Kurt Tucholsky
Kurt Tucholsky (January 9 1890-December 21 1935) was a German journalist, satirist and song text writer.
Mariefred: Tucholsky's grave
Born in Berlin-Moabit, he moved in 1924 to Paris and in 1930 to Sweden. When Nazis in 1933 came to power, his books were burned and he lost his citizenship. He probably committed suicide in Hindås near GÃÂöteborg and died in a hospital in GÃÂöteborg while in Swedish exile.
Tucholsky, like other writers and artists of the Weimar era, had the same combination of mordant objectivity and political insight that made them mock the illusions of those who thought that everything would somehow work out for the best. His poem about the production of Danton's Death, a nineteenth century warhorse restaged in Berlin in the early 1920s, only a few years after the German Revolution of 1918-19 was brought to grief, expresses this well:
DANTONS TOD
Bei Reinhardt wogte der dritte Akt.
Es rasten sechshundert Statisten.
Sieh an - wie das die Berliner packt!
Es jubeln die Journalisten.
Mir aber erschien das Ganze wie
eine kleine Allegorie.
Es tost ein Volk: "Die Revolution!
Wir wollen die Freiheit gewinnen!
Wir wollten es seit Jahrhunderten schon -
laÃÂÃÂt Herzblut strÃÂömen und rinnen!"
Es drÃÂöhnt die Szene. Es drÃÂöhnt das Haus.
Um Neune ist alles aus.
Und ernÃÂüchtert seh ich den grauen Tag.
Wo ist der November geblieben?
Wo ist das Volk, das einst unten lag,
von Sehnsucht nach oben getrieben?
Stille. Vorbei. Es war nicht viel.
Ein Spiel. Ein Spiel.DANTON'S DEATH
Act Three was great in Reinhardt's play —
Six hundred extras milling.
Listen to what the critics say!
All Berlin finds it thrilling.
But in the whole affair I see
A parable, if you ask me.
"Revolution!' the People howls and cries
'Freedom, that's what we're needing!
We've needed it for centuries —
Our arteries are bleeding.'
The stage is shaking. The audience rock.
The whole thing is over by nine o'clock.
The day looks grey as I come to.
Where are the People — remember? —
That stormed the peaks from down below?
What happened to November?
Silence. All gone. Just that, in fact.
An act. An act.
English editions and books
Grenville, Bryan P.: Kurt Tucholsky: The Ironic Sentimentalist. London 1981.
Poor, Harold Lloyd: Kurt Tucholsky and the ordeal of Germany, 1914-1935. New York 1968.
Tucholsky, Kurt: Castle Gripsholm. A Summer Story. Overlook Press. New York 1988.
Tucholsky, Kurt: "Germany? Germany": a Kurt Tucholsky Reader. With translations by Harry Zohn, Karl F. Ross and Louis Golden. Manchester 1990
Tucholsky, Kurt: What if - ?; Satirical writings of Kurt Tucholsky. Translated by Harry Zohn and Karl F. Ross. New York 1967 (1968).