Newsletter 1--1997
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MAX KADE CENTER FOR GERMAN-AMERICAN STUDIES NOVEMBER 1997 Author Ruth Klüger to Speak about Holocaust Experiences Ruth Klüger’s autobiographical Although this book represents au- stadt (the author regrets the inability work weiter leben, an account of her tobiographical holocaust literature, its of people to remember the names of experience in surviving Auschwitz, highly intelligent approach distin- smaller camps just because it is easier has won wide acclaim in Germany. guishes it from most examples of the to recall only the famous concentra- Now also available in paperback, the genre. Its non-sentimental abstrac- tion camps), the strategies and hard- book has sold 200,000 copies. It has tion and psychological impartiality ships of trying to go on with one’s been translated into Dutch, Italian, matches the best in the literature of life (“weiter leben”), the period after French, Spanish, Czech, and Japa- moral philosophy. Like her predeces- the war when being a Jew does not nese. Klüger has received numerous sors, Ruth Klüger is drawn to apho- immediately cease to be a stigma all literary awards, including the rism. Fake pieties surface only to be at once, and the never fully success- Niedersachsen Prize, the Grimmels- dissected and eliminated. None of ful attempt to return to normality. hausen Prize, the Gryphius Prize, them can prevail against the insights Weiter leben is a significant book, a Rauriser Prize of Austria, and, most derived from the extreme trials she piece of sad history, but it is also an recently, the Heinrich Heine Prize. had to endure. attempt to penetrate into the center of She will read selections from her Klüger’s spiritual and intellectual human emotions of people and, with- book, for the first time in English. document describing personal suffer- out tolerance for any cheap excuses, Ruth Klüger taught at the University ing is balanced by reflection, abstrac- to describe the true motives for ac- of Kansas from 1970 to 1972, and is tion, and synthesis. Beneath her self- tion and thought. currently professor emerita of the analysis, the images of her childhood, It makes sense that Ruth Klüger University of California at Irvine. Her her incorruptible psychology, and her repeatedly addresses female readers; presentation “A Jewish Childhood un- search for truth, lies the inexorable after all, at first she experienced the der the Nazis” will be on Wednesday, nonverbal reality that is not supposed cruel exclusion and then the even December 3 at 3:30 p.m. in 330 to exist. But it does: the Anschluß, more fatal world of the concentration Strong Hall. the exclusion of the Jews from their camp not only as a Jew but also as a hard-working social positions, the de- female. But why does she believe that The following is a review of Klüger’s portations, Theresienstadt, Ausch- only men read things that were writ- weiter leben: Eine Jugend by our re- witz, the “selection,” trying to cheat ten by other men? Has she forgotten cent visiting professor, Egon one’s way out of dying in the gas about her male readers who are en- Schwarz: chamber, the workcamp Christian- thusiastic about the book? Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures (785) 864-7342; fax (785) 864-4298; e-mail: [email protected] Ruth Klüger asserts ironically that the troublesome details of her autobiography—for example, the fact that toddlers, much younger than she, were deported—should become re- quired common knowledge for Ger- mans. Now, thanks to the success of weiter leben, German-speaking read- ers have indelible images as constant reminders. If and when a translation becomes available, English-speaking readers will be able to view the holo- caust from an entirely new perspec- tive. Weiter leben is one of the finest works about the most disgraceful pe- riod of German history. Albert Bloch made preliminary sketches on a copy of the 1936 University of Kansas commencement brochure. He incorporated the caricature of Hitler in his painting The March of Clowns (1941). Rediscovering Albert Bloch at the University of Kansas Born in 1882 in St. Louis, Albert Bloch was trained in a local art school and from 1900 to 1905 worked as a free-lance draftsman for several newspapers in both St. Louis and New York. Bloch’s cartoons attracted the attention of William Marion Reedy, editor of The Mirror, a St. Louis-based political and literary journal with a national readership. Reedy hired Bloch in 1905 to con- tribute to The Mirror, which over the next four years published almost two hundred of Bloch’s “Kindly Carica- tures” of prominent St. Louisians, each of which was accompanied by a DAWSON WATSON, Albert Bloch’s art teacher in St. Louis text written by Reedy. In 1908, with Reedy’s encouragement and financial In 1911 Kandinsky, along with work in Chicago and St. Louis in support, Bloch went to Europe to con- his friend Franz Marc, visited Bloch’s 1915, and became an important pa- tinue his artistic training. Though he studio and soon thereafter proposed tron of the artist. visited museums in London and Paris, that the American exhibit his works Following his return to the United Bloch settled in Munich, and there with the NKVM. When conservative States in 1921, Bloch held a solo ex- studied independently, eschewing tra- members of that society opposed hibition at the Daniel Gallery in New ditional academic instruction. An Bloch’s participation, Kandinsky and York, but thereafter chose to with- encounter with reproductions of the Marc protested, and invited Bloch to draw from the art market; he never work of Wassily Kandinsky in the join them in their new venture, the showed again at a commercial gallery, catalogue of the 1909 Neue first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter and exhibited only by invitation. Af- Künstlervereinigung München (The Blue Rider), which opened in ter living briefly in St. Louis, Bloch (NKVM) exhibition encouraged Munich in December 1911. Bloch taught for a year at the Academy of Bloch to seek out progressive mem- showed six canvases in the first Blue Fine Arts in Chicago (1922-23) be- bers of the Munich artists’ commu- Rider exhibition, more than any other fore accepting the position of head of nity and eventually to pursue mod- artist except Gabriele Münter, who the department of painting and draw- ernist experiments in his own paint- also showed six. He also exhibited ing at the University of Kansas in the ings. eight works in the second and final fall of 1923. For the next twenty-four Blue Rider exhibition, devoted to years, Bloch taught art at the Univer- graphics and watercolors, which sity, leaving his imprint on countless opened in March 1912 in Munich. students, several of whom went on to Thereafter Bloch participated in other pursue successful careers as artists major avant-garde shows such as the and teachers. He also initiated and 1912 international Sonderbund exhi- taught the first courses in the history bition in Cologne and the 1913 Erster of art at the University of Kansas. Deutscher Herbstsalon in Berlin. In Bloch retired in 1947, but he con- December 1913, Herwarth Walden tinued to be an active painter, com- gave Bloch a solo exhibition at his pleting numerous canvases in the sub- famous Berlin gallery Der Sturm, and sequent decade. He died in 1961, in 1916 Bloch shared an exhibition survived by his second wife, Anna with Paul Klee at the same gallery. Francis Bloch, whose dedication, Meanwhile, the Chicago collector knowledge, and accessibility have Arthur Jerome Eddy helped to ar- made the rediscovery of Bloch pos- ADOLPHUS BUSCH range for solo exhibitions of Bloch’s sible. Bloch and Literature the history of journalism, his later satirical work (including paintings, prose writings, poetry, and transla- Bloch became an admirer of Karl tions) represents important contribu- Kraus in 1914 and strove to enhance tions to German literature and Ger- the appreciation of the Austrian critic man-American studies. in the United States. He translated Franz Marc’s request of 1915 to significant portions of Kraus’s poetry translate his essay “Das geheime and prose. Europa” into English helped Bloch Even before Bloch met Kraus, he discover his talent as a translator. was a severe Austrian critic of his Bloch’s most important contributions times. In more than two hundred cari- to German studies were in this field. catures, to which William Reedy, the The correspondence with Marc shows editor of the Mirror, provided biting that Bloch took his task as translator RUDYARD KIPLING prose texts, Bloch scrutinized the very seriously. He was determined powerful political, business, and cul- to communicate his friend’s analysis tural personalities as well as the so- of the European crisis and his vision cial problems of St. Louis. The per- of peace precisely and persuasively. I did my stint of newspaper drudg- sistent attacks on human folly and its He faced a far more ambitious task ery, magazine illustration and the tragic consequences are constants in when he undertook to translate works like, sandwiched in amongst regular Bloch’s work. In an illustrated essay of Karl Kraus in the 1920s. Inspired contributions of political and portrait Bloch surveyed German and Austrian by ideas of Kraus, Bloch developed caricatures to my dear old Bill literature in 1913, just before the out- his own theory of translation. He Reedy’s “Mirror”... I had the great break of the war; he analyzed twenty called his translations “reconstruc- benefit of a good bit of private criti- prominent writers (including tions,” which often involved radical cism from painters whom I respected, Hermann Bahr, Thomas Theodor departures from literal translation, but in New York, Paris, Munich; and then, Heine, Heinrich Mann, Arthur which allowed him to remain faith- somehow, I came into contact, dur- Schnitzler, and Karl Kraus).