They bid on two portrait photos of the German-Jewish writer Walter Meckauer (1889-1966).
1.) Real photo postcard, typewritten on the back and hand-signed by Walter Meckauer.
Dated Munich, 17. April 1959.
Addressed to the literary agent and translator Elfriede Mechnig (1901-1986).
Thanks for the congratulations on your 70th birthday. Birthday; His work “Foreign World”, published in 1959, is mentioned.
Format: 10.5 x 14.7 cm.
2.) Real photo around 1955.
Photographer: Hans Schürer (1901-1996), Munich.
Format: 14.7 x 10.3 cm.
Condition: Slightly stained, ins. very good. bPlease also note the pictures!
Internal note: KRST 210324
About Walter Meckauer, Elfriede Mechnig and Hans Schürer (Source: wikipedia & NDB):
Walter Moritz Meckauer (*13. April 1889 in Breslau; † 6. February 1966 in Munich) was a German-Jewish writer.
Life: Walter Meckauer was born in 1889 as the son of the Jewish merchant Ludwig Meckauer and his wife Linna, who was born in Hamburg. He studied philosophy and received his doctorate in Breslau. From 1910 to 1911 he stayed in China. From 1918 to 1922 he was head of the Silesian Ullstein editorial team, then dramaturge at several German theaters. He wrote numerous novels and plays. Persecuted as a Jew, Meckauer emigrated via Switzerland to Positano, Italy, in 1933, and to France in 1939. In 1942 he went back to Switzerland and emigrated to the USA in 1947. In 1952 Meckauer returned to the Federal Republic.
In 1955 he received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st. Class because of his contributions to German literature. Meckauer lived as a freelance writer in Munich until his death.
He was married to the writer Lotte Meckauer (1894–1971), and his daughter Brigitte (1925–2014) was married to the Buchenwald survivor Rolf Kralovitz (1925–2015). The shared family grave is in Munich's North Cemetery.
In Oldenburg (Oldb.) and in Nuremberg, Walter-Meckauer-Straße is named after him, and in the Munich district of Daglfing and in the Thiede district of Salzgitter, Walter-Meckauer-Weg is named after him.
Works (selection)
Intuitionism and its elements in Henri Bergson. A critical investigation. 1916 (Inaugural dissertation to obtain a doctorate from the Higher Faculty of Philosophy, Breslau).
Mr. Eßwein and the smoke in front of the forest - A tragicomic picture book. Silesian printing and publishing company, Breslau 1921.
The Books of Emperor Wutai. Prize winner Novel from the “Youth Prize for German Storytellers 1927” competition. Foreword by Oskar Loerke, German Book Association, Berlin 1928.
The stars are falling. Stiasny, Vienna et al. 1949. (China novel).
Venus in the labyrinth. Hundt, Hattingen (Ruhr) 1953. (Autobiographical novel).
My father Oswald. Story, with an afterword by Gerhart Pohl, Reclam, Stuttgart 1954.
A lot of water flowed down the stream. Bergstadt Verlag, Munich 1957. (Or novel).
Alleys in foreign cities – a novel from my life. Bergstadt Verlag, Munich 1959.
The tree with the golden fruits. Bergstadtverlag Korn, Munich 1964.
Meckauer, Walter, writer, * April 13, 1889 Breslau, † February 6, 1966 Munich. (Israelite)
Genealogy: V →Ludwig (1853–1931), insurance director. in B., S d. →Markus (1798–1885), manufacturer of arts and crafts Glass makers and art dealers in Neiße and B, and →Rosalie Meckauer (1818–98), miniature painter; M Linna Hamburger (1858–1944);
⚭ Breslau 1921 →Lotte (1894–1971), reciter and singer, T d. Commercial Albert Peiser in B. and Clara Elkeles;
1 T →Brigitte (* 1925), writer.
Life: After completing commercial training, M. worked as an employee of the Deutsche Überseebank in Beijing in 1910-11. He then studied philosophy and German studies in Wroclaw. In 1916 he received his doctorate with the dissertation “Intuitionism and its elements in Henri Bergson”. During this time he began writing. After 1922 he lived in Munich and since 1926 in Berlin, where he also worked as a lecturer at the German Theater drama school. In 1933 he had to emigrate and settled with his family in Italy (Rome, Positano). Expatriation took place in 1938. His literary declarations of loyalty to Mussolini, based on a misjudgment (cf. K. Voigt) could not prevent him from being temporarily arrested in the same year. After the outbreak of war he was interned in Antibes and Les Milles. After an adventurous escape, the family reached Switzerland in November 1942. The writing ban imposed on M. was circumvented by using the pseudonym Johann Maria Dominik. Because of the unclear situation in post-war Germany, M. went to the United States in 1947 and lived in New York until 1952. Here he worked as a writer and gave guest lectures (including at New York State University in Albany). When the novel “The Stars Are Falling Down” (1952), completed in New York, was awarded a prize by the Langen-Müller publishing house, M. received an invitation to go on a reading tour through Germany, from which he never returned to the USA. M. lived in Munich until the end.
Although M. published several philosophical and drama theory essays after his doctorate, the focus of his work soon shifted to literary work. The confrontation with Bergson's philosophy, whose concept of intuition he affirmed, and Kant's ethics shaped in him an attitude that gave an ethical framework to the unlimited subjectivism of creative intuition. In the early work, which is close to the poetic school of the Wroclaw local poet Karl Biberfeld, a mysticism with expressionistic features inspired by Carl Hauptmann also emerges. M. moved away soon from the Schles. Homeland poetry, it was only towards the end of his life that he returned to it with the novel “Much Water Flowed Down the Stream” (1957) and the stories in “The Tree with the Golden Fruit” (1964). The early dramatic work shows the beginnings of a political statement for the republic, which M. did not return to later. Similar to →Oskar Loerke, this can be understood as an expression of the poet's increasing isolation during the Weimar period. As a third aspect, the Chinese experience emerges in numerous stories and poems. It determines the character of his two most important novels, “The Books of Emperor Wutai” (1928) and “The Stars Fall Down” (1952, most recently 1988; transl. to the Netherlands. etc.). As allegories, both are at the same time self-assurances of the poet, of the temptation and danger individual through the consequences of war or through persecution and exile. The second Chinese novel is considered one of the most successful depictions of the exile experience. He followed this with the autobiographical novel “Alleys in Foreign Cities” (1959, new edition. 1985). These memories of the years of exile in Italy and France testify to the roots of the Schles. Jews M. in Germany and its intellectual tradition. In praise of Mussolini, they make the above-mentioned fragments appear as desperate attempts to obtain a permanent refuge for himself and his family. The return to Judaism, mixed with the perplexity about the persecution, as also becomes clear in the mystery play “The Reich has already begun” (1959), never happens without the expression of the connection to one's own German origins. In this respect, M. exemplified reconciliation between Jews and Germans and made a significant contribution to it. – Since 1989, the M. Circle in Cologne has awarded a W.-M. Medal in recognition of special efforts on behalf of the works of persecuted and forgotten authors.
Elfriede Mechnig (*7. April 1901 in Berlin; † 22. August 1986 in West Berlin) was a German literary agent and translator. She was also Erich Kästner's private secretary for 45 years[1].
Life: As the daughter of the city inspector Arthur Mechnig and the teacher Bianka Mechnig, née Schlomka, Elfriede Mechnig completed training as a stenographer after attending school because her parents had arranged for her to join the Gebr company. Mechnig, which manufactured equipment for nursing,[2] was intended.[3] The young woman, who was interested in art, also devoted herself to musical studies. In her free time she played in a trio, read classical literature and went to the theater.
In the fall of 1928 she met the writer Erich Kästner in a Berlin coffee house. His question “Do you want to help me become famous?”, which she answered in the affirmative, marked the beginning of Mechnig's 45-year career as Kästner's secretary.[1][3] Kästner once acknowledged the close collaboration by saying that they would form the “Company Kästner & Co.” Thanks to this harmonious working relationship, Mechnig was able to enter Berlin's literary scene. She made acquaintances, among others, with Hermann Kesten, Gerhart Pohl, Martin Kessel, Alfred Neumann and Walter Mehring.[1][3] Elfriede Mechnig's intensive study of the Italian language began at the beginning of the 1940s. She translated jokes and funny short stories that were printed in newspapers and magazines during the war, which was characterized by destruction, fear and death.
After the end of the Second World War, Erich Kästner moved his residence to Munich. Mechnig continued to run his Berlin office on Friedenauer Niedstrasse, but at the same time took over the representation of Chronos Verlag for East Germany.[1] From January 1952 she represented Atrium Verlag (founded in Basel in 1935 by Kästner's friend Kurt Leo Marschler) for theater. From 1953 onwards, she ran an independent agency under the name Atrium-Bühnenvertrieb and offered literary works to regional and national newspapers, publishers and theaters for publication.[1] The second print distribution, which began around 1930 with Kästner's work, was expanded in the 1950s to include distribution rights for, among others, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Ulrich Becher, Alexander Roda Roda, Joachim Ringelnatz, Monika Mann, Martin Kessel, Ludwig Marcuse and Victoria Wolff.[1] [4] In addition, Mechnig continued to cultivate her love of the Italian language. She made contact with the Italian playwright Eduardo De Filippo and edited the German translation of his play Filumena Marturano, which was successfully performed in Berlin's Schiller Theater in August 1953. She also translated works by Italian authors Nicola Manzari and Paolo Levi and took care of the distribution of the works.
Even after Kästner's death in 1974, she continued to promote the dissemination of his works, for example by organizing Kästner readings.[1] On the 22nd Elfriede Mechnig died in Berlin in August 1986. Her estate is in the archives of the Academy of Arts.
Work: Even during the National Socialist era, Mechnig supplied the Neueste Zeitung - illustrated daily newspaper with Sunday mail with jokes and prose miniatures translated from Italian. She continued this sideline after the war for newspapers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland - most intensively between 1962 and 1976. Mechnig wrote anecdotes, translations of jokes, short stories and prepared press releases and factual articles that were published primarily on the entertainment pages. Her reports about working with Erich Kästner were repeatedly picked up in the features section in connection with Kästner's tributes. The translation work concerned plays and radio plays.
Factual articles (selection)
… and that's why I'm hanging here. A Berlin woman remembers the last days of the war in 1945. Under a slightly different title in: Berliner Zeitung (1946).[5]
A text that reads “Do you want to help me…” in the manuscript was published in various newspapers in 1968 and 1969, partially edited and retitled, for example as Ab 10 by Dr. Kästner on typing in the Münchner Merkur or as Forty Years with and with Erich Kästner in the Frankfurter Rundschau or With the Eyes of the Secretary in the Ruhr Nachrichten.
A text on Kästner's 70th birthday. Birthday appeared in edited versions under the following titles: My boss back then, My “boss” Erich Kästner, He has been my boss for 40 years.
Hanna Maron was Erich Kästner's first “Pünktchen” in Berlin. Under slightly different titles in 1970 in: Frankfurter Rundschau[6] and Telegraf.
Short stories (selection)
The royal promise. Short story from the Orient. Published between 1962 and 1971 in several German-language newspapers, some under modified titles.
The sight. Published between 1969 and 1975 in several German-language newspapers, some under alternative titles.
Wrong answer. Also published variously in newspapers between 1965 and 1976 under the titles The Wrong Answer and Marcello's Wrong Answer.
Parisian experience. Published between 1964 and 1974 in several German-language newspapers and again in 1981 under the title Richard's Paris Experience in the Konstanzer Südkurier.
Translations and adaptations (selection)
Filumena Marturano. Translation of the comedy by Eduardo De Filippo.
The inner voices. Translation of the play Le voci di dentro by Eduardo De Filippo.
The Animal Conference. Dialogue version of Kästner's children's novel for the theater.
The dream. Translation of a radio play by Paolo Levi.
Like looking in a mirror. Translation of a radio play by Paolo Levi.
Street intersection. Translation of a radio play by Paolo Levi.
Game for four. Translation of a radio play by Nicola Manzari.
Hans Schürer (*24. September 1911 in Munich; † 25. March 1996 ibid) was a German photographer.
Life: The son of a worker in the Nymphenburg porcelain factory completed his training as a lithographer at the Müller und Sohn company in the Munich book trade building. Since he was 12 When he was enthusiastic about photography when he was young, he spent a lot of time traveling with an old plate camera, and later with a Leica camera. At the beginning of the war he volunteered for a propaganda company in the western campaign. He was then deployed in the invasion of Poland, observed the Leningrad blockade and took part in the Battle of the Bulge.
Schürer documented life in the early post-war period from the May Day celebrations in 1946 with Mayor Thomas Wimmer at the foot of the Bavaria to the constituent assembly on Herrenchiemsee, from the first appearance of the Munich Philharmonic in peacetime in the large auditorium of the Ludwig Maximilian University to the distribution of food for the severely disabled .[3] He worked for Das Bayerland, Ullstein Verlag and the German Alpine Club, advertised for pastry shops and rest houses, showed new fashion and architecture, portrayed American soldiers and “incidentally captured all the ruins”. He remembered the returnees, evacuees and refugee camps. This mourning work suggests remembering his grave in the Nymphenburg cemetery.