Rudolf Kassner

Rudolf Kassner (11 September 1873 Velké Pavlovice– 1 April 1959 Sierre Switzerland) was an Austrian writer, essayist, translator and cultural philosopher. Although stricken as an infant with poliomyelitis, Kassner traveled widely to northern Africa, the Sahara, India, Russia, Spain, and throughout Europe. His translations of William Blake introduced this English romantic poet to German-speaking audiences. His literary career covered six decades, including a period of isolation during the Nazi years in Vienna. His writings on physiognomy reflect his effort to understand the problems of modernity and Man's subsequent disconnectedness from time and place. His later autobiographical writings suggest a brilliant literary mind attempting to make sense of a chaotic post-nuclear world. He was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature thirteen times.[1]

Rudolf Kassner
Born1873
Died1 April 1959  (aged 85–86)
OccupationWriter, translator and philosopher

Biography

Before his birth, Rudolf Kassner's family emigrated to Moravia (at the time part of Austro-Hungary) from Silesia. His father, Oskar Kassner, was a landowner and factory owner, descended from government officials and businessmen. His maternal ancestors were peasants. Kassner regarded himself as a German-Slavic mixture, having inherited German Blut (German: blood) from his mother and a Slavic Geist (German: spirit) from his father (Das physiognomische Weltbild, 116ff.).

Student life

In 1892 Kassner enrolled at the University of Vienna where he set out to study German philology, Latin, and Philosophy. He spent the last two semesters, in 1895 and '96, in Berlin, where he attended the lectures of the nationalist historian Heinrich von Treitschke. Kassner, too, was an enthusiastic theater-goer. This formed the basis for later reflections on acting and the role of the actor, important for his physiognomic worldview. In 1896 he returned to Vienna and completed his studies with a doctoral dissertation on Der ewige Jude in der Dichtung (The Eternal Jew in Poetry), which he completed in 1897.[2]

Schmölders speculates that at least on Kassner's part this friendship was latent homosexuality (in: Neumann/Ott 1999).

References
  1. "Nomination Database". www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2017-01-24.
  2. http://fondationrilke.ch/en/rainer-maria-rilke/rudolf-kassner/rudolf-kassners-biography/
Collected works
  • (in German) Rudolph Kassner, Sämtliche Werke, Bände I – X, Ernst Zinn und Klaus E. Bohnenkamp (Eds), Günther Neske, Pfüllingen, (1969–1991).
Correspondence
  • (in German) Rudolph Kassner, Briefe an Tetzel, Ernst Zinn und Klaus E. Bohnenkamp (Eds), Günther Neske, Pfullingen, 1979.
  • (in German) Bohnenkamp, Klaus E. (Ed.), Rainer Maria Rilke und Rudolph Kassner, Freunde im Gespräch: Briefe und Dokumente, Insel, Memmingen, 1997.
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