Manès Sperber
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Manès Sperber (12 December 1905 – 5 February 1984) was an
Early life
Sperber was born on 12 December 1905 in
In the summer of 1916 the family fled from war to
In 1927 Sperber had moved to Berlin and joined the Communist Party. He lectured at the Berliner Gesellschaft für Individualpsychologie, an institute for individual psychology in Berlin.
After Hitler had
In 1939 Sperber volunteered for the
Career
After the end of the war, in 1945, he returned to Paris, and worked as a writer and as a senior editor at the Calmann-Lévy publishing house.
Manès Sperber is the author of a novel trilogy: Like a Tear in the Ocean: A Trilogy, (1949–1955); of an autobiographical trilogy: All our Yesterdays (1974–1997), and numerous essays on philosophy, politics, literature, and psychology. Sperber was widely published and read in Germany, receiving the high-profile Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels in 1983. In awarding the prize, the association described Sperber as a "writer, who tracked the path of the ideological aberrations of the century, and freed himself from them entirely. Throughout his life he retained the independence of his own judgement, and incapable of indifference, summoned the courage, to get himself onto that non-existing bridge that only opens up in front of those who step out over the abyss."[2] The German writer Siegfried Lenz gave the speech highlighting Sperber's lifetime achievement.[3]
One of his closest friends was the novelist Constantine Fitzgibbon who translated much of his work into English.
Personal life
Manès Sperber is the father of Italian historian Vladimir Sperber and French anthropologist and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber. His first wife, Miriam Sperber, eventually emigrated to Champaign, Illinois, and became a counselor at the Psychological and Counseling Center there.
His younger brother Milo was an English actor. Milo spent the last years of his life travelling around Britain reading from his brother's works.
Death and legacy
Manès Sperber died on 5 February 1984 in Paris. He was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
In 1988, the city of Vienna dedicated a park in the Leopoldstadt quarter to Sperber.[4]
The Manès Sperber Prize for Literature[5] (Manès-Sperber-Preis für Literatur) was established in 1985 by the Austrian Ministry of Art and Culture in honour of Sperber, with Siegfried Lenz winning the inaugural prize. As of 2023[update] it is worth 8000 euros.[6]
Awards
- 1967 Remembrance Award from the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Associations
- 1971 Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts
- 1971 Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
- 1973 Hanseatic Goethe Prize
- 1973 Honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne, in Paris
- 1974 Literary Prize of the City of Vienna
- 1975 Georg Büchner Prize[7]
- 1977 Franz Nabl Prize
- 1977 Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature
- 1979 Prix Européen de l'essai
- 1979 Buber Rosenzweig Medal
- 1983 Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels
- 1983 Honorary Ring of Vienna
Works
- Charlatan und seine Zeit (1924, ver. 2004)
- Alfred Adler (1926)
- Zur Analyse der Tyrannis (1939)
- Like a Tear in the Ocean: A Trilogy (3 volumes, reprinted by Holmes & Meier 1988)
- Volume 1 - Burned Bramble (1949)
- Volume 2 - The Abyss (1950)
- Volume 3 - Journey Without End (1955)
- The Wind and the Flame (Allan Wingate, 1951) trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon
- Die Achillesferse (1960)
- Zur täglichen Weltgeschichte (1967)
- Alfred Adler oder Das Elend der Psychologie (1970)
- Leben in dieser Zeit (1972)
- Wir und Dostojewski: eine Debatte mit Heinrich Böll u.a. geführt von Manès Sperber (1972)
- All Our Yesterdays (3 volumes)
- Volume 1 - God's Water Carriers (1974)
- Volume 2 - The Unheeded Warning: 1918-1933 (1975)
- Volume 3 - Until My Eyes Are Closed With Shards (1977)
- Individuum und Gemeinschaft (1978)
- Sieben Fragen zur Gewalt (1978)
- Churban oder Die unfaßbare Gewißheit (1979)
- Der freie Mensch (1980)
- The Encyclopœdia of Sexual Knowledge[8]
- Nur eine Brücke zwischen gestern und morgen (1980)
- Die Wirklichkeit in der Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts (1983)
- Ein politisches Leben - Gespräche mit Leonhard Reinisch (1984)
- Geteilte Einsamkeit - Der Autor und seine Leser (1985) (Essay)
- Der schwarze Zaun (1986) (Fragments of a novel)
Notes
- patrilinear ancestors mentioned under the name Shfarber in Zabłotów's Yizkor Book [1].
- ^ Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels. "Manès Sperber: Der Preisträger 1983". Retrieved 14 January 2019.
- ^ Lenz, Siegfried. "Von der Gegenwart des Vergangenen" (PDF). Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
- ^ "Manes Sperber Park". GeschichtsWiki Wien. Stadt Wien. Retrieved 22 February 2023.
- ^ "Marica Bodrožić". Haus der Kulturen der Welt. 4 July 2022. Retrieved 19 May 2023.
- ^ "Manès-Sperber-Preis für Literatur". Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport (in German). Retrieved 19 May 2023.
- ^ "Manès Sperber". Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. Retrieved 12 November 2023.
- ^ The Encyclopœdia of Sexual Knowledge