Kurt Tucholsky
Kurt Tucholsky
His literary works were translated into English, including the 1912 Rheinsberg: Ein Bilderbuch für
Verliebte, translated as Rheinsberg: A Storybook for Lovers; and the 1931 Schloss Gripsholm: Eine
Sommergeschichte, translated as Castle Gripsholm: A Summer Story.
a wholly consistent person of 21. From the controlled and powerful swing of his walking
stick which gives a youthful lift to his shoulders to the deliberate delight in and contempt for
his own literary works. Wants to be a criminal defence lawyer.
Yet, despite his later doctorate, Tucholsky never followed a legal career: his inclination towards literature
and journalism was stronger.
With Rheinsberg – ein Bilderbuch für Verliebte ("Rheinsberg – a Picture Book for Lovers") in 1912,
Tucholsky published a tale in which he adopted a fresh and playful tone (which was unusual for that
time) and which made him known to a wider audience for the first time. To support the sales of the book,
Tucholsky and Szafranski, who had illustrated the tale, opened a "Book Bar" on Kurfürstendamm in
Berlin: anyone who bought a copy of his book also received a free glass of schnapps (this student prank
came to an end after a few weeks).
In January 1913 Tucholsky began an enduring and productive new phase of his journalistic career when
he published his first article in the weekly theatre magazine Die Schaubühne (later called Die
Weltbühne).[8][11] The owner of the magazine, the publicist Siegfried Jacobsohn, became Tucholsky's
friend and mentor, offering him both encouragement and criticism, sometimes co-writing articles with
him, and gradually inviting him to assume some editorial responsibility for Die Schaubühne; under
Tucholsky's influence the focus of the journal shifted toward political concerns, and in 1918 it was
renamed Die Weltbühne: Zeitschrift für Politik/Kunst/Wirtschaft ("The World Stage: Magazine for
Politics/Art/Economics).[8] Tucholsky reflected on the significance of his relationship with Jacobsohn in
a "Vita" (biography) that he wrote in Sweden two years before his death: "Tucholsky owes to the
publisher of the paper, Siegfried Jacobsohn, who died in the year 1926, everything he has become."[12]
For three and a half years I dodged the war as much as I could – and I regret not having had
the courage shown by the great Karl Liebknecht to say No and refuse to serve in the military.
Of this I am ashamed. I used many means not to get shot and not to shoot – not once the
worst means. But I would have used all means, all without exception, had I been forced to do
so: I wouldn't have said no to bribery or any other punishable acts. Many did just the
same.[14]
These means, in part, did not lack a certain comic effect as emerges in a letter to Mary Gerold:
One day for the march I received this heavy old gun. A gun? And during a war? Never, I
thought to myself. And leaned it against a hut. And walked away. But that stood out even in
our group at that time. I don't know now how I got away with it, but somehow it worked.
And so I got by unarmed.[15]
His encounter with the jurist Erich Danehl eventually led to his being transferred to Romania in 1918 as a
deputy sergeant and field police inspector. (Tucholsky's friend Danehl later appeared as "Karlchen" in a
number of texts, for example in Wirtshaus im Spessart.) In Turnu Severin in Romania, Tucholsky had
himself baptized as a Protestant in the summer of 1918. He had already left the Jewish community on 1
July 1914.
Although Tucholsky still took part in a contest for the 9th war bond (Kriegsanleihe) in August 1918, he
returned from the war in the autumn of 1918 as a convinced anti-militarist and pacifist. In a 1931 text, he
wrote Soldaten sind Mörder ("soldiers are murderers"), which subsequently led to numerous judicial
proceedings in Germany.
In December 1918, Tucholsky took on the role of editor-in-chief of Ulk which he held until April 1920.
Ulk was the weekly satirical supplement of publisher Rudolf Mosse's left-liberal Berliner Tageblatt.[16]
Death
On the evening of 20 December 1935 Tucholsky took an overdose of sleeping tablets in his house in
Hindås.[18] The next day he was found in a coma and taken to hospital in Gothenburg. He died there on
the evening of 21 December. Recently, Tucholsky's biographer Michael Hepp has called into doubt the
verdict of suicide, saying that he considers it possible that the death was accidental. However, this claim
is disputed among Tucholsky researchers. Kurt Tucholsky was buried in the cemetery of Mariefred (near
Gripsholm Castle) at Lake Mälaren. An inscription on his grave reads: Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein
Gleichnis, a quote from Goethe.
Iraq,
1988 Sherko Bekes
Kurdistan
Syria,
2000 Salim Barakat
Kurdistan
Serbia,
2002 Rajko Đurić
Romani
Turkey,
2014 Muharrem Erbey
Kurdistan
There is also a German Kurt Tucholsky Prize of €3,000 that is awarded every two years
since 1995 by the Kurt Tucholsky Foundation for "committed and succinct literary works".
Kurt Tucholsky is portrayed in the political/historical comic series Berlin by Jason Lutes.
12401 Tucholsky, asteroid.
Tucholskystraße in Berlin-Mitte is named after Kurt Tucholsky.
Notes
1. "German Book Dealers Ban Works of 12 Noted Authors (https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstr
act.html?res=9E07E4DE1F39EF32A25754C1A9639C946294D6CF&legacy=true)" (article
preview only; subscription required). New York Times. 17 May 1933. Retrieved 22 May
2017. "A blacklist of twelve 'un-German' authors whose works are to be barred from the
German book trade has been compiled by the German Bookdealers' Association and the
Militant League of German Culture." Kurt Tucholsky is among the 12 authors named in the
article, and his four pen names are also noted.
2. "Kurt Tucholsky" (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/608379/Kurt-Tucholsky).
Encyclopædia Britannica. britannica.com. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
3. Freeman, Thomas (1997). "1914. Kurt Tucholsky withdraws from the Jewish community", in
Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes (Eds.), Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in
German Culture, 1096–1996. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300068245.
pp. 327–335; here: p. 332. "[Carl Ossietzky and Kurt Tucholsky] were both among the first
writers and intellectuals whose books were burned and whose citizenship was revoked."
4. "8.6.1935 [8 June 1935]: German writers stripped of their citizenship (http://www.today-in-his
tory.de/index.php?what=thmanu&manu_id=1481&tag=8&monat=6&year=2016&dayisset=1
&lang=en)". Today in History. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
5. Istvan Deak, "Tucholsky, Karl," in Dieter K. Buse and Juergen Doerr, eds. Modern Germany:
An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture 1871–1990 (1998) 2: 1016.
6. Freeman (1997), p. 327–328.
7. Freeman (1997), p. 327.
8. Freeman (1997), p. 328.
9. Knust, Herbert (1987). "Kurt Tucholsky (9 January 1890-21 December 1935)". German
Fiction Writers, 1914–1945; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 56. Detroit: Gale.
ISBN 9780810317345. pp. 264–277; here: p. 266.
10. Louise Reichstetter (2014). "Poignant Past. How Interwar Satirical Magazines in Germany,
France and Spain Used History to Criticise Their Times" (https://books.google.com/books?id
=oUXqBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA89). In Elisabeth Cheauré; Regine Nohejl (eds.). Humour and
Laughter in History: Transcultural Perspectives. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. p. 89. ISBN 978-
3-8394-2858-0.
11. Illies, Florian (2013). 1913: The Year Before the Storm (https://books.google.com/books?id=
XypAmsur_5wC&pg=PA51). Translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside and Jamie
Lee Searle. London: The Clerkenwell Press. ISBN 9781847659811. p. 51.
12. Tucholsky, Kurt, "Eigenhändige Vita Tucholsky: Für den Einbürgerungsantrag zur Erlangung
der schwedischen Staatsbürgerschaft (https://books.google.com/books?id=F6WzDAAAQBA
J&pg=PA11)". In: Kurt Tucholsky – Gesammelte Werke – Prosa, Reportagen, Gedichte. 2nd
ed. Neuss: Null Papier Verlag, 2016. p. 8–12; here: p. 11. According to the subtitle of the
published piece, Tucholsky wrote it as part of his application for Swedish citizenship.
13. Zohn, 2017.
14. Quoted in Ignaz Wrobel, Wo waren Sie im Kriege, Herr –? (Where were you in the war,
Mister –?) in Die Weltbühne, March 30, 1926, p. 490.
15. Tucholsky, Kurt. Unser ungelebtes Leben. Briefe an Mary (Our Unlived Life. Letters to
Mary). Reinbek, 1982. p. 247.
16. Winter, Jay; Robert, Jean-Louis (1999). Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–
1919, Volume 1. Cambridge University PressCapital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin
1914–1919, Volume 1. p. 107. ISBN 9780521668149.
17. Grimes, William (6 June 2014). "Giving a Satirist of the Third Reich the Last Laugh" (https://
www.nytimes.com/2014/06/07/books/giving-a-satirist-of-the-third-reich-the-last-laugh.html).
The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0362-4331).
Retrieved 3 March 2019.
18. "Kurt Tucholsky" (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/608379/Kurt-Tucholsky).
Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 21 April 2009.
19. "Tucholskypriset pristagare" (https://www.svenskapen.se/tucholskypriset-pristagare/?rq=tuc
holsky).
Further reading
Baumann, Franz. "Fabulous, Tragic Kurt Tucholsky (https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fabul
ous-tragic-kurt-tucholsky/#!)". In The Los Angeles Review of Books, 19 August 2017.
Freeman, Thomas (1997). "1914. Kurt Tucholsky withdraws from the Jewish community", in
Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes (eds.), Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in
German Culture, 1096–1996. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300068245.
pp. 327–335.
Grenville, Bryan P.: Kurt Tucholsky: The Ironic Sentimentalist. London: Oswald Wolff,
London 1981. ISBN 978-0854960743
Grimes, William. "Giving a Satirist of the Third Reich the Last Laugh" (https://www.nytimes.c
om/2014/06/07/books/giving-a-satirist-of-the-third-reich-the-last-laugh.html?partner=rss&em
c=rss&_r=2) The New York Times, 6 June 2014.
Hierholzer, Michael: Kurt Tucholsky, 1890–1935: Aspekte seiner Person und seines Werkes
(English: Kurt Tucholsky 1890–1935: aspects of the man and his works). Inter Nationes,
Bonn 1990.
Knust, Herbert (1987). "Kurt Tucholsky (9 January 1890-21 December 1935)". German
Fiction Writers, 1914–1945; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 56. Detroit: Gale.
ISBN 9780810317345. pp. 264–277.
Merriman, John, and Jay Winter (Eds.). "Kurt Tucholsky", in Europe Since 1914:
Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
2006. Available online via Encyclopedia.com (http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclop
edias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tucholsky-kurt-1890-1935).
Poor, Harold L.: Kurt Tucholsky and the Ordeal of Germany, 1914–1935. Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York 1968. ISBN 978-1125817650
Zohn, Harry (2007). "Tucholsky, Kurt" (http://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-
almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tucholsky-kurt). In Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred
(eds.). Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 20 (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. pp. 168–
169. ISBN 978-0-02-866097-4 – via Encyclopedia.com.
An early version of this article was based, in part, on the corresponding article in the
German Wikipedia, retrieved 24 April 2005.
External links
"Works by Kurt Tucholsky" (http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Tucholsky,+Kurt). Zeno.org (in
German).
(in German) tucholsky-gesellschaft.de (http://www.tucholsky-gesellschaft.de/)
"Kurt Tucholsky (https://web.archive.org/web/20120204043738/http://german.about.com/libr
ary/bltucholsky.htm)" (biography). German Language: Authors. About.com. Archived from
the original (http://german.about.com/library/bltucholsky.htm) on 4 February 2012.
Kurt Tucholsky (http://kurttucholsky.blogspot.com) blogspot.com (English translations of
Tucholsky)
Works by or about Theobald Tiger (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%
3A%22Tiger%2C%20Theobald%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Theobald%20Tiger%22%2
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OR%20description%3A%22Theobald%20Tiger%22%29%20OR%20%28%221890-1935%2
2%20AND%20Tiger%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at the Internet
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Internet Archive
Works by or about Kurt Tucholsky (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%
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5%22%20AND%20Tucholsky%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at the
Internet Archive
Works by Kurt Tucholsky (https://librivox.org/author/311) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
Kurt Tucholsky (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9580228) at Find a Grave