Erwin von Busse also known as Granand or Erwin von Busse-Granand (12 January 1885 – 10 April 1939) was a German writer, artist, theater director, art historian and critic. His 1920 collection of short stories devoted to erotic male relationships was banned; it was republished in German in 1993 and in an English translation in 2022 as ''Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights''.
As a stage director for several years he worked with some of the most prominent figures of his time and he directed the world premiere of
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...
's drama ''
Exiles'' in 1919.
He devoted himself to painting in his later years, living in exile in Brazil.
Biography
Early years
Erwin Oskar Leopold von Busse was born on 12 January 1885 in
Magdeburg
Magdeburg (; nds, label= Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river.
Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Mag ...
.
His parents were Lieutenant Hugo Maximilian von Busse (1855–1922) and his wife Marie Louise Elisabeth Helene née Weste (1861–1935). He had a brother Rudolf Maximilian von Busse (1886–1957).
Erwin von Busse went to school in Magdeburg and
Kiel
Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021).
Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the Jutland pe ...
.
Beginning in 1898, he attended several military schools, ending with graduation in 1905 from the
Prussian military academy
The Prussian Staff College, also Prussian War College (german: Preußische Kriegsakademie) was the highest military facility of the Kingdom of Prussia to educate, train, and develop general staff officers.
Location
It originated with the ''A ...
in
Gross-Lichterfelde. He spent the next two years performing his compulsory military service.
[
Beginning in 1907 he studied law in Munich, changing to art history in 1909. In 1912 he interrupted his studies for a trip to Brazil and a sojourn in Paris.][
]
Art criticism
In 1912 he contributed an essay about Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstra ...
to the '' Der Blaue Reiter Almanach''. Reproductions of two recent Delaunay works, ''St. Séverin'' (1909) and ''The Window on the City'' (1911), illustrated the text. This essay has been praised for its "extraordinary insight" into Delaunay, who was soon to prove a critical leader in discovering the principles of expressionist and abstract art. Analyzing a few critical Delaunay canvases, von Busse traced the artist's shift from respect for the physical subject, to fracturing the object into particles formed and colored as "the dynamic needs of the space" require, and finally to excluding all references to the external world so that shape and color become the form and subject of the painting. Delaunay, in von Busse's words, now explores "the problem of space dynamics" without reference to the external world as he searches for the rules of "subjective understanding and representation".[
Von Busse returned to his studies before the end of 1912, now at the ]University of Bern
The University of Bern (german: Universität Bern, french: Université de Berne, la, Universitas Bernensis) is a university in the Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It is a compreh ...
. There he received his doctorate in 1914 with a thesis on ("The Historical Evolution of the Depiction of the Masses in Italian painting").[
]
Theater
Von Busse then turned to the theater and before long settled in Berlin, where he edited ', a theater magazine, in 1917. By that year he had also taken up the position of director and dramaturge
A dramaturge or dramaturg is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults auth ...
at the Deutches Theater under Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born theatre and film director, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his innovative stage productions, he is regarded as one of the most promi ...
, a dominant figure in the German-language theater. He directed several productions there in 1918–19.[ In 1919 he directed a revival of Walter Hasenclever's expressionist play '' The Son'' (1916), achieving greater success than Reinhardt had with the original production in 1918.]
He moved to Munich and worked for Hermine Körner
Hermine Körner (30 May 1878 in Berlin - 14 December 1960) was a German actress, director and theater manager.
Early life
Körner was the fifth child of teacher and zoologist William Stader and Emilie Luyken. The father departed in 1880 on a lect ...
, who had starred in ''The Son''. There he directed the world premiere
A première, also spelled premiere, is the debut (first public presentation) of a play, film, dance, or musical composition.
A work will often have many premières: a world première (the first time it is shown anywhere in the world), its f ...
of James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...
's 1918 drama '' Exiles'' at the Munich Theater on 7 August 1919.[
Other plays he directed included '' Candida'' by Shaw and '']Die Soldaten
' (''The Soldiers'') is a four-act opera in German by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, based on the 1776 play by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. In a letter accompanying his newly printed play (23 July 1776, aged 24) that he sent to his best friend, the Ger ...
'' by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (23 January 1751, or 12 January in the Julian calendar – 4 June 1792, or 24 May in the Julian calendar) was a Baltic German writer of the ''Sturm und Drang'' movement.
Life
Lenz was born in Sesswegen (Cesvaine), ...
. By 1925 he was no longer associated with a theater.[
]
Fiction
Von Busse adopted the pseudonym Granand to publish (Erotic Comedy Garden) in 1920. Its five stories depict a variety of sexually charged encounters between men, with characters that range from military school cadets and dance-hall regulars to a foreign businessman and a burglar. Granand wrote that his garden "has crooked, convoluted, and uncontrolled paths" but "over it all the great, hot sun shines, the melancholy moon passes by, and the innocent stars twinkle." There were two editions: a private edition of 100 copies with six illustrations by Rudolph Pütz (1896–1986) and a public edition of a few thousand copies with a slightly different text and five illustrations and a cover design by Ludwig Kainer (1885–1967).[ Above an enthusiastic review, '' Der Eigene'', a bi-weekly gay newsletter, called the small printing a "luxury edition" and identified the bookstore that was handling sales.][ Review of Granand, ''Das erotische Komödien-Gärtlein.]
Von Busse wrote with discretion to avoid government censorship. Though the Weimar Republic
The German Reich, commonly referred to as the Weimar Republic,, was a historical period of Germany from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also r ...
is celebrated for its "radical remaking of sexual norms", and its 1919 constitution prohibited censorship in principle, it also permitted statutes to regulate films, printed matter, and public presentations. For example, the film ''Different from the Others
''Different from the Others'' (german: Anders als die Andern) is a silent German melodramatic film produced during the Weimar Republic. It was first released in 1919 and stars Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel. The story was co-written by Rich ...
'', which argued for the decriminalization of homosexuality, was released in May 1919 and banned nationwide in October 1920.
Regional courts in Berlin and Leipzig in 1920 and 1921 banned the distribution of von Busse's collection of stories because of "indecency" and ordered all copies confiscated or destroyed.[ The banned 1920 edition was not reprinted until 1993. Its first English translation was published in 2022 as ''Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights''. Consistent with the 1920 edition, it identified the author as "Granand".][
A second set of stories, this time heterosexual, appeared in 1921 as (Lovers' Fairy Tales). With illustrations by Kainer, its stories were "literary imitations of selections from ]Washington Irving
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories " Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and " The Lege ...
's ''Tales of the Alhambra
''Tales of the Alhambra'' (1832) is a collection of essays, verbal sketches and stories by American author Washington Irving (1783–1859) inspired by, and partly written during, his 1828 visit to the palace/fortress complex known as the Alhamb ...
''" (1832). An attempt to ban this volume failed.[
]
Later years
In 1925, von Busse contributed a slight volume to an art history series. By this time he was using a composite name, having added his pseudonym to his birth name to become "Erwin von Busse-Granand".
Using that name he emigrated to Brazil in 1928.[ In 1931 he took part in the group exhibition (Revolutionary Salon) at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in ]Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of the same name, Brazil's List of Brazilian states by population, third-most populous state, and the List of largest citi ...
, the first of its annual exhibitions to host modernists.
He became a Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...
in 1933 and in London on 10 April of that year married Simonette Mathilde Kowarick, a wealthy woman and native of Brazil. They had no children.[ In Brazil he devoted himself to painting, concentrating on the South American landscape. He taught for a time at the Olinda School in ]São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
.[
He died in São Paulo on 10 April 1939.][ A few months later, mounted a memorial exhibition of von Busse's paintings at his galleries in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo; the catalog included several illustrations of von Busse's paintings, two essays about Brazil by the artist, and a brief biography that did not mention his short story collections.]
Works
*
*
*
*
See also
*Expressionism (theatre)
Expressionism was a movement in drama and theatre that principally developed in Germany in the early decades of the 20th century. It was then popularized in the United States, Spain, China, the U.K., and all around the world. Similar to the broader ...
* German Brazilians
*Weimar culture
Weimar culture was the emergence of the arts and sciences that happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic, the latter during that part of the interwar period between Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 and Hitler's rise to power in 193 ...
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Von Busse Granand, Erwin
German expatriates in Brazil
1885 births
1939 deaths
People from Magdeburg
University of Bern alumni
German art critics
German theatre directors
Berlin in fiction
1920s LGBT literature
Censored books
20th-century German short story writers
German male short story writers
20th-century pseudonymous writers