Bernard von Brentano (15 October 1901, in
Offenbach am Main – 29 December 1964, in
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...
) was a German writer, poet, playwright, storyteller,
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...
, essayist and journalist.
Life
Brentano was a son of the Hessian Interior and Justice Minister
Otto Rudolf von Brentano di Tremezzo and a brother of
Clemens Clemens is both a Late Latin masculine given name and a surname meaning "merciful". Notable people with the name include:
Surname
* Adelaide Clemens (born 1989), Australian actress.
* Andrew Clemens (b. 1852 or 1857–1894), American folk artist
* ...
and
Heinrich von Brentano
Heinrich Joseph Maximilian Johann Maria von Brentano di Tremezzo (20 June 1904 – 14 November 1964), known professionally as Heinrich von Brentano, was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He served as Federal Minister ...
. His mother, Lilla Beata née Schwerdt maternally stems from the Frankfurt line of the
Brentano family. In contrast to his brothers, Bernard von Brentano hardly used the full name of his family, ''Brentano di Tremezzo''.
Brentano studied philosophy in Freiburg, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin. In Frankfurt, he became an active member of the catholic student association Bavaria. In Munich he was a member of the K. St. V. Rheno-Bavaria. Brentano became a member of the
PEN-Club in 1920. From 1925 to 1930 he worked in the Berlin office of the
Frankfurter Zeitung, where he became the successor of
Joseph Roth
Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga '' Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life '' Job'' ...
. He was also involved in the
Association of proletarian revolutionary writers and worked for the
Communist literary magazine
Die Linkskurve. A
KPD member, he later left the party and distanced himself from politics after some trips to Moscow and because of the party's
Stalinist tendencies.
Together with
Berthold Brecht and
Herbert Ihering
Herbert Ihering (also sometimes Herbert Jhering: 29 February 1888 – 15 January 1977) was a German dramaturge, director and theatre critic. He was seen by many contemporaries as one of the leading theatre critics during and after the Weimar yea ...
he planned to edit the magazine "Krisis und Kritik", which, however, never appeared. In 1933, he emigrated to Switzerland and his family lived in
Küsnacht
Küsnacht is a municipality in the district of Meilen in the canton of Zurich in Switzerland.
History
Küsnacht is first mentioned in 1188 as ''de Cussenacho''.
Earliest findings of settlement date back to the stone age. There are also finding ...
in
Zurich. In 1949, he returned from exile back to Germany. He lived with his family in Wiesbaden.
[Translated from Sven Hanuschek: Nachwort zu Bernard von Brentano: ''Theodor Chindler. Roman einer deutschen Familie''. Schöffling, Frankfurt am Main 2014. .]
Works
*''Über den Ernst des Lebens'', 1929
*''Kapitalismus und schöne Literatur'', 1930
*''Der Beginn der Barbarei in Deutschland'', 1932
*''Berliner Novellen'', 1934
*''Theodor Chindler,'' 1936
*''Prozess ohne Richter,'' 1937
*''Die ewigen Gefühle'', 1939
*''Une Famille Allemande'', 1939
*''Phädra. Drama,'' 1939
*''Tagebuch mit Büchern'', 1943
*''
August Wilhelm Schlegel
August Wilhelm (after 1812: von) Schlegel (; 8 September 176712 May 1845), usually cited as August Schlegel, was a German poet, translator and critic, and with his brother Friedrich Schlegel the leading influence within Jena Romanticism. His trans ...
'', 1944
*''Goethe und Marianne von Willemer,'' 1945
*''Franziska Scheler,'' 1945
*''Martha und Maria'', 1946
*''Streifzüge,'' 1947
*''Die Schwestern Usedom,'' 1948
*''Sophie Charlotte und Danckelmann'', 1949
*''Du Land der Liebe,'' 1952
References
Further reading
*
Konrad Feilchenfeldt:''Afterword'', in: Bernard von Brentano:''Three prelates. Essays.'' Limes, Wiesbaden 1974th (Important for the Assessment of Brentano's later work)
* Ulrike Hessler:''Bernard von Brentano. A German writer without Germany. Tendencies of the novel between the Weimar Republic and in exile.'' Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.m. e.g. 1984th (= European university studies. I. 778th series)
* Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag (ed.), ''Handbook of the German Empire'', Volume 1, Berlin, 1931
1901 births
1964 deaths
People from Offenbach am Main
People from the Grand Duchy of Hesse
German people of Italian descent
Writers from Hesse
German untitled nobility
Exiles from Nazi Germany
20th-century German novelists
German male novelists
20th-century German poets
20th-century German dramatists and playwrights
German male poets
German male dramatists and playwrights
German essayists
German male essayists
German male journalists
20th-century essayists
20th-century German male writers
People from Küsnacht
20th-century German journalists
{{Germany-writer-stub