Fritz Mierau , Sieglinde Mierau Pfemfert: Erinnerungen und Abrechnungen. Texte und Briefe by Lisbeth Exner , Herbert Kapfer (review)
2004; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 99; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2004.a827607
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Resumo258 Reviews The specific senses in which the imagery and organization of these literary texts challenge and interact with the conventional thinking of their time could have been pursued further.In places Kingerlee appears to rest content with linking the narrative content to the thinking of Jung or Adler in particular. But by examining these three texts alongside each other, he provides an illuminating study of the contribution that literary writing was making in the 1920s to the revision of gender assumptions. The book would have benefited from closer editorial attention to detail in some of the quotations and translations, and the addition of a key to the abbreviations used would have been helpful. It will be welcomed, however, as an informative basis for further research in this area. St John's College, Cambridge David Midgley Almanachfur Einzelganger. Ed. by Fritz Mierau and Sieglinde Mierau. Hamburg: Nautilus. 2001. 208 pp. ?20.80. ISBN 3-89401-366-4 (hbk). Pfemfert: Erinnerungen und Abrechnungen. Texte und Briefe. Ed. by Lisbeth Exner and Herbert Kapfer. Munich: Belleville. 1999. 680pp. ?29. ISBN 3-933510i8 -x(pbk). Books on literary Expressionism are now rare; books on the later lives and works of its exponents are even rarer. These two volumes offercrucial insights into the finalyears of three prominent members ofthe Expressionist generation, Franz Jung, Karl Otten, and Franz Pfemfert, editor of the journal Die Aktion. Writing to Jung in 1961, Otten declared his intention of compiling an Almanachfur Fufiganger auf das Jahr 2001, containing aphorisms and anecdotes. Forty years on, Fritz and Sieglinde Mierau have edited an Almanachfur Einzelganger, comprising selected correspondence between Otten and Jung in the years 1957-63, together with a miscellany of poems, portraits, and articles by them and other contemporaries. Otten and Jung firstmet as students in Munich, when both were part of the circle around the psychiatrist Otto Gross, a maverick Freudian who psychoanalysed both men. Gross, along with Jung and Leonhard Frank, appears, thinly disguised, in Otten's autobiographical novel Wurzeln (1963). The Otten-Jung correspondence that forms the backbone of the book is one be? tween two consummate 'Einzelganger', whose letters none the less reveal a growing interdependence. It deals largely with literary plans and publications, conducted against the dominant theme ofthe growing gulf between literature and 'Literaturbetrieb '. Above all, Otten encouraged Jungto complete his autobiography Der Weg nach unten and subsequently mediated the book's publication with Luchterhand Verlag in 1961. Der Weg nach unten is a minor classic of its kind, recounting one of the emblematic careers of the early twentieth century. It is still in print, but the republication of Otten's Wurzeln is long overdue. The correspondence breaks offabruptly; Otten and Jung died within weeks of each other in early 1963. The publication of this small volume may help to revive interest in two minor but fascinating literary figures. Otten's letters to Jung form part of his wide correspondence with various authors regarding the anthologies of Expressionist writing which he edited from 1957, and which he regarded as an attempt to rescue the work of his literary generation. Many of the authors he republished had firstappeared in the pages of Franz Pfemfert's Die Aktion: indeed, Otten's effortsto salvage the work of so many Expressionist writers parallel Pfemfert's in firstnurturing them. The reprint of Die Aktion, beginning in 1961, brought Pfemfert's name to the attention of a younger generation, but little has previously been published on his MLRy 99.1, 2004 259 years in exile. Pfemfertand his wife Alexandra Ramm were forced to flee Germany in 1933. They found refuge firstin Karlsbad, then in Paris, and finally in Mexico City, where Pfemfert managed to eke out a tenuous existence as a photographer, a trade he had been taught by Thea Sternheim. The volume Pfemfert: Erinnerungen und Abrechnungen fails into three parts. There are excellent introductory essays by the two editors. Also included are twenty-two per? sonal reminiscences of Pfemfert by friends and collaborators, most of whom formed part of a radio tribute to Die Aktion, broadcast by Westdeutscher Rundfunk in 1960. However, the main body of the book consists of Pfemfert's letters to such friends as Rudolf...
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