Hermann Kesten by Henrik Eger
Hermann Kesten, 1900-1996 |
KESTEN, Hermann. Born January 28, 1900, in Podwoloczuska, near Tarnapol in Austrian Galizia; he lives in Basel, Switzerland. Kesten wrote his dissertation on Heinrich Mann at Erlangen University but never finished it. From 1927 to 1933 he was reader, then chief literary editor at the Kiepenheuer publishing company where he nurtured such writers as Bertolt Brecht, Gottfired Benn, and Anna Seghers. His own work, mainly novels, had been translated into several languages before the Third Reich came into existence.
Kesten, who was not a religious man, was attacked in the Nazi press for his Jewish background. He moved to Paris in 1933 and from there to Amsterdam, where he founded the German literature division at Allert de Lange’s publishing company (he stayed there, as editor-in-chief of that division, until the invasion of Holland by the German army). In 1935 his books were banned in Germany; in response to growing censorship, Kesten co-founded the union of Free Press and Literature, the association of independent German writers and literature in exile. In 1940, while visiting Paris, he was caught in the German invasion and was interned by the occupiers. However, after five weeks, Kesten was able to escape. He fled to New York, where he became active in assisting endangered writers. He collaborated with Thomas Mann and other writers in operating the Emergency Rescue Committee to aid refugees in their emigration to the United States. He wrote for exile publications, including the Aufbau (Rebuilding), Deutsche Blätter (German Papers), Mass und Wert (Measure and Worth), Neue Deutsche Blätter (New German Papers), Das Neue Tagebuch (The New Diary), Die Neue Weltbühne (New World Stage), Die Sammlung (Collection), and Die Zukunft (Future). Kesten became an American citizen and remained in the United States through 1949. |
From 1949 to 1951 Kesten lived in various European cities; in 1952 he moved to Rome, and in 1977 he returned to the United States, only to return again to Italy in the 1980s—“a poet in exile who has never returned home.” In 1975 he turned down an offer by the city of Munich to return there; however, he did accept an honorary doctorate from the University of Erlangen and the presidency of the German PEN Center (1972-76).
Kesten devoted much of his artistic vision to the flaying of bourgeois hypocrisy, and particularly to those middle-class values which exalted safety and comfort over honesty and resistance to tyranny of whatever devious kind. His postwar fiction is often the emotional reflection of a witness to acquiescence to barbarism. At times savagely sketched, his work makes up in passion what it may lack in subtlety. Many of his critics went through gyrations of reaction over his postwar writing; some of them could not relate to Kesten’s unusual combination of the erotic and the political, the satiric and the non-theatrical, the entertaining and the poetic. In sum, Kesten’s writings defy many conventions, and as a result of his political engagement and refusal to honor taboos and self-censorship, he has been criticized by some critics as frivolous. Given German literary traditions, such antagonism comes as little surprise.
At his best, Kesten was a deeply philosophical and poetic voice. “Slowly the tree bends under snow and the weight of life,” he wrote in his volume of poems, Ich bin der ich bin: Verse eines Zeitgenossen (Munich, 1974, I am who I am).
Selected Titles: Josef sucht die Freiheit (Potsdam, 1927; London, 1950, Joseph Breaks Free); Einer sagt die Wahrheit (Berlin, 1930, One Says the Truth, drama); with Ernst Toller, Wunder in Amerika: Mary Baker Eddy (Berlin, 1931; Mary Baker Eddy); Der Gerechte: Roman (Munich, 1934, The Just); Die Kinder von Guernika: Roman (Munich, 1939: The Children of Guernica: A Novel, 1939); The Twins of Nuremberg (1946; Amsterdam, 1947, Die Zwillinge von Nürnberg: Roman); Meine Freunde, die Poeten (Vienna, 1959, My Friends, the Poets); Die Abenteur eines Moralisten: Roman (1961, Adventures of a Moralist); Lauter Literaten: Portraits, Kritik an Zeitgenossen, Erinnerungen (Vienna, 1963, All Literary Types: Portraits, Critique of Contemporaries, Memoirs); Die Zeit der Narr En: Roman (1966, The Time of the Fools); Die Lust am Leben: Bocaccio, Aretino, Casanova (Munich, 1968, The Joy of Living); Ein Mann von sechzig Jahren (Munich, 1972, A Man of Sixty Years); Heine im Exil (Cologne, 1972, Heine in Exile). See Ausgewählte Werke in 20 Einzebanden, 20 vol (Frankfurt, 1980-84, Collected Works).
Consult: Walter Seifert, “Exil als politischer Akt: Der Romancier Hermann Kesten,” in Die deutsche Exilliteratur 1933-1945, ed. Manfred Durzak (Stuttgart, 1973); John M. Spalek, Guide to the Archival Materials of the German-Speaking Emigration to the United States after 1933 (Charlottesville: University of Virgina, 1978); Hans-Albert Walter, Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933-1950 (Darmstadt, 1972).
HENRIK EGER and MARTIN TUCKER
Hermann Kesten, Wikipedia, 9 July 2015
Originally published in Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century: An Analysis and Biographical Dictionary , edited by Martin Tucker.
New York, Greenwood Press, 1991, pp. 448-50.
Kesten devoted much of his artistic vision to the flaying of bourgeois hypocrisy, and particularly to those middle-class values which exalted safety and comfort over honesty and resistance to tyranny of whatever devious kind. His postwar fiction is often the emotional reflection of a witness to acquiescence to barbarism. At times savagely sketched, his work makes up in passion what it may lack in subtlety. Many of his critics went through gyrations of reaction over his postwar writing; some of them could not relate to Kesten’s unusual combination of the erotic and the political, the satiric and the non-theatrical, the entertaining and the poetic. In sum, Kesten’s writings defy many conventions, and as a result of his political engagement and refusal to honor taboos and self-censorship, he has been criticized by some critics as frivolous. Given German literary traditions, such antagonism comes as little surprise.
At his best, Kesten was a deeply philosophical and poetic voice. “Slowly the tree bends under snow and the weight of life,” he wrote in his volume of poems, Ich bin der ich bin: Verse eines Zeitgenossen (Munich, 1974, I am who I am).
Selected Titles: Josef sucht die Freiheit (Potsdam, 1927; London, 1950, Joseph Breaks Free); Einer sagt die Wahrheit (Berlin, 1930, One Says the Truth, drama); with Ernst Toller, Wunder in Amerika: Mary Baker Eddy (Berlin, 1931; Mary Baker Eddy); Der Gerechte: Roman (Munich, 1934, The Just); Die Kinder von Guernika: Roman (Munich, 1939: The Children of Guernica: A Novel, 1939); The Twins of Nuremberg (1946; Amsterdam, 1947, Die Zwillinge von Nürnberg: Roman); Meine Freunde, die Poeten (Vienna, 1959, My Friends, the Poets); Die Abenteur eines Moralisten: Roman (1961, Adventures of a Moralist); Lauter Literaten: Portraits, Kritik an Zeitgenossen, Erinnerungen (Vienna, 1963, All Literary Types: Portraits, Critique of Contemporaries, Memoirs); Die Zeit der Narr En: Roman (1966, The Time of the Fools); Die Lust am Leben: Bocaccio, Aretino, Casanova (Munich, 1968, The Joy of Living); Ein Mann von sechzig Jahren (Munich, 1972, A Man of Sixty Years); Heine im Exil (Cologne, 1972, Heine in Exile). See Ausgewählte Werke in 20 Einzebanden, 20 vol (Frankfurt, 1980-84, Collected Works).
Consult: Walter Seifert, “Exil als politischer Akt: Der Romancier Hermann Kesten,” in Die deutsche Exilliteratur 1933-1945, ed. Manfred Durzak (Stuttgart, 1973); John M. Spalek, Guide to the Archival Materials of the German-Speaking Emigration to the United States after 1933 (Charlottesville: University of Virgina, 1978); Hans-Albert Walter, Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933-1950 (Darmstadt, 1972).
HENRIK EGER and MARTIN TUCKER
Hermann Kesten, Wikipedia, 9 July 2015
Originally published in Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century: An Analysis and Biographical Dictionary , edited by Martin Tucker.
New York, Greenwood Press, 1991, pp. 448-50.
