Egon Kisch
Egon Kisch | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | March 31, 1948 | (aged 62)
Resting place | Vinohrady Cemetery, Prague |
Political party | Communist Party of Austria |
Military service | |
Allegiance | Austria-Hungary |
Branch/service | Austro-Hungarian Navy Austro-Hungarian Army |
Years of service | 1914-1918 |
Unit | 11th Infantry Regiment |
Battles/wars |
|
Egon Erwin Kisch (29 April 1885 – 31 March 1948) was an
.Biography
Kisch was born into a wealthy, German-speaking
At the outbreak of World War I, Kisch was called up for military service and became a corporal in the Austrian army. He fought on the front line in
Communist
The war radicalised Kisch. He deserted in October 1918 as the war came to an end and played a leading role in the abortive
Between 1921 and 1930 Kisch, though a citizen of
From 1925 onwards Kisch was a speaker and operative of the communist international and a senior figure in the publishing empire of the West European branch of the
Through the late twenties and early thirties, Kisch wrote a series of books chronicling his journeys to the
Exile
On 28 February 1933, the day after the Reichstag fire, Kisch was one of many prominent opponents of Nazism to be arrested. He was briefly imprisoned in Spandau Prison, but as a Czechoslovak citizen, was expelled from Germany. His works were banned and burnt in Germany, but he continued to write for the Czech and émigré German press, bearing witness to the horrors of the Nazi takeover.
In the years between the
Reichstag Fire counter-trial and exclusion from Britain
Following the Reichstag Fire Trial organised by the Nazi government to lay the blame for the fire on Communist opponents, a counter-trial was organized in 1933 in London by a group of lawyers, democrats and other anti-Nazi groups under the aegis of German Communist émigrés. Kisch was to be a witness at the counter trial but was refused leave to land in the United Kingdom because of his "known subversive activities".
Attempted exclusion from Australia
Kisch's visit to Australia as a delegate to the All-Australian Congress Against War and Fascism [3] in 1934 was later chronicled in his book Landung in Australien (Australian Landfall) (1937).[4][5]
The right-wing Australian government refused Kisch entry from the ship Strathaird at Fremantle and Melbourne because of his previous exclusion from the UK. Kisch then took matters into his own hands. He jumped five metres from the deck of his ship onto the quayside at
On 17 February 1935, Kisch addressed a crowd of 18,000 in the Sydney Domain warning of the dangers of Hitler's Nazi regime, of another war and of
Spain, France, the United States and Mexico
In 1937 and 1938, Kisch was in Spain, where left-wingers from across the world had been drawn by the Spanish Civil War. He travelled across the country, speaking in the Republican cause, and his reports from the front line were widely published.
Following the
He remained in Mexico for the next five years, one of a circle of European communist refugees, notable among them Anna Seghers and Ludwig Renn, and the German-Czech writer Lenka Reinerová. He continued to write, producing a book on Mexico and a memoir, Marktplatz der Sensationen (Sensation Fair) (1941). In this period of exile, Kisch's work regularly returned to the themes of his Prague home and his Jewish roots and in March 1946 (after troubles in securing a Czechoslovak visa) he was able to return to his birthplace. Immediately after the return he started to travel around the country and work as a journalist again.
Legacy
Kisch died of a stroke[2] two years after his return to Prague, shortly after the Communist party seized complete power. Kisch is buried in the Vinohrady Cemetery, Prague, Czech Republic.
After his death, Kisch's life and work were held up as exemplary in the GDR. The attitude to both in West Germany was more complicated due to his communism. Nonetheless, when Stern magazine founded a prestigious award for German journalism in 1977, it was named the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize in his honour.[8]
Kisch's work as a writer and communist journalist inspired Australian left wing intellectuals and writers such as Katharine Susannah Prichard, E. J. Brady, Vance and Nettie Palmer and Louis Esson. This group formed the nucleus of what later became the Writers League, drawing on the example of Egon Kisch’s own journalistic dedication to reportage.
Kisch has appeared as a character in novels by Australian authors. Without naming him, his visit to Australia, the leap from the ship and the court case challenging the validity of the language test are mentioned in Kylie Tennant's Ride on Stranger (novel) (1943). He is a minor character in Frank Hardy's Power Without Glory (1950), which was filmed for television in (1976), and plays a central, if fictionalised, role in Nicholas Hasluck's Our Man K (1999). He appears in Sulari Gentill's detective novel Paving the New Road (2012) along with other real persons such as Nancy Wake and Unity Mitford.
Selected bibliography
English titles are given where the work has been translated into English. All dates refer to earliest publication.
- Aus Prager Gassen und Nächten (1912) – An early collection of reports from Prague's underworld
- Der Mädchenhirt (1914) – Kisch's only novel, again set in the Prague underworld
- Der Fall des Generalstabschefs Redl (1924)
- Der rasende Reporter (1924)
- Hetzjagd durch die Zeit (1925)
- Elliptical Treadmill (1925) – On Six Days of Berlin
- Zaren, Popen, Bolschewiken (1926) – On the Soviet Union
- Schreib das auf, Kisch! (1929)
- Paradies Amerika (1929) – On the United States
- Asien gründlich verändert (Changing Asia) (1932) – On Soviet Central Asia
- China Geheim (Secret China) (1933) – On China
- Geschichten aus sieben Ghettos (Tales from Seven Ghettos) (1934) – A collection with a Jewish theme
- Landung in Australien (Australian Landfall) (1937)
- Soldaten am Meeresstrand (1938) – Reports from the Spanish Civil War
- Die drei Kühe (The Three Cows) (1939) – Report from the Spanish Civil War
- Marktplatz der Sensationen (Sensation Fair) (1941) – memoir up to 1914
- Entdeckungen in Mexiko (1945)
References
- ^ Bryant, Chad (2021). Prague: Belonging and the Modern City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 57-105 [1]
- ^ ISSN 1833-7538.
- ^ Kisch in Australia by Heidi Zogbaum, page 32
- ^ Kisch, E. E. (1937) Australian Landfall, translated from the German by John Fisher and Irene and Kevin Fitzgerald. Secker and Warburg, London.
- ^ Kisch, E. E. (1937) Landung in Australien. Verlag Allert de Lange, Amsterdam.
- ^ R v Carter; Ex parte Kisch [1934] HCA 50, (1934) 52 CLR 221 (16 November 1934), High Court (Australia).
- ^ R v Wilson ; Ex parte Kisch [1934] HCA 63, (1934) 52 CLR 234 (19 December 1934), High Court (Australia).
- ISBN 978-0-19-551503-9, retrieved 3 July 2021
Further reading
- Blackshield, Tony; Williams, George (2010). Australian Constitutional Law and Theory (5th ed.). Annandale (NSW): Federation Press. pp. 915–916. ISBN 978-1-86287-773-3.
- Cochrane, Peter (2008). The Big Jump: Egon Kisch in Australia. Commonwealth History Project. The National Centre for History Education. Archived from the original on 18 June 2005. Retrieved 3 August 2008.
- Gatterer, Joachim (2019): "History, literature and propaganda: Egon Erwin Kisch in the Spanish Civil War, in: Alía Miranda, Francisco/Higueras Castañeda, Eduardo/Selva Iniesta, Antonio (ed.): Hasta pronto, amigos de España. Las Brigadas Internacionales en el 80 aniversario de su despedida de la Guerra Civil (1938–2018), Albacete: CEDOBI 2019, 249–261.
- Hofmann, Fritz; Poláček, Josef (1985). Servus, Kisch! Erinnerungen, Rezensionen, Anekdoten. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag. OCLC 491176002.
- Howells, A. F. (1983). Against the Stream: The Memories of a Philosophical Anarchist, 1927–1939. Melbourne: Hyland House. ISBN 0-908090-48-X.
- Meacham, Steve (8 February 2005). "One jump ahead of a ban on freedom". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 3 June 2011.
- Schlenstedt, Dieter (1985). Egon Erwin Kisch: Leben und Werk. Berlin: Volkseigener Verlag Volk und Wissen.
- Schwartz, Larry (8 November 2004). "The first boat person". The Age. Melbourne. Retrieved 3 June 2011.
- Segel, Howard B. (1997). Egon Erwin Kisch, the Raging Reporter: A Bio-Anthology. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-100-1.
- Slater, Ken (1979). "Egon Kisch: a Biographical Outline". JSTOR 27508355.
- Spector, Scott (2006). Kisch, Egon Erwin. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
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ignored (help) - Zogbaum, Heidi (2004). Kisch in Australia: The Untold Story. Melbourne: Scribe Publications. ISBN 978-1-920769-35-2.