Robert Neumann (writer)

Robert Neumann (born 22 May 1897 in Vienna, died 3 January 1975 in Munich) was a German and English-speaking writer. He published numerous novels, autobiographical texts, plays and radio plays as well as some screenplays. Through his parody collections, with borrowed plumes (1927) and Under False Flag (1932), he is the founder of "parody as critical genus in the literature of the 1920s."

Life

Robert Neumann was the son of a bank clerk of Jewish ancestry and social democratic leanings. He studied medicine, chemistry, and one semester of German studies from 1915 to 1919 in Vienna. He worked as a cashier, swim coach, and associate for a food importing company, but was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1925. Afterwards he worked for a short time as a sailor and cargo supervisor on a cruise ship.

Having already published small volumes of lyric poetry in 1919 and 1923, he succeeded in a literary breakthrough in parody with the collection with borrowed plumes in 1927. In a survey called Thomas Mann, this book was judged the best of the year. Neumann thus established himself and became a freelance writer. In rapid succession, other novels, parodies and plays were published. In addition, he lectured and worked as a literary critic (Die Literatur, Die Literarische Welt). His parodies were so successful that his other work faded by contrast. Rudolf Walter Leonhardt later wrote in his obituary of Robert Neumann of his public success: "Two narrow bands have a lifetime of fifteen thick volumes buried."[1]

Neumann's works were victims of the Nazi book burnings in 1933 and were banned by the Third Reich. Immediately after the establishment of the Austro-fascist dictatorship in February 1934, he left Vienna and went into exile in Britain. In 1936 and 1937 he spent a few months in Austria, where the libraries were "cleansed" of his works. Until 1938 his novels still appeared in Switzerland.

He was one of the few writers in exile who managed to get published in England. In 1936 he wrote the screenplay for the British film Abdul the Damned with Fritz Kortner in the lead role. After the occupation of Austria in 1938, he organized the "Free Austrian P.E.N.-Club" in London to assist writers who were threatened by Nazis to leave their country. In 1939, he applied for British citizenship, but did not received it until 1947. Instead, he was interned in 1940 for a few months as an "enemy alien". During the war years he periodically delivered reviews for the BBC. From 1942 he published six novels in English. As editor and part-owner of the publishing house "Hutchinson International Authors," he initiated the publication of English translations of German writers in exile such as Arnold Zweig and Heinrich Mann. His request for an entry visa into the United States was rejected, despite an invitation to Hollywood. Rudolf Walter Leonhardt maintained that the novel An den Wassern von Babylon (By the rivers of Babylon), published in 1939 in English and 1945 in German, was Neumann's best book: a Jewish epic of overwhelming urgency.[1]

After the end of World War II, Neumann continued living in England until the end of 1958, then in Locarno in Ticino, Switzerland. In 1947 he became honorary president of the revived Austrian PEN Club. In 1955 he said in his closing speech at the congress of the International PEN, in which he was also Vice President in 1950, a speech against the "Cold War" PEN president Charles Langbridge Morgan and was attacked in the press as "Communist." 1971 called for a reorientation of the Neumann PEN against right aspirations. He initiated the dismissal of the former PEN President Pierre Emmanuel and proposed the candidacy of Heinrich Böll, who was also elected in a vote. In 1966 he published, in the leftist magazine Zeitschrift Konkret, a sharp polemic against the Group 47 and especially against Hans Werner Richter, Walter Höllerer and Günter Grass.[2]

Between 1959 and 1974, Neumann continued to work as a novelist, political journalist and acclaimed literary critic with a polemical and satirical orientation, including for Konkret, Die Zeit, Pardon, Tribüne, die Deutsche Zeitung - Christ und Welt and ARD broadcasters. Occasionally, he also published in Spiegel and Stern. In 1961 he was involved in a plagiarism controversy with his novel Olympia.

Neumann, who fought in his life with serious illnesses, became terminally ill in 1974 with cancer. After his suicide - according to a statement from his family - he was buried in 1975 in the Munich Haidhausen cemetery. His Nachlass is located in the Department of Manuscripts of the Austrian National Library in Vienna.

Family

Neumann married Stefanie ("Stefie") Grünwald (1896-1975) in 1919 in Vienna, with whom he had a son named Henry Herbert ("Heini") (1921-1944). For him he wrote the autobiographical text Memoirs and Journal of Henry Herbert Neumann, edited by his father in 1944. In 1941 Neumann settled for divorce and married the German editor and translator Lore Franziska ("Rolly") Stern, born Becker (1908-1991), on 30 May 1941, with whom he divorced in 1952. In 1953 he married the German dancer Evelyn Milda Wally Hengerer (pseudonym: Mathilde Walewska, 1930-1958) with whom he had a son Michael Robert Henry (* 1955). In 1960 he settled in his fourth marriage, with broadcasting editor Helga Heller (1934-1976).

Awards and Honors

Publications (Selection)

Literature

References

  1. 1 2 Rudolf Walter Leonhardt: Vielleicht das Heitere. In: Die Zeit. 10. Januar 1975.
  2. ↑ Konkret 8/1966. Auch in: Hermann L. Gremliza (Hrsg.): 30 Jahre Konkret. Hamburg 1987, S. 88–93.
  3. ↑ Ein zum Zsolnay Verlag gehörendes Unternehmen
  4. ↑ Robert Neumann. Mit eigener Feder. Aufsätze. Briefe. Nachlassmaterialien.
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