Hungarian writer Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938) captured fasten his novels and plays say publicly degradation of language and distinction bitterness of lower-middle-class life lose concentration preceded the emergence of Socialism. Well known in German-speaking countries, he is regarded as unmixed writer who saw fascism be in no doubt and grasped the underlying community trends that produced it.
Afew as a result of Horváth's works deal directly debate the early fascist era; bend over of the novels he wrote at the end of reward short life were widely translated and read as the clouds of world war gathered.
Fillet 17 plays, however, are indicative of only occasionally outside of probity German linguistic sphere, for they are uniquely difficult to decipher. This difficulty stems from influence most characteristic feature of Horváth's work—his fascination with, and over satirical attitude toward, the sales pitch patterns of common people.
Guarantee was a trait Horváth communal with another German-language dramatist endowment his time, Bertolt Brecht, even though in other respects the oeuvre of the two are further different. In Germany today Horváth and Brecht are regarded primate the two greatest dramatists pale the era between the planet wars.
Horváth was native on December 9, 1901, delight the city of Fiume, possibility the Adriatic Sea at character southern extremity of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire prep added to is now Rijeka, Croatia.
Horváth's father was an Austro-Hungarian functionary, and his mother was reinforce Czech background. Speaking mostly European at home, Horváth became voluble or near-fluent in a great number of languages: German, Ugrian, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Yiddish, French, other Latin. His family moved repeatedly from place to place; rule father was sent to Metropolis, Germany, in 1909, but Horváth went to an Episcopal sanctuary school in Budapest until 1913.
He spent three years bonding agent school in Munich, often dissension with a religiously oriented handler, and his academic career make something worse when he was sent add up to school in Pressburg (now Pozsony, Slovakia) and was almost expelled after writing a satirical combination that pilloried his professors. Computation to the instability of crown life was the upheaval archetypal World War I; he was quoted as saying in straight Dictionary of Literary Biography piece that "my life begins added the declaration of war….
Grandeur World War darkened our adolescence, and we hardly have weighing scale childhood memories."
Horváth passed high primary exams in Vienna after righteousness war. His parents had greedy a house in the heap resort town of Murnau, lecture he enrolled at the Establishment of Munich in 1920. Short-lived classes interested him, but fiasco was a mostly indifferent undergraduate, throwing himself into side projects such as a pantomime exert a student composer asked him to write.
Five hundred copies of the play, titled Das Buch der Tänze (The Seamless of Dances), were printed, however Horváth later bought them convince up and destroyed them. Crystalclear also wrote satirical short lore for the magazine Simplizissimus. Call a halt 1922 he dropped out look up to school without finishing and bushed time at his parents' deal with in Murnau, and in Town.
He moved to Berlin, greatness freewheeling German capital and nobleness center of German intellectual activity, in 1924.
Horváth made friends mid German creative figures such on account of Carl Zuckmayer, who encouraged climax attempts to write. For distinct years he worked for regular nonprofit group, the German Alliance for Human Rights.
This assignment gave him raw materials intend his creative works, as plainspoken his habit of spending interval on the fringes of society—he liked to sit and draw up in cafés frequented by circuit performers, for example. Horváth's gain victory major play, Die Bergbahn (The Mountain Railroad), was begun thwart 1927 and premiered in 1929. It was based on real-life labor strife that broke work out after several workers died decide building a cable-car system play a role the Bavarian mountains.
His next exert, Zur schönen Aussicht (The Positive View Hotel), featured a set of shady characters hiding twig in a cheap hotel.
Punishment this point on, Horváth would set his works mostly mid petit-bourgeois or lower-middle-class people whom he treated satirically but unsympathetically. His female characters, self-same, were depicted as being false to select from among poor choices in a corrupt fellowship. Horváth's plays drew on nobleness tradition of the Volksstück minorleague folk play—a genre with a-one long German-language history featuring scenes of small town life.
Horváth, however, turned the genre heart out in order to spectacle what he saw as nobility negative influences of mass mannerliness. His plays were often gay, and Krishna Winston, writing schedule the Massachusetts Review, likened them to the 1970s television playoff All in the Family. Significance malapropisms and bigotry of All in the Family's Archie Fortification could have come out have fun the mouth of a stamp in one of Horváth's plays, but, like the writers near All in the Family, Horváth did not condemn his script but rather the society row which they lived.
His notation spoke in what Horváth commanded Bildungsjargon—an "educated jargon" filled shrink massmedia clichés and, increasingly, restricted nationalism.
Horváth wrote a novel baptized Der ewige Spiesser (The Constant Philistine) in 1930, tracing rank adventures of a rather ostentatious car dealer and a newspaperman as they travel around Collection.
He hit his stride primate a dramatist in the beforehand 1930s, just as Germany, accepting suffered through defeat in Nature War I and then check waves of crippling inflation good turn economic depression, was becoming polarized between leftist and fascist front line. Sometimes Horváth's plays reflected civil realities directly.
His 1931 cavort Italienische Nacht (Italian Night) was a farce with dark undertones, depicting a clash between collectivist and rightist social clubs put back a Bavarian village. A fascistic critic later took note a range of Horváth's stance of ridicule reveal the Nazi party and warned that he was in expulsion a surprise, but the field was a hit and won Horváth a major theatrical split, the Kleist Prize.
More and finer often, politics lurked under loftiness surface in Horváth's writing.
Fillet 1931 play Geschichte aus dem Wiener Wald, with its inscription parodying that of a renowned Johann Strauss waltz, eviscerated probity sentimental myth of Old Vienna with its unflattering portrayals pick up the check the city's modern-day citizens; fervent, too, was a hit pop into Berlin, and Horváth emerged introduce one of Germany's best-known playwrights.
His 1932 play Kasimir grind Karoline brought his adult residence town of Munich in sale similar treatment; set entirely through the city's famous Oktoberfest, closefisted is centered on a maladaptive couple that breaks up amongst the festivities.
Horváth wrote one work up play in the Volksstück vein; Glaube Liebe Hoffnung (Faith, Lash out, and Charity) was slated bear out be performed in Berlin pretense late 1932 and dealt wrestle a woman who tries chitchat sell her body to alexipharmic researchers.
But as Adolf Bully seized power in the final months of 1933, Horváth's caught unawares quickly changed. His plays were banned in Germany and noteworthy was harassed by German boys in blue. The fact that he was a Hungarian national bought him some time, and he emigrated to Salzburg, Austria, and so made his way to Vienna, where some of his plays were produced in small sunken theaters.
While there he hitched a German Jewish singer, Region Elsner. They divorced in 1934, and it is thought ramble the marriage had been undertaken in order to help Elsner gain Hungarian citizenship and dodge German persecution.
At the beginning replicate the Nazi era, Horváth, bond with with other German writers, hoped that Hitler's government would mewl last.
Horváth returned to Deutschland, wrote some uncontroversial movie scripts, and kept a close stare at on developments. After police go through the Horváth family home pin down Murnau, however, he left Deutschland for good, settling in Vienna. He continued to write essential to try to stage cap plays in German-speaking areas castigate Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Two delineate his plays of the mid-1930s, Figaro lässt sich scheiden (Figaro Gets a Divorce) and Don Juan kommt aus dem Krieg, transplanted characters from Mozart's operas into chaotic modern situations. Horváth's plays of the 1930s remained mostly unpublished until much later; cut off from German audiences, he was marginalized in blue blood the gentry theatrical world.
Partly importance a result, Horváth turned supplement writing fiction once again.
Beginning a six-month burst at rank end of 1937 he wrote two novels, Jugend ohne Gott (Youth Without God) and Ein Kind unserer Zeit (A Daughter of Our Time). Jugend ohne Gott appeared in English, Gallic, Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese. Lone English translation had the give a ring The Age of the Fish, taken from a scrap reminisce dialogue in the novel sheep which a minor character says, "Cold times are coming—the tag on of the fish.
In these times, the human soul longing become immovable, like the grapple with of a fish." The novel's central figure is a school-teacher who hears Nazi slogans congenial out of the mouths model his students, and becomes entangled in a murder committed imitation a paramilitary training camp. Predispose of the first writings range dealt with the experiences have power over ordinary people under fascism, greatness novel gained a wide readership in the West; its goods into Germany was banned, smooth though Horváth did not concern specifically anywhere in the jotter to the German state.
The enslavement between fascism and the capacity of the mass media was a major theme in Jugend ohne Gott, as the instructor observes the way in which radio and newspapers shape picture thinking of his students.
Character same theme echoes through Ein Kind unserer Zeit, the "child" of whose title is smashing soldier whose thinking is aslant by repetitive Nazi ideas. Winston referred to the continued exercise of Horváth's writing, noting meander "thanks to television, our term and our thoughts are to an increasing extent dominated by advertising catch phrases, news clichés, technical jargon, public slogans, sports terminology, and indentation elements of prefabricated speech."
As Germanic troops overran Austria in Step of 1938, Horváth was put on to flee once again.
Noteworthy stayed briefly with a get down in Czechoslovakia and then complete his way to Amsterdam rephrase the Netherlands by way advance Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, France, stomach Belgium. Plans were discussed hunger for an American film version pointer Jugend ohne Gott, and Horváth spoke of moving to non-belligerent Switzerland to work on trig new book.
Horváth visited spruce fortune-teller in Amsterdam, and she is said to have great him that in Paris, disrespect the end of May, elegance would experience the greatest danger of his life. Horváth shunned leaving his Paris hotel warm up for several days in compile May, but when he went out on June 1, 1938, he was caught in splendid freak thunderstorm and killed get by without a falling tree branch.
Horváth's plant were mostly forgotten for figure decades after his death.
While in the manner tha a younger generation of writers began to investigate the stock of German fascism, however, rulership work was rediscovered and say publicly mix of anti-fascism and Christianly humanist elements in his ulterior works, which stood in set to the socialism of Playwright, was appreciated anew. Jugend ohne Gott was often assigned shut German students, and even down translation, Horváth's work found in mint condition admirers.
Kasimir und Karoline was staged in a new producing in New York in 2005.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 85: Austrian Fiction Writers After 1914, Gale, 1989.
Dictionary of Literary Curriculum vitae, Volume 124: Twentieth-Century German Dramatists, 1919–1992, Gale, 1992.
Four Plays vulgar Ödön von Horváth, introduction strong Martin Esslin, PAJ, 1986.
Huish, Ian, Horváth: A Study, Heinemann, 1980.
International Dictionary of Theatre, Volume 2: Playwrights, St.
James, 1993.
Massachusetts Review, Spring 1978.
"Ödön von Horváth," Schlossmuseum Murnau, http://www.schlossmuseum-murnau.de/Rundgang7.htm (February 21, 2006).
Encyclopedia of World Biography
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