Emil Szittya
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Emil Szittya is the name under which the originally
Austria-Hungarian Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...
multi-faceted libertarian writer Adolf/Avraham Schenk (18 August 1886 – 26 November 1964) published his first book, and it is the name by which he was and is most frequently known. The very many pseudonyms under which he may sometimes be identified include "Chronist, Emszi" and "Emil Lesitt". Along with his work as a novelist and journalist, he is also sometimes classified as an art critic and/or an inveterate traveller-vagabond. His earlier work was written in Hungarian. Later, as a young man, he also wrote in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
. During the second half of his life he lived principally in France and wrote in
French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...
.


Life

Adolf Schenk was born in
Óbuda Óbuda (, ) is, together with Buda and Pest, one of the three cities that were unified to form the Hungarian capital city of Budapest in 1873. Today, together with Békásmegyer, Óbuda forms a part of the city's third district, although the to ...
(part of
Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...
), a member of the Hungarian speaking Jewish community in what was at that time an ethnically diverse city. Ignác Schenk, his father, was a shoe-maker while his mother, born Regina Spatz stayed at home and looked after the children. According to the available information he was the eldest of his parents' five sons. Little is known of his early years. He himself would later come up with various mutually incompatible versions of his family origins and childhood, consistent only in terms of their implausibility. After he grew up he always refused to acknowledge his Jewish provenance, at times manifesting an aggressive level of alienation. By the time he settled in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
he had for several years been leading what would have been termed at the time a conspicuously "
Bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, originally practised by 19th–20th century European and American artists and writers. * Bohemian style, a ...
" life-style. Later that year he moved to
Ticino Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...
, living during 1906/07 as part of the
Monte VeritĂ  Monte VeritĂ  (Italian; German 'Berg Wahrheit', meaning "Mount Truth" or "Mountain of Truth") is a hill standing 321 Metres above the Sea (Switzerland), metres above sea level and a cultural-historical ensemble in the Swiss canton of Ticino. The ...
community on the edge of
Ascona 300px, Ascona Ascona ( ) is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. It is located on the shore of Lake Maggiore. The town is a popular tourist destination and holds the yearly Ascona Jazz Festival. ...
. It was here that he first met the
communard The Communards () were members and supporters of the short-lived 1871 Paris Commune formed in the wake of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. After the suppression of the Commune by the French Army in May 1871, 43,000 Communards we ...
brothers Karl and Gustav Gräser. The next year he was in
Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
when, during the course of his travels, he met the flamboyant Swiss-born
modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
novelist-poet
Blaise Cendrars FrĂ©dĂ©ric-Louis Sauser (1 September 1887 – 21 January 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars (), was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the European ...
, with whom he would later collaborate in Paris. By 1911 (not for the last time in his life) he had returned to Paris, where during 1911 and 1912 he worked on
Les Hommes nouveaux ''The New Men'' (French: ''Les Hommes nouveaux'') is a 1936 French drama film written and directed by Marcel L'Herbier and starring Harry Baur, Natalie Paley and Gabriel Signoret. The film was based on the novel of the same title by Claude Farrèr ...
, a newly launched Franco-German literary journal produced by a group of proto-libertarians with Cendrars. Between 1914 and 1918 he lived predominantly in
ZĂĽrich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
. In 1915 he crossed paths with a group of
Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...
revolutionaries, including
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
,
Karl Radek Karl Berngardovich Radek (; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a revolutionary and writer active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a Communist International leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian ...
and
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...
. It was also in 1915 that he joined with Hugo Kersten and others to launch Der Mistral, another short-lived internationalist "literary war magazine" (according to the main subtitle on one of the editions). Published in ZĂĽrich it was, Szittya wrote in 1923, "the first
an- An alpha privative or, rarely, privative a (from Latin ', from Ancient Greek ) is the prefix ''a-'' or ''an-'' (before vowels) that is used in Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit and Greek and in words borrowed therefrom to express negation or ...
uropean magazine to be set up during the war .... scorned by the entire Swiss press, and unfortunately, only taken seriously
uch Uch (; ), frequently referred to as Uch Sharīf (; ; ''"Noble Uch"''), is a historic city in the Pakistan's Punjab province. Uch may have been founded as Alexandria on the Indus, a town founded by Alexander the Great during his invasion of t ...
later". During 1916 he became a regular presence at the short-lived Cabaret Voltaire, known to posterity as the cradle of the Dadaist movement, of which at least one admirer credits Szittya as a co-founder. Writing to a friend in 1964, Szittya nevertheless wrote of Der Mistral that it was often "... identified as a forerunner of Dadaism (which it was not) and people therefore assert, incorrectly, that I myself was also a Dadaist". In 1918 he returned to
Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
where his presence coincided with that year's
revolution In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements ...
. He met again with his old friend the socialist poet
Lajos Kassák Lajos Kassák (March 21, 1887 – July 22, 1967) was a Hungarian poet, novelist, painter, essayist, editor, theoretician of the avant-garde, and translator. Self-taught, he became a writer within the socialist movement and published journa ...
, founder of the anarchist-pacifist magazine
A Tett ''A Tett'' (The Action) was a Hungarian magazine published by Lajos Kassák from 1915 to 1916. It advocated an anarchist-pacifist outlook. Kassák sponsored several activities opposing the war – exhibitions of avant-garde art by socialist paint ...
which had been quickly banned on account of its "anti-militarist" tendencies. In 1918–1919 he teamed up with Karl Lohs and Hans Richter to produce the short-lived Dadaist literary periodical "Horizont-Flugschriften" which was published in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest. He lived between 1921 and 1926 in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, writing and publishing several novels in German during this period. He was becoming increasingly networked with other members of Europe's
avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
. In 1923 he published "Kuriositäten-Kabinett: Begegnungen mit seltsamen Begebenheiten, Landstreichern, Verbrechern, Artisten, religiös Wahnsinnigen, sexuellen Merkwürdigkeiten, Sozialdemokraten, Syndikalisten, Kommunisten, Anarchisten, Politikern und Künstlern", a volume of pen-portraits and memories. With mentions of around 1,000 individuals, it has been described as an indispensable information pool on Europe's counter-culture during the early decades of the twentieth century, though critics have complained that some of the detail is, allegedly, unreliable. It has been reprinted several times and remains, in commercial terms, Szittya's most successful book. It is not clear whether the book's enduring reputation was helped or hindered by the fact that shortly after initial publication it was temporarily (and briefly) banned. Also during the 1920s in Berlin he wrote for the avant-garde arts magazines
Querschnitt Querschnitt ("cross section") is a compilation album by German industrial metal Industrial metal is the fusion of Heavy metal music, heavy metal and industrial music, typically employing repeating Heavy metal guitar, metal guitar riffs, sa ...
and
Kunstblatt ''Das Kunstblatt'' was a German art magazine published between 1917 and 1933 by Paul Westheim in Weimar Germany The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it w ...
. In 1927 Szittya returned to Paris, where he now lived (with interruptions) for the rest of his life, teaming up with the fashion designer Erika Drägert to start a family. They married in 1930 and their daughter Jeanne was born in 1931. When he died more than thirty years later and Erika found herself going through his papers, it became evident that he had never told her, and she had never known, very much about his former life as a foot-loose "vagabond". In
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
he teamed up with Paul Ruhstrat to launch and produce yet another short-lived literary journal (also touching on politics, the arts more broadly, science, theatre, music and the rapidly evolving medium of broadcast radio), "Die Zone". There were eight editions published between 1933 and 1934, including one special edition commemorating the murder, twenty years before, of
Jean Jaurès Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon Jaurès (3 September 185931 July 1914), commonly referred to as Jean Jaurès (; ), was a French socialist leader. Initially a Moderate Republican, he later became a social democrat and one of the first possibi ...
. The tone of "Die Zone" was uncompromisingly anti-fascist or, in Szittya's own words, "anti-Hitlerisch". As the German armies entered Paris in June 1940 Emil Szittya and his little family were already clear of the city, having fled south with hundreds of thousands of other Parisians. Between 1940 and 1944 he served as a member of the
Résistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the Nazi occupation and the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during the Second World War. Resistance cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the Maquis ...
, based in
Limoges Limoges ( , , ; , locally ) is a city and Communes of France, commune, and the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne Departments of France, department in west-central France. It was the administrative capital of the former Limousin region. Situated o ...
. Sources are silent concerning Szittya's Résistance activities. During their four years in
Limoges Limoges ( , , ; , locally ) is a city and Communes of France, commune, and the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne Departments of France, department in west-central France. It was the administrative capital of the former Limousin region. Situated o ...
, with his wife Erika, he also undertook an unusual and intriguing research project. They systematically visited and interrogated the local people about their dreams. Their subjects included Résistance fighters, peasants-farmers, men, women and children. And they carefully noted down the details, producing in the process a psychoanalytical portrait of the area at a key stage in history. They refrained from adding any sort of "interpretation" in the notes they took, though the direction of their thinking is sometimes apparent from the answers to their follow-up questions. Biographical descriptions of each of the 82 subjects are restricted to a couple of lines. The fascinating result was published in Paris in 1963, shortly before the author's death, but its appearance went little remarked. However, a reissue, with an introduction by
Emmanuel Carrère Emmanuel Carrère (; born 9 December 1957) is a French author, screenwriter and film director. Life Family Carrère was born into a wealthy family in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. His father, Louis Carrère d'Encausse, is a retired insurance ...
appeared in 2019, and was enthusiastically reviewed by at least one scholarly critic, who wrote that the 220 page work "cries out for a German ranslation andpublisher". In 1945 the family returned to Paris. They made their home at Rue du Château 149, where Szittya lived for the rest of his life, close to the
Montparnasse quarter Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split betwee ...
. For many years he worked at the nearby Café Les Deux Magots, which at that time was famed as a meeting point for the Parisienne literary and intellectual élite. Emil Szittya died in a Paris
Tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
sanatorium on 26 November 1964.


Output (selection)

* ''Die Haschischfilme des Zöllners Henri Rousseau und Tatjana Joukoff mischt die Karten.'' Budapest 1915. * ''Das Spiel eines Erotomanen.'' Berlin 1920. * ''Ein Spaziergang mit manchmal Unnützigem.'' Wien/Prag/Leipzig 1920. * ''Gebete über die Tragik Gottes'', Berlin 1922. * ''Das Kuriositäten-Kabinett.'' Konstanz 1923. (Neuausgabe: Verlag Clemens Zerling, Berlin 1979.) * ''Klaps oder Wie sich
Ahasver The Wandering Jew (occasionally referred to as the Eternal Jew, a calque from German ) is a mythical immortal man whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. In the original legend, a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Cruc ...
als Saint Germain entpuppt.'' Potsdam 1924. * ''Henri Rousseau.'' Hamburg 1924. * ''Malerschicksale. Vierzehn Porträts.'' Hamburg 1925. * ''Selbstmörder. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte aller Zeiten und Völker.'' Leipzig 1925. * ''Ernesto de Fiore.'' Mailand 1927. * ''Hoetger.'' Paris o.J. (ca. 1928). * ''Ausgedachte Dichterschicksale.'' Paris 1928. * ''Herbert Garbe et la Sculpture Allemande.'' O.O., o.J. (um 1929). * ''Neue Tendenzen in der Schweizer Malerei.'' Édition Ars, Paris (1929). * ''Le Paysage Français.'' Paris 1929. ** Deutsch: ''Die französische Landschaft.'' Paris 1929. * ''Leopold Gottlieb.'' Paris 1930. * '' Leo von König.'' Paris 1931. * ''Arthur Bryks.'' Paris 1932. * ''L'Art allemand en France.'' (ĂĽbersetzt von Lazare LĂ©vine), Paris (1933) * ''Notes sur Picasso.'' Paris 1947. * ''Marquet parcourt le monde.'' Paris 1949. * ''Soutine et son temps.'' Paris 1955. * ''Der Mann, der immer dabei war.'' Hgg. Sabine Haaser. Manfred Lamping. Wien 1986. * ''Ein Spaziergang mit manchmal UnnĂĽtzigem. Prosa 1916–1920.'' ''Vergessene Autoren der Moderne,'' 59. Hg. Walter Fähnders. Siegen 1994. * ''Ahasver Traumreiter. Verstörung der Legende.'' Mit editorischer Notiz. Illustr. Matjaz Vipotnik. Klagenfurt: Wieser 1991. . Bibliographie pp. 135–137. * ''Mit Franz Jung durchquert das Fieber die Strassen.'' Briefe an Franz Jung. In: ''Archiv fĂĽr die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit'', 18. Fernwald: Germinal 2008. pp. 365–376. * ''Reise durch das anarchistische Spanien.'' In: ''Archiv fĂĽr die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit'', 19. Fernwald: Germinal 2011. S. 197–212. ** Kommentar: Walter Fähnders, RĂĽdiger Reinecke: ''Das andere, das verborgene Spanien.'' In: ''Archiv fĂĽr die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit'', 19. Fernwald: Germinal 2011. pp. 213–220. * ''Spaziergang in sich.'' Roman. In: ''Gegner.'' Quartalsschrift, 30. Basisdruck, Berlin 2012. pp. 9–16. ** Kommentar: Walter Fähnders: ''Es war ihm unangenehm, im Nichts zu sein.'' ''Gegner.'' Quartalsschrift, 30. Basisdruck, Berlin 2012. pp. 16–22. * ''Herr AuĂźerhalb illustriert die Welt.'' Mit Erstdrucken aus dem Nachlass. Reihe: ''Pamphlete,'' 28. Hg. Walter Fähnders. Basisdruck, Berlin 2014. . * ''Erich MĂĽhsam. Eine Rede.'' Erstdruck aus dem Nachlass. In: ''Improvisationen in mehr als zwei Bildern.'' Hg. von Gregor Ackermann und Walter Delabar. Bielefeld 2015, , pp. 153–170. (''Juni.'' Magazin fĂĽr Literatur 49/50.) * ''Die sieben Jahre. Ein Kriegsepos.'' Erstdruck aus dem Nachlass in ''literaturkritik.de'' 2016. * ''Man will die Spanier zu Sklaven machen'' und ''Spanien 1939.'' In: ''Archiv fĂĽr die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit,'' Nr. 20 (2016), pp. 565–570. ; . ** Kommentar: Walter Fähnders: ''„Die Felder atmen nicht mehr“. Zum Erstdruck von Emil Szittyas Spanien-Texten''. Ebenda, pp. 571–578.


Pen-portraits of artist contemporaries

Szittya included pen-portraits of leading artists of his generation in many of his books, usually in the form of concise carefully crafted monographs. Those whom he treated in this way included
Henri Rousseau Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (; 21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910)
at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Gug ...
,
Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
,
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...
,
Marc Chagall Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal; – 28 March 1985) was a Russian and French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with the School of Paris, École de Paris, as well as several major art movement, artistic styles and created ...
, August Wilhelm Dressler,
Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and Printmaking, printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Alon ...
,
Oskar Kokoschka Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright and teacher, best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expre ...
,
Braque Georges Braque ( ; ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he play ...
and Masereel.


Literary estate

A substantial literary archive of Emil Szittya's papers is held by the
German Literature Archive The Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA – German Literature Archive), established in 1955, in Marbach am Neckar, is one of the most significant literary archives in the world. Its collections span literary and intellectual history from 1750 ...
at Marbach, a short distance to the north of
Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-WĂĽrttemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...
.


Notes


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Szittya, Emil 1886 births 1964 deaths Hungarian people of German descent 20th-century Hungarian painters 20th-century Hungarian male writers 20th-century Hungarian journalists 20th-century German male writers German art critics 20th-century French male writers French opinion journalists French Resistance members Writers from Budapest Writers from Berlin Writers from Paris People from Limoges Hungarian male painters 20th-century Hungarian male artists