GuentherZ 2007-11-03 1320 Gedenktafel Theodor Kramer Wien02

Theodor Kramer (1 January 1897 – 3 April 1958) was an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n poet of Jewish origin. He was persecuted during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and fled to the United Kingdom. After his death his significant poetic output fell into obscurity, but has been rediscovered in recent decades. Several of his poems have been set to music.

Biography

Theodor Kramer was born on 1 January 1897. His father was the village doctor of Niederhollabrunn in the

Weinviertel The (; ) or ; "Area below the " is located in the northeast of Lower Austria. In the east, the borders Slovakia at the March River. In the south, it borders and , its limits being the Wagram, the Danube and the . Its western neighbor is ...

region of

Lower Austria Lower Austria ( , , abbreviated LA or NÖ) is one of the nine states of Austria, located in the northeastern corner of the country. Major cities are Amstetten, Lower Austria, Amstetten, Krems an der Donau, Wiener Neustadt and Sankt Pölten, which ...

. After completing his secondary education with the matura examination he served as an officer in the Austrian army until the end of the war. After the war, he began to study Germanic philology and governmental studies, but curtailed his university education to work as a civil servant and later a book retailer. From 1931 he earned his living by writing. His literary output, almost exclusively poetry, brought him significant success and he became well known in the German-speaking world. After the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

with

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

, Kramer – a Jew and Social Democrat – was forbidden to work. In 1939, he was able against all the odds to secure emigration to the United Kingdom, first for his wife and then for himself. From 1940 to 1941, he was imprisoned as an

enemy alien In customary international law, an enemy alien is any alien native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secur ...

. In 1943, he started work as a college librarian in Guildford. In 1946, he took British citizenship, and stayed in the same job until 1957. He was on the governing body of the Austrian

PEN club PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internati ...

, an association of persecuted writers. He was in close contact with other members of the club like

Elias Canetti Elias Canetti (; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994; ; ) was a German-language writer, known as a Literary modernism, modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and nonfiction writer. Born in Ruse, Bulgaria, to a Sephardi Jews, Sephardic Jewish fam ...

Erich Fried Erich Fried (6 May 1921 – 22 November 1988) was an Austrian-born poet, writer, and translator. He initially became known to a broader public in both Germany and Austria for his political poetry, and later for his love poems. As a writer, he ...

and

Hilde Spiel Hilde Spiel (19 October 1911 – 30 November 1990) (pseudonyms: Grace Hanshaw and Jean Lenoir) was an Austrian writer and journalist who received numerous awards and honours. Biography Youth in Vienna Hilde Spiel was born in Vienna in October 19 ...

. In the 1950s he gradually withdrew from social contact and his health deteriorated. In 1957, he was recalled to Vienna, where he received an honorary pension. He died in Vienna on 3 April 1958 and was buried in the

Vienna Central Cemetery The Vienna Central Cemetery () is one of the largest Cemetery, cemeteries in the world by number of interred, and is the most well-known among Vienna's nearly 50 cemeteries. The cemetery's name is descriptive of its significance as Vienna's big ...

(30B - 1- 2) in a grave of honour (a grave given to particularly significant citizens). Kramer's work was soon forgotten. His lyrical yet unromantic poetry draws its power and poetic quality from its depiction of outsiders: members of the proletariat, tramps, craftsmen, servants and whores. Kramer wrote sensitive poetic portraits of people and landscapes. His literary influences were

Georg Trakl Georg Trakl (; 3 February 1887 – 3 November 1914) was an Austrian poet and the brother of the pianist Grete Trakl. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists. He is perhaps best known for his poem " Grodek", which h ...

and

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

. Kramer's oeuvre consists of 10,000 works, many of which remain unpublished.

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

called him, "one of the greatest poets of the young generation," and

Stefan Zweig Stefan Zweig ( ; ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Zweig was raised in V ...

and

Carl Zuckmayer Carl Zuckmayer (27 December 1896 – 18 January 1977) was a German writer and playwright. His older brother was the pedagogue, composer, conductor, and pianist Eduard Zuckmayer. His first two dramas were failures. In 1929, he wrote the script ...

promoted his writing. Yet the eighteen years of his exile in the United Kingdom were sufficient to allow his work to fall into obscurity, at least amongst the general reading public. From the end of the 1970s, the interpretations of his poetry by the German folk duo Zupfgeigenhansel contributed significantly to the rediscovery of Kramer. In recent years the Berlin singer Hans-Eckardt Wenzel has released two albums of Kramer's poems set to music, which has revived interest in the poet in the German-speaking world. In her 1996 book, '' In der Falle'', Nobel Prize-winning author

Herta Müller Herta Müller (; born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in Nițchidorf (; ), Timiș County in Romania; her native languages are German and Romanian. Si ...

analyzed Kramer's autobiographical poetry in the context of dictatorship.

Awards

* 1958 Literaturpreis der Stadt Wien (a literature prize awarded by the city of Vienna) The Theodor Kramer Prize of the Theodor Kramer Society is awarded to authors writing in a context of resistance or exile.

Works

This is a list of his works, in German. *''Gesammelte Gedichte in drei Bänden.'' Erwin Chvojka Ed. 3 vols. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2005. *''Spätes Lied.'' Gedichte. Erwin Chvojka Ed. Europaverlag, Munich 1996. *''Lass still bei Dir mich liegen ...'' Love poems. Erwin Chvojka Ed. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2005. *''Der alte Zitherspieler.'' Portraits. Erwin Chvojka Ed. Club Niederösterreich, Vienna 1999. *''So lange der Atem uns trägt.'' Poems. Theodor Kramer-Gesellschaft, Vienna 2004. *

(Ed.): ''Die Wahrheit ist, man hat mir nichts getan.'' Poems. Paul Zsolnay, Vienna 1999.

References

*Daniela Strigl: ''Wo niemand zuhaus ist, dort bin ich zuhaus''. Theodor Kramer - Heimatdichter und Sozialdemokrat zwischen den Fronten. Böhlau Verlag 1993. (German) *Harald Hahn, David Fuhr: ''Lob der Verzweiflung – Lieder und Texte zu Gedichten von Theodor Kramer.'' Ibidem-Verlag 2006 (with CD). (German)

External links

*
Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft
includes biography, bibliography and excerpts of his works .

Article by Hannes Schwenger in ''Die Welt'' (in German).

by Kellerman and Rieck with song lyrics and audio clips .

Biography and poems of Kramer .
Theodor Kramer
im .
Entry for Theodor Kramer at litkult1920er.aau.at
a project by the University of Klagenfurt * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kramer, Theodor 1897 births 1958 deaths 20th-century British poets Jewish poets 20th-century Austrian poets British male poets Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United Kingdom People from Korneuburg District Austrian male poets Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom 20th-century British male writers