External links
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Biographical dictionaries | |
| Scientific databases | |
| Other | |
Werner Kraft (4 May 1896, Braunschweig - 14 June 1991, Jerusalem) was a German-Israeli literary scholar, writer and librarian.
Kraft was born in Braunschweig in 1896 to Jewish parents. He spent most of his childhood in Hanover. In 1910 Kraft, already interested in German literature and bibliophile, discovered the work of two contemporary writers; Rudolf Borchardt and Karl Kraus. [1] In addition to Borchardt and Kraus, Kraft was an admirer of Stefan George, Goethe, Hofmannsthal and Kafka. [1] [2] From 1906 to 1914 he attended the Leibniz School in the Alte Celler Heerstraße.
In 1913 he made the acquaintance of Theodor Lessing in the bookstore Ludwig Ey at the Hanoverian Steintor, who gave Kraft decisive impetus and with whom he was to remain connected until Lessing's death in 1933. Lessing also mediated 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.
In 1915 he began studying German and French philology and philosophy in Berlin with his cousin, the poet Paul Kraft (1896–1922). In Berlin he also made friends with Walter Benjamin and Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem and first met the writer Borchardt, whom he admired. 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 Lessing and reading the magazine Die Fackel by the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus as well as the books by Borchardt. Kraus and Borchardt became his literary heroes; both are known to be men of Jewish origin and found it difficult to admit their origin. [3]
In 1920 he trained as a librarian in order to subsidise his lifestyle and extensive writing. Between 1922 and 1926 he worked at the German Library (now the German National Library) in Leipzig. In 1928 he started his post as librarian at the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library. As a Jew, Kraft was dismissed from his position in 1933. [1]
In 1933, he emigrated to Sweden and finally to Israel. [4] He later wrote in his diary:
"It was only after 1933 that I finally and forever knew 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 violence before it murdered people! I have never given up this language, I have always considered it to be a commission to which there was no objection, to lead my life within the German spirit."
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Biographical dictionaries | |
| Scientific databases | |
| Other | |
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe situations like those found in his writing.
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects.
Franz Viktor Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a novel based on events that took place during the Armenian genocide of 1915, and The Song of Bernadette (1941), a novel about the life and visions of the French Catholic saint Bernadette Soubirous, which was made into a Hollywood film of the same name.
Max Brod was a Czech German-speaking Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is best remembered as the friend and biographer of writer Franz Kafka. Kafka named Brod as his literary executor, instructing Brod to burn his unpublished work upon his death. Brod refused and had Kafka's works published instead.
Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He directed his satire at the press, German culture, and German and Austrian politics. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times.
Gottschalk Eduard Guhrauer was a German philologist and biographer. He is known principally for his 1842 biography of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his completion (1853) of Theodor Wilhelm Danzel's biography of Lessing, G. E. Lessing, sein Leben und seine Werke.
Austrian literature is mostly written in German, and is closely connected with German literature.
Joseph Peter Maria Stern, FBA was an authority on German literature.
Theodor Lessing was a German Jewish philosopher.
Nahum Norbert Glatzer was a scholar of Jewish history and philosophy from antiquity to mid 20th century.
Erich Heller was a British essayist, known particularly for his critical studies in German-language philosophy and literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Free State of Brunswick was a state of the German Reich in the time of the Weimar Republic. It was formed after the abolition of the Duchy of Brunswick in the course of the German Revolution of 1918–19. Its capital was Braunschweig (Brunswick).
Martin Bodmer was a Swiss bibliophile, scholar and collector.
The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Union to ceremonially burn books in Nazi Germany and Austria in the 1930s. The books targeted for burning were those viewed as being subversive or as representing ideologies opposed to Nazism. These included books written by Jewish, communist, socialist, anarchist, liberal, pacifist, and sexologist authors among others. The initial books burned were those of Karl Marx and Karl Kautsky, but came to include very many authors, including Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, writers in French and English, and effectively any book that was not ardent in its support of Nazism. In a campaign of cultural genocide, books were also burned by the Nazis en masse in occupied territories.
The Herzog August Library, in Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, known also as Bibliotheca Augusta, is a library of international importance for its collection from the Middle Ages and early modern Europe. The library is overseen by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture.
Karl Krolow was a German poet and translator. In 1956 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize. He was born in Hanover, Germany, and died in Darmstadt, Germany.
Ottilie "Ottla" Kafka was the youngest sister of Franz Kafka. His favourite sister, she was probably also his closest relative and supported him in difficult times. Their correspondence was published as Letters to Ottla. She was murdered in the Holocaust.
Willy Moog was a German philosopher and educator.
Simson Alexander David was a German art dealer, author, journalist, and member of the French secret police in the Napoleonic era, who was also known as Karl Julius Lange.
Dietrich Hans Borchardt was an Australian librarian and bibliographer.
