Arno Schmidt (; 18 January 1914 – 3 June 1979) was a German author and translator. He is little known outside of German-speaking areas, in part because his works present a formidable challenge to translators. Although he is not one of the popular favourites within Germany, critics and writers often consider him to be one of the most important German-language writers of the 20th century.

Biography

Born in Hamburg, the son of a police constable, Schmidt moved in 1928, after the death of his father (1883–1928), with his mother (1894–1973), to her hometown of Lauban (in Lusatia, then Lower Silesia, now Poland) and attended secondary school in

Görlitz Görlitz (; pl, Zgorzelec, hsb, Zhorjelc, cz, Zhořelec, :de:Ostlausitzer Mundart, East Lusatian dialect: ''Gerlz'', ''Gerltz'', ''Gerltsch'') is a town in the Germany, German state of Saxony. It is located on the Lusatian Neisse River, and ...

as well as a trade school there. After finishing school, he was unemployed for some months and then, in 1934, began a commercial apprenticeship at a textile company in Greiffenberg. After finishing his apprenticeship he was hired by the same company as a stock accountant. Around this time, at his company, he met his future wife, Alice Murawski. The couple married on 21 August 1937; they had no children. At the outset of World War II, in 1939, Schmidt was drafted into the '' Wehrmacht'', where his mathematical skills led him to be assigned to the artillery corps. He first served in Alsace and after 1941 in fairly quiet Norway. In 1945, Schmidt volunteered for active front duty in Northern Germany, in order to be granted a brief home visit. As the war was obviously lost, he used this visit to organise his wife's and his own escape to the west of Germany, in order to evade capture by the Red Army, which was known for its much harsher treatment of prisoners of war and German civilians. Schmidt gave himself up to British forces in Lower Saxony. As refugees, Schmidt and his wife lost almost all of their possessions, including their cherished book collection. After an interlude as a British POW and later as an interpreter at a police school, Schmidt began his career as a freelance writer in 1946. Since Schmidt's pre-war home in Lauban was now under Polish administration, Schmidt and his wife were among the millions of refugees moved by the authorities to numerous places in what was to become West Germany. During this time of uncertainty and extreme poverty, the Schmidts were sustained by CARE Packages his sister sent them from the US (his sister Lucie had emigrated to the US in 1939, together with her husband Rudy Kiesler, a Jewish German communist). Temporary accommodations led the Schmidts to Cordingen (near Bomlitz), Gau-Bickelheim, and Kastel (the latter two in the newly formed state of Rhineland-Palatinate). In Kastel, he was accused in court of

blasphemy Blasphemy is a speech crime and religious crime usually defined as an utterance that shows contempt, disrespects or insults a deity, an object considered sacred or something considered inviolable. Some religions regard blasphemy as a religiou ...

and moral subversion, then still considered a crime in some of the Catholic regions of Germany. As a result, Schmidt and his wife moved to the Protestant city of

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

in Hesse, where the suit against him was dismissed. In 1958, the Schmidts moved to the small village of

Bargfeld Bargfeld is a hamlet of about 190 inhabitants near Celle in Lower Saxony, Germany, documented since 1056, now belonging to the village municipality Eldingen. It has become famous for the many novels and stories the great German author Arno Schmi ...

, where they were to stay for the rest of their lives, Schmidt dying in 1979, his wife Alice in 1983.

Writing style and personal philosophy

Schmidt was a strict individualist, almost a

solipsist Solipsism (; ) is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and ...

. Disaffected by his experience of Nazi Germany, he had an extremely pessimistic world view. In 1951's ''

Schwarze Spiegel Schwarze may refer to: * Achim Schwarze (born 1958), German author * Schwarze Elster The Black Elster or Schwarze Elster () is a long river in eastern Germany, in the states Saxony, Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt, right tributary of the Elbe. Its ...

'' (''Dark Mirrors''), he describes his utopia as an empty world after an

anthropogenic Anthropogenic ("human" + "generating") is an adjective that may refer to: * Anthropogeny, the study of the origins of humanity Counterintuitively, anthropogenic may also refer to things that have been generated by humans, as follows: * Human im ...

apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary. The means of mediation include dreams, visions and heavenly journeys, and they typically feature symbolic imager ...

. Although he was not a deist in the conventional sense, he maintained that the world was created by a monster called Leviathan, whose predatory nature was passed on to humans. Still, he thought this monster could not be too powerful to be attacked, if it behoved humanity. His writing style is characterised by a unique and witty style of adapting colloquial language, which won him quite a few fervent admirers. Moreover, he developed an orthography by which he thought to reveal the true meaning of words and their connections amongst each other. One of the most cited examples is the use of ''“Roh=Mann=Tick"'' instead of "Romantik" (revealing romanticism as the craze of unsubtle men). The atoms of words holding the nuclei of original meaning he called Etyme (etyms).

''Zettel's Dream''

His theory of etyms is developed in his magnum opus, '' Zettels Traum'', in which an elderly writer comments on Edgar Allan Poe's works in a stream of consciousness, while discussing a Poe translation with a couple of translators and flirting with their teenage daughter. Schmidt also accomplished a translation of Edgar Allan Poe's works himself (1966–1973, together with

Hans Wollschläger 150px, Signature, 1988 Hans Wollschläger (17 March 1935, in Minden – 19 May 2007, in Bamberg) was a German writer, translator, historian, and editor of German literature. Biography Wollschläger is widely known as the translator of '' Ulysse ...

). Some critics even dismissed ''Zettel's Traum'' as non-art, or sheer nonsense, and Schmidt himself as a "psychopath". But Schmidt's reputation as esoteric, and that of his work as non-art, has faded and he is now seen as an important, if highly eccentric, German writer of the 20th century.

Other, minor works

In the 1960s, he authored a series of plays for German radio stations presenting forgotten or little known and—in his opinion—vastly underrated authors, e.g.

Johann Gottfried Schnabel Johann Gottfried Schnabel (November 7, 1692 – ) was a German writer best known for his novel ''Insel Felsenburg''. He published his works under the pen name Gisander. Schnabel was born in Sandersdorf near Bitterfeld, Germany. Orphaned in 1694, ...

, Karl Philipp Moritz, Leopold Schefer, Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow, and others. These "plays" are basically talks about literature with two or three participants plus voices for quotations (Schmidt lent his voice for his translations of '' Finnegans Wake'' quoted in ''Der Triton mit dem Sonnenschirm'' 961. Eleven of these so-called "Radio-Essays" were republished on 12 audio CDs in 2003.

The final years

1971 Schmidt was nominated for the

Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

by Lars Gyllensten, a member of the

Swedish Academy The Swedish Academy ( sv, Svenska Akademien), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III of Sweden, Gustav III, is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish lang ...

. But as none of Schmidt's works sold more than a few thousand copies (he openly admitted that he only wrote for the small handful of people who could appreciate his work), he lived in extreme poverty. During the last few years of his life, he was financially supported by the philologist and writer

Jan Philipp Reemtsma Jan Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma (born 26 November 1952) is a German literary scholar, author, and patron who founded and was the long-term director of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. Reemtsma lives and works mainly in Hamburg. Biog ...

, the heir of the German cigarette manufacturer Philipp F. Reemtsma. Schmidt's final completed novel was ''Abend mit Goldrand'' (1975) which was praised by some critics for its verbal inventiveness, although many had a difficult time digesting the erotic themes of the book. He died in a hospital in

Celle Celle () is a town and capital of the district of Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town is situated on the banks of the river Aller, a tributary of the Weser, and has a population of about 71,000. Celle is the southern gateway to the Lü ...

on 3 June 1979 after suffering a stroke.

Posthumous legacy

Dalkey Archive Press has reissued five volumes of Schmidt's work translated by John E. Woods. The series includes ''Collected Novellas'', ''Collected Stories'', ''Nobodaddy's Children'', ''Two Novels'', and most recently, '' Bottom’s Dream'' (''Zettel’s Traum''). The reissues were scheduled to coincide with "Rediscovering Arno Schmidt events in the US, UK, and continental Europe." The Arno Schmidt Foundation (''Arno Schmidt Stiftung'') in

, sponsored by

, is publishing his complete works.

Arno Schmidt Prize

The Arno Schmidt Prize, awarded by the Arno Schmidt Foundation and awarded from 1981 to 1988, was endowed with DM 50,000 (about €25,000). The prize has only been awarded four times: *1982:

* 1984:

Wolfgang Koeppen Wolfgang Arthur Reinhold Koeppen (23 June 1906 – 15 March 1996) was a German novelist and one of the best known German authors of the postwar period. Life Koeppen was born out of wedlock in Greifswald, Pomerania, to Marie Köppen, a seamstress w ...

* 1986: Peter Rühmkorf * 1988:

Karlheinz Deschner Karl Heinrich Leopold Deschner (23 May 1924 – 8 April 2014) was a German researcher and writer who achieved public attention in Europe for his trenchant and fiercely critical treatment of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in parti ...

After that the award was converted into the two-year Arno Schmidt scholarship, endowed with 36,000 euros.

Arno Schmidt scholarship winners

* 1992/1993:

Ulrich Holbein Ulrich Holbein (born January 24, 1953, in Erfurt) is a German writer. Holbein was the winner of the 2003 Hugo Ball Prize and winner of the 2012 Kassel Literary Prize The Kassel Literary Prize for Grotesque Humor (''Kasseler Literaturpreis fü ...

* 1994/1995:

Andreas Eschbach Andreas Eschbach (born 15 September 1959, in Ulm) is a German writer, primarily of science fiction. His stories that are not clearly in the SF genre usually feature elements of the fantastic. Biography Eschbach studied aerospace engineering ...

* 1996/1997:

Werner Kofler Werner Kofler (23 July 1947 – 8 December 2011) was an Austrian novelist was born in Villach, Austria, and died in Vienna. Life Werner Kofler was the son of a merchant. He broke off his teacher training at the teacher training college in Klag ...

* 2000/2001:

Kurt Drabert Kurt is a male given name of Germanic or Turkish origin. ''Kurt'' or ''Curt'' originated as short forms of the Germanic Conrad, depending on geographical usage, with meanings including counselor or advisor. In Turkish, Kurt means "Wolf" and i ...

* 2000: Georg Martin Oswald * 2002/2003:

Friederike Kretzen Friederike is a feminine given name which may refer to: People *Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine of Prussia, Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1709–1758), Prussian princess and older sister of Frederick the Great *Princess Friederike Luise of Pr ...

* 2005/2006:

Reinhard Jirgl Reinhard Jirgl (born 16 January 1953 in East-Berlin) is a German writer. Biography Jirgl was born in Berlin-Friedrichshain. He became a skilled worker for electromechanics. Then he completed a degree in electronics at Humboldt University, Berli ...

* 2007/2008:

Werner Fritsch Werner may refer to: People * Werner (name), origin of the name and people with this name as surname and given name Fictional characters * Werner (comics), a German comic book character * Werner Von Croy, a fictional character in the ''Tomb Rai ...

* 2015/2016: Andreas Maier *2018/2019: Georg Klein

Bibliography

Novels

*''Brand's Haide'' (1951). ''Brand's Heath'' * ''Schwarze Spiegel'' (1951). ''Dark Mirrors'' *''Aus dem Leben eines Fauns'' (1953). ''Scenes from the Life of a Faun'' *''Das steinerne Herz'' (1954). ''The Stony Heart'' *''KAFF auch Mare Crisium'' (1960). ''B/Moondocks'' *''Nobodaddy's Kinder'' (1963). ''Nobodaddy's Children''; collects ''Aus dem Leben eines Fauns, Brand's Haide, Schwarze Spiegel'' *'' Zettels Traum'' (1970). ''Bottom's Dream'' * '' Die Schule der Atheisten'' (1972). ''The School for Atheists'' * ''Abend mit Goldrand'' (1975). ''Evening Edged in Gold'' *''Julia, oder die Gemälde'' (unfinished, 1983).

Novellas and short stories

* ''Leviathan'' (1949). Includes: ''Enthymesis'', ''Gadir'', ''Leviathan'' *''Die Umsiedler – 2 Prosastudien'' (1953)''.'' Includes: ''Die Umsiedler'' (''The Displaced'') and ''Alexander'' *''Seelandschaft mit Pocahontas'' (1955). ''Lake Scenery with Pocahontas'' * ''Kosmas oder Vom Berge des Nordens'' (1955) * ''Tina oder über die Unsterblichkeit'' (1956) * ''Goethe und einer seiner Bewunderer'' (1957) * ''Die Gelehrtenrepublik'' (1957). ''The Egghead Republic'' (trans. Michael Horovitz, 1979) and ''Republica Intelligentsia'' (trans. John E. Woods, 1994) * ''Rosen und Porree'' (1959). Collects ''Pocahontas'', ''Die Umsiedler'', ''Alexander'' and ''Kosmas'' * ''Kühe in Halbtrauer'' (1964). Later published as ''Ländliche Erzählungen'' (''Country Matters'') * ''Trommler beim Zaren'' (1966). Short story anthology.

Dialogues

* ''Massenbach, Cooper, Brockes, Fouqué, Pape, Schnabel, Europa, Wieland, Meyern, Meisterdiebe, Klopstock, Moritz'' * ''Joyce, May, Stifter, Krakatau, Herder, Vorspiel, Oppermann, Wezel, Kreisschlösser, Müller, Tieck, Schefer, Dickens'' * ''Das Zweite Programm, Joyce, May, Frenssen, Stifter, Gutzkow, Lafontaine, Joyce, Collins, Bulwer-Lytton, Spindler''

Literary theory

* ''Fouqué und einige seiner Zeitgenossen'', biography of

Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué (); (12 February 1777 – 23 January 1843) was a German writer of the Romantic style. Biography He was born at Brandenburg an der Havel, of a family of French Huguenot origin, as evidenced in ...

, 1958 (2nd, extended ed. 1960) *''Dya Na Sore'' (1958) *''Belphegor'' (1961) * ''Sitara und der Weg dorthin'', biography of Karl May, 1963 *''Die Ritter vom Geist'' (1965) *''Der Triton mit den Sonnenschirm'' (1969). ''The Triton with the Parasol''

English translations

* ''The Egghead Republic'' – 1979 (''Die Gelehrtenrepublik'', trans. Michael Horovitz) * ''Evening Edged in Gold'' – 1980 (''Abend mit Goldrand'', trans. John E. Woods) * ''Scenes from the Life of a Faun'' – 1983 (''Aus dem Leben eines Fauns'', trans. John E. Woods; revised in 1995) * ''Collected Early Fiction, 1949–1964'', in four volumes (all trans. John E. Woods): ** Volume 1: ''Collected Novellas'' – 1994; collects ''Enthymesis'' (1949), ''Leviathan'' (1949), ''Gadir'' (1949), ''Alexander'' (1953), ''The Displaced'' (1953), ''Lake Scenery with Pocahontas'' (1955), ''Cosmas'' (1955), ''Tina'' (1956), ''Goethe'' (1957) and ''Republica Intelligentsia'' (1957) ** Volume 2: ''Nobodaddy's Children'' – 1995; collects ''Scenes from the Life of a Faun'' (1953), ''Brand's Heath'' (1951) and ''Dark Mirrors'' (1951) ** Volume 3: ''Collected Stories'' – 1996; collects ''Aus der Inselstraße'' (''Tales from Island Street'') (16 stories, 1955-1962), ''Stürenburg-Geschichten'' (''Stürenburg Stories'') (9 stories, 1955-1959), ''Country Matters'' (9 stories and the novella ''Caliban über Setebos'' (''Caliban upon Stetebos''), 1960-1964) ** Volume 4: ''Two Novels'' – 1997; collects ''The Stony Heart'' (1954) and ''B/Moondocks'' (1960) * ''Radio Dialogs I'' – 1999 (trans. John E. Woods) * ''

The School for Atheists ''The School for Atheists: A Novella=Comedy in 6 Acts'' (''Die Schule der Atheisten'') is a novel by Arno Schmidt. It was originally published in German in 1972. It was translated into English by John E. Woods and published by Green Integer in 20 ...

'' – 2001 (''Die Schule der Atheisten'', trans. John E. Woods) * ''Radio Dialogs II'' – 2003 (trans. John E. Woods) * ''Bottom's Dream'' – 2016 ('' Zettels Traum'', trans. John E. Woods)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt, Arno 1914 births 1979 deaths Writers from Hamburg English–German translators German Army personnel of World War II Translators of Edgar Allan Poe Trümmerliteratur 20th-century German translators 20th-century German novelists German male novelists 20th-century German male writers