Rudolf Kassner
- Writer
- translator
- philosopher
Rudolf Kassner (11 September 1873 Velké Pavlovice – 1 April 1959 Sierre, Switzerland) was an Austrian writer, essayist, translator and cultural philosopher. Although stricken as an infant with poliomyelitis, Kassner traveled widely to northern Africa, the Sahara, India, Russia, Spain, and throughout Europe. His translations of William Blake introduced this English romantic poet to German-speaking audiences. His literary career covered six decades, including a period of isolation during the Nazi years in Vienna. His writings on physiognomy reflect his effort to understand the problems of modernity and Man's subsequent disconnectedness from time and place. His later autobiographical writings suggest a brilliant literary mind attempting to make sense of a chaotic post-nuclear world. He was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature thirteen times.[1]
Biography
Before his birth, Rudolf Kassner's family emigrated to Moravia (at the time part of Austro-Hungary) from Silesia. His father, Oskar Kassner, was a landowner and factory owner, descended from government officials and businessmen. His maternal ancestors were peasants. Kassner regarded himself as a German-Slavic mixture, having inherited German Blut (German: blood) from his mother and a Slavic Geist (German: spirit) from his father (Das physiognomische Weltbild, 116ff.).
Student life
In 1892, Kassner enrolled at the University of Vienna where he set out to study German philology, Latin, and Philosophy. He spent the last two semesters, in 1895 and 1896, in Berlin, where he attended the lectures of the nationalist historian Heinrich von Treitschke. Kassner, too, was an enthusiastic theater-goer. This formed the basis for later reflections on acting and the role of the actor, important for his physiognomic worldview. In 1896, he returned to Vienna and completed his studies with a doctoral dissertation on Der ewige Jude in der Dichtung (The Eternal Jew in Poetry), which he completed in 1897.[2]
Schmölders speculates that at least on Kassner's part this friendship was latent homosexuality (in: Neumann/Ott 1999).
References
General references
- Collected works
- (in German) Rudolph Kassner, Sämtliche Werke, Bände I – X, Ernst Zinn und Klaus E. Bohnenkamp (Eds), Günther Neske, Pfüllingen, (1969–1991).
- Correspondence
- (in German) Rudolph Kassner, Briefe an Tetzel, Ernst Zinn und Klaus E. Bohnenkamp (Eds), Günther Neske, Pfullingen, 1979.
- (in German) Bohnenkamp, Klaus E. (Ed.), Rainer Maria Rilke und Rudolph Kassner, Freunde im Gespräch: Briefe und Dokumente, Insel, Memmingen, 1997.
External links
- Works by Rudolf Kassner at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Rudolf Kassner at the Internet Archive
- v
- t
- e
- 1922: Jakob Bosshart
- 1925: Heinrich Federer
- 1927: Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
- 1929: Josef Nadler
- 1931: Hans Carossa
- 1933: Festgabe Universität Zürich
- 1936: Hermann Hesse
- 1938: Ernst Gagliardi
- 1943: Robert Faesi
- 1947: Fritz Ernst
- 1949: Rudolf Kassner
- 1952: Gertrud von Le Fort
- 1954: Werner Kaegi
- 1956: Max Rychner
- 1959: Maurice Zermatten
- 1962: Emil Staiger
- 1965: Meinrad Inglin
- 1967: Edzard Schaper
- 1969: Golo Mann
- 1971: Marcel Raymond
- 1973: Ignazio Silone
- 1975: Hans Urs von Balthasar
- 1977: Elias Canetti
- 1979: Max Wehrli
- 1981: Philippe Jaccottet
- 1983: Hermann Lenz
- 1985: Herbert Lüthy
- 1989: Jacques Mercanton
- 1992: Erika Burkart
- 1994: Gerhard Meier
- 1997: Giovanni Orelli
- 1999: Peter Bichsel
- 2001: Ágota Kristóf
- 2004: Klaus Merz
- 2007: Fabio Pusterla
- 2010: Gerold Späth
- 2013: Collective of writers Bern ist überall
- 2016: Pietro De Marchi
- 2019: Adolf Muschg and Thomas Hürlimann