Jakob van Hoddis

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Jakob van Hoddis (born May 16, 1887 in Berlin; died 1942 in Sobibór) was the pen name of a German-Jewish expressionist poet Hans Davidsohn, of which name "Van Hoddis" is an anagram. His most famous poem Weltende (End of the world) published on 11 January 1911 in Der Demokrat, is generally regarded as the preliminary expressionist poem [1] which inspired many other poets to write in a similarly grotesque style; he is also seen as perhaps the only German predecessor of surrealism (which did not exist as a movement in Germany).

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[edit] Life

He was the oldest son of doctor Hermann Davidsohn and his wife Doris. Mrs Davidsohn gave birth to twins, but the other baby was stillborn. He had four other siblings, Marie, Anna, Ludwig and Ernst. Due to his temper (although he was extremely intelligent), he was not a successful student. In 1909 he created a Der Neue Club (The New Club) with his friend Kurt Hiller; and in March of the following year, they introduced their ideas at an evening they called Neopathetisches Cabaret (The Neopathetic Cabaret). They were joined by Georg Heym, Ernst Blass and Erich Unger, soon followed by others, for example Alfred Lichtenstein. Else Lasker-Schüler participated too (she said about van Hoddis´ performances "His verses are so ardent that one wants to steal them" [1]). The last, ninth, evening of the Cabaret took place in the spring of 1912; it was a tribute to the tragically deceased Georg Heym. The Cabaret was very popular, often attracting hundreds of spectators. It was during one of these evenings when Weltende was recited, and electrified the audience totally. Many artists later remembered the impact the eight lines had on them that day.

During this part of his life, things started to get worse. Not only was he expelled from university, but he lost his father and his close friends, Heym and Ernst Balcke. He suffered a breakdown and voluntarily entered a mental hospital. Although he was released, he was soon forced to come back after attacking his mother. Since then, his mental health started to decline, and from 1914, he was living in private care until 1922; from 1927, when his mother lost her money, he was taken care of in a state clinic. Van Hoddis´ family had to move to Israel (where his broken-hearted mother died a few months ago in Tel Aviv) as the Nazis took over the country and started to persecute the Jewish Germans. Also, expressionism was seen as an absolutely inacceptable form of art. Some of the artists managed to flee the country, many more either commited suicide or were murdered in concentration camps. Van Hoddis was Jewish, an expressionist, and also mentally ill (which then meant in Germany that he was subject to "mercy killing"). Any of these was almost guaranteed death. On the 30 April 1942 van Hoddis and all the other patients and staff (five hundred people) of his sanatorium were transported to Sobibór via Krasnystaw. None of them survived. The date of van Hoddis´ death remains unknown [2].

[edit] Works

Only one book, called Weltende, was published during his life, in 1918. André Breton included van Hoddis into his famous Anthology of Black Humor. Sadly, in the English-speaking world he remains almost unknown.

Posthumous collections:

  • Paul Pörtner (ed.): Jakob van Hoddis, Weltende. Gesammelte Dichtungen. Arche, Zürich, 1958 - Collected poems
  • Regina Nörtemann (ed.): Jakob van Hoddis. Dichtungen und Briefe. Wallstein, Göttingen, 2007 - Poetry and Letters

[edit] Weltende

Dem Bürger fliegt vom spitzen Kopf der Hut,
In allen Lüften hallt es wie Geschrei.
Dachdecker stürzen ab und gehn entzwei
Und an den Küsten – liest man – steigt die Flut.
Der Sturm ist da, die wilden Meere hupfen
An Land, um dicke Dämme zu zerdrücken.
Die meisten Menschen haben einen Schnupfen.
Die Eisenbahnen fallen von den Brücken.


[

From bourgeois’ pointed heads their bowlers flew,
the whole atmosphere´s like full of cry.
Tile layers fall from roofs and break in two,
and on the coast, one reads, the water´s high.
The storm is here, the seven seas do wildly hop
onto the land to bust thick dams.
The folk have cold, so many noses need a mop.
From viaducts fall down the trams.

]


(For a more literal translation please see [3])

[edit] References and external links

  1. ^ a b Kundera, Ludvík. Expresionismus, pp. 10. 
  2. ^ History of Holocaust
  3. ^ van Hoddis


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