Debora Vogel (1902–1942) was a Polish-Jewish philosopher and poet. During World War I her family fled to

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and moved later to

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...

(formerly known as Lemberg), where Vogel spent most of her life. She studied Philosophy and Psychology at the Jan Kazimierz University (now Ivan Franko National University of Lviv).

Biography

Vogel was born to a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

-speaking

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family in

Burshtyn Burshtyn ( uk, Буршти́н, translit=Burshtyn) is a city located in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, in western Ukraine, to the north of Halych. It is accessible by rail. Burshtyn hosts the administration of Burshtyn urban hromada, one of the hromad ...

, Galicia (now Ukraine). During her time at the Lwów Jewish gymnasium, she was active in the

Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

youth movement. She later studied philosophy in Vienna and Polish literature in Krakow. In 1926 she obtained her Ph.D., with a doctoral dissertation on influence of Hegel's aesthetics upon

Józef Kremer Józef Kremer (February 22, 1806, Kraków - June 2, 1875 Kraków), was a Polish historian of art, a philosopher, an aesthetician and a psychologist. Life He studied at Kraków, Berlin, Heidelberg and Paris. He was a professor of philosophy and ...

. After completing her education, she taught psychology at a college in Lwów. Vogel began writing poetry while at the university, initially in German, and later Yiddish. She moved about in Yiddish literary circles and contributed articles for several Yiddish journals, including '' Sygnały'' and ''Wiadmosci Literackie''. She was also a contributor of essays, art reviews, poetry, and essays on poetry to ''Tsushtayer'', a short-lived Lwów Yiddish journal of literature and art. She became a correspondent and close friend of writer and painter

Bruno Schulz Bruno Schulz (12 July 1892 – 19 November 1942) was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher. He is regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academ ...

. World War I forced Vogel's family to flee to Vienna. From there they moved to Lwów, where Vogel would spend the majority of her life. In 1932 Vogel married a Lwów architect and engineer named Barenblit, and their only son, Anshel, was born in 1937. Together with her husband and son, she was killed in the Lwów ghetto in 1942.

Work

Vogel was a prolific poet and essayist. Her most famous poems are ″You are Light and Bowing,″ (1929), ″Day-Figures″ (1930), ″Mannequins″ (1934), ″Legend of Silver″ (1935). She also wrote some prose. These include ''Acacias Bloom'' (1935), ''Fragments of a Montage-Novel'' (1936), and ''Military Parade'' (1938). Vogel's essays include; ''Theme and Form in the Art of Chagall'' (1929), ''′White Words′ in Poetry'' (1931), ''Stasis, Dynamics and Contemporaneity in Art'' (1936) and ''The Literary Genre of Montage'' (1937). Her poetic legacy is marked for its experimental spirit. Her poems, mostly written in the 1930s, reflect the radical and minimalistic outlook that all art aspired toward during this period in history. Her experiment in poetry was mostly about fusing poetry and art. She called this technique 'white words,' and described it as an attempt to "create a new lyric poetry of the urban condition." This style was, however, not liked by critics both during her lifetime and later, who considered it too intellectual, obscure and devoid of feminist themes. Vogel responded to such claims by stating that her style was not deliberate, but an outcome necessitated by life's experiences.

Biography

Work

References

Further reading