NOTES On THE AUTHORS anD ILLUSTRaTORS AUTHORS Béla Balázs Pseudonym for Herbert Bauer, 1884–1949 Balázs, whose parents were teachers, was born in Szeged, Hungary. He was an excellent student and received a Ph.D. from the University of Budapest in 1909. He participated in World War I as a common soldier, and his experiences with the autocracy of the military politicised him. At the end of the war he joined the Hungarian Communist Party and became one of the leaders of the Hungarian revolutionary movement. In 1920 he had to flee Hungary when theRäterepublik (soviet republic) collapsed. He eventually settled in Berlin, where he was active as a film director, theorist and journalist. In 1924 he published a book on film entitledDer sichtbare Mensch (The Visible Man), which is still considered a major book in cinematic studies. His interest in fairy tales began during his student years in Hungary, and he was particularly drawn to Oriental and Hungarian folk tales. In 1917 he published his first collection of political fairy tales, entitledSeven Fairy Tales, and during the 1920s he continued adapting traditional folk- tales and writing original fairy tales for children and adults that mirrored the political problems in Central Europe. Most of these works appeared © The Author(s) 2018 205 J. Zipes (ed.), Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69275-3 206 NOTES ON THE AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS in German: Der Mantel der Träume (The Cloak of Dreams, 1922) and Das richtige Himmelblau (The Right Kind of Blue Skies, 1925). By far his most significant work for children was the playHans Urian geht nach Brot (Hans Urian Goes in Search of Bread, 1929), which he wrote with Lisa Tetzner. This fairy-tale drama about a young boy’s magical learning experiences during the Depression was a great success in Germany and was later published as a fairy-tale novel. In 1931 Balázs emigrated to the Soviet Union and worked in various film studios. During this time he wrote antifascist novels for children: Karlchen, durchhalten! (Little Carl, Don’t Give up! 1936) and Heinrich beginnt den Kampf (Henry Begins the Battle, 1941). At the close of World War II he returned to Budapest and headed the Institute for the Study of Film until his death in 1949. ‘Der Sieger’ was published in Marguerite E. Benz, ed., Für unsere kleinen russischen Brüder: Gaben westeuropäischer Schriftsteller und Künstler für die Notleidenden Kinder in den Hungerdistrikten Rußlands (Geneva: 1922). Carl Ewald 1856–1908 Ewald grew up in the small Danish city of Bredelykke ved Gram, Slesvig where his father was a well-known novelist and Danish nationalist. When in 1864 the area came under German rule he moved his family to Elsinore. A stern and didactic disciplinarian, he sent his son Carl to high school in nearby Frederiksberg and hoped he would pursue a ‘respectable’ career. Once Carl received his diploma, he decided to study forestry; however, he suffered a severe malady in 1874 that prevented him from becoming a forester, and he began teaching and writing, bent on breaking away from his father’s conservative influence. In 1880 Ewald moved to Copenhagen and earned his living as a jour- nalist and freelance writer. Soon he made a name for himself with a series of novels such as The Rule or the Exception (1883), A Way Out (1884), and The Linden Branch (1886), all of which exposed hypocrisy and cor- ruption in Danish society. Strongly influenced by social Darwinism, Ewald depicted the brutal struggles for survival resulting from natural and social forces that shaped humankind’s destiny. During the 1880s he effectively incorporated his social Darwinist principles into three important collec- tions of fairy tales: I det Fri (In the Open, 1892), Fem nye Eventyr (Five New Fairy Tales, 1894), and Die fire Fjendingsfyrsten (The Four Little NOTES ON THE AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS 207 Princes, 1896). The public response was so favourable that he wrote another twenty volumes of fairy tales and also translated the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm in 1905. By the turn of the twentieth century Ewald was the most significant Danish fairy-tale writer in Germany, next to Hans Christian Andersen. However, in contrast to Andersen’s optimistic perspective, Ewald was much more sceptical and cynical. His tales do not exude a ‘happy ending’ ideology, and it was exactly because of their grim realism that they had a wide reception in Germany during the 1920s. His collected works were published there in five volumes:Mutter Natur erzählt (1910), Der Zweifüßler und andere Geschichten (1911), Vier feine Freunde und andere Geschichten (1913), Meister Reineke und andere Geschichten (1919) and Das Sternekind und andere Geschichten (1925). Not only were his tales popular in Germany, but they also made their way to Britain and the United States. For instance Two-Legs and Other Stories was published in 1907 and The Old Willow-Tree and Other Stories appeared in 1921. ‘Ein Märchen von Gott und den Königen’ was published in Ernst Friedrich, ed., Proletarischer Kindergarten (Berlin: Buchverlag der Arbeiter-Kunstausstellung, 1921). Felix Fechenbach 1894–1933 Fechenbach grew up in a baker’s family and worked during his teens as an apprentice in a shoe store. In 1911 he joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and immediately became active in the party’s youth movement. Soon thereafter he was sacked from a job he held in Frankfurt-am-Main because he led a strike against unpaid work. In 1912 he went to Munich, where he was employed in the SPD central office for workers. During World War I he was a pacifist, and after the war he played a major role in the Munich Räterepublik (soviet republic) as personal secretary to Kurt Eisner, the prime minister. When the Republic was invaded and dissolved by federal troops in the spring of 1919, he was arrested and sentenced to eleven years imprisonment. However, he was pardoned in 1924 and went to Berlin, where he began working with the organisation Kinderfreunde (Friends of Children). As a result of this work he wrote and published Punch and Judy plays, fables, and children’s songs that reflect his criticism of the SPD’s politics during the Weimar Republic, though he remained a member of the party. Typical of his critical perspective are his fables, which 208 NOTES ON THE AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS depict the cowardly regressive politics of Social Democrats who betray their revolutionary instincts. In 1929 Fechenbach became editor of the SPD’s Detmolder Parteiblatt, and when the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was arrested because of his antifascist activities. Shortly thereafter, as he was being transported to the Dachau concentration camp, he was murdered by Nazi guards. Most of his fables had been published in newspapers and were reissued in Switzerland by his exiled friend Walter Victor in 1936. ‘Der Chamäleon’, ‘Der Triumph der Wölfe’ and ‘Die Revolution im Zoo’ were published in Walter Victor, ed., Die Lebensgemeinschaft Das Felix Fechenbach-Buch (Zurich: Eichenverlag, 1936). Oskar Maria Graf 1894–1967 Graf was born in Starnberg and was strongly influenced by Bavarian village life. He grew up in a hardworking family – his parents were bakers – and he left home at seventeen after many disputes with his older brother. In Munich, which became his new home, he worked as a miller, postman and elevator boy while mixing in Bohemian circles. Like many other German writers of his time Graf was politicised by World War I. He participated in the November Revolution in 1918 and was a supporter of the Munich Räterepublik (soviet republic). During the 1920s he wrote novels, stories, essays and autobiographical works that dealt with the provinciality of Bavarian village life and the social conditions that would lead to the down- fall of the Weimar Republic. In 1927 he published a collection of fairy tales for children, Licht und Schatten (Light and Shadow) that made use of traditional folklore to shed light on various facets of authoritarianism that could be related to contemporary life in Germany. In particular, his tales focus on the brutality of tyrannical leaders who can be tamed only by supernatural forces more powerful than they are. Because of his strong opposition to Nazism, he emigrated to Vienna in 1933, where he continued to write novels about the constraints of living in German villages and small towns. In addition, he became active in the antifascist resistance movement; but in 1938, with the annexation of Austria, he was forced to flee. He made his way to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Just as he had done in his Austrian exile, Graf kept producing significant political works. Among his best were the two auto- biographical volumes, Menschen aus meiner Jugend auf dem Dorf (People NOTES ON THE AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS 209 from my Youth in the Village, 1953) and Gelächter von außen: Aus mei- nem Leben 1918–1933 (Laughter from Outside: About My Life 1918–1933, 1966), and a novel about exile life in New York, Die Flucht ins Mittelmäßige (The Flight into Mediocrity, 1966). ‘Das Märchen vom König’ and ‘Baberlababb’ were published in Licht und Schatten: Eine Sammlung zeitgemäßer Märchen (Berlin: Verlag der Neuen Gesellschaft, 1927). Robert Grötzsch 1882–1946 After learning the trade of plumbing, and travelling from job to job during his youth, Grötzsch eventually turned to writing by the turn of the cen- tury to earn his living. He had a fair amount of success publishing satires, dramas and children’s books, and he also became a journalist for the SPD newspaper Die Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung in Dresden.