940 as the so-called enemy alien . After his release, he became director of the Thomas Mann Group in the Czech Refugee Trust Fund and edited their newsletters with Bernhard Menne until 1945 and worked as the London correspondent for the New York emigrant magazine Aufbau .

From 1943 he was also treasurer of the PEN center for German-speaking authors abroad and its secretary from 1951 to 1955.

After the end of the Second World War , he worked as a correspondent for Die Welt am Sonntag and several German radio stations, but mainly campaigned for emigrants in need by collecting donations and organizing aid campaigns with the support of Federal President Theodor Heuss and the Süddeutscher Rundfunk.

In 1955, Sternfeld was commissioned by the German Academy for Language and Poetry to compile a bibliography of German exile literature . The Handbuch Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933–1945 edited by him and Eva Tiedemann is seen as an important contribution to exile research in the 1960s. Sternfeld was also involved in setting up the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main . He died in London on December 26, 1973.

plant

  • with Eva Tiedemann: German exile literature 1933–1945. A bio bibliography. Foreword by Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer , Schneider, Heidelberg / Darmstadt 1962. A second and greatly expanded edition, Heidelberg 1970.

Contributions to anthologies

  • Hans José Rehfisch (Ed.): In Tyrannos. Four centuries of struggle against tyranny in Germany. London 1944.

As editor

  • Jesse Thoor [PK Höfler]: Thirteen sonnets. Bull City, 1958.

Awards

  • 1958: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • 1968: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • Corresponding member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt

literature

  • Wilhelm Sternfeld, Eva Tiedemann: German exile literature 1933 to 1945 . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1963 ( online ).
  • JM Ritchie : Wilhelm Sternfeld and Exile Studies in Great Britain. In: JM Ritchie: German Exiles: British Perspectives. Lang, New York 1997, ISBN 0-8204-3743-3 , pp. 30-46.

estate

Wilhelm Sternfeld's estate, including correspondence with Thomas Mann, Erika Mann, Katia Mann, Arthur Koestler, Erna Pinner and documents from Sternfeld's exile, photographs and Sternfeld's library with signed copies, including those by Thomas Mann, is in the German National Library .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annual report 2016: German National Library. Frankfurt a. M., 2017. P. 62 ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on June 12, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dnb.de
personal data
SURNAME Sternfeld, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sternfeld, Willy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Journalist, writer and researcher in exile
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Unna
DATE OF DEATH December 26th 1973
Place of death London