Johannes Urzidil (3 February 1896 in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

– 2 November 1970 in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

) was a German-Bohemian writer, poet and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

. His father was a

German Bohemian German Bohemians (german: Deutschböhmen und Deutschmährer, i.e. German Bohemians and German Moravians), later known as Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part o ...

and his mother was Jews, Jewish.

Life

Urzidil was educated in

, studying German language, German, art history, and Slavic languages before turning to journalism and writing. His initial efforts in poetry were influenced by Expressionism, and were published under the pseudonym Hans Elmar. He also worked as a writer and editor of the monthly journal ''Der Mensch''. Among his acquaintances during this period were Franz Werfel, Ludwig Winder and Franz Kafka. From 1922 until 1933 he advised the press section of the German embassy in Prague. When Czechoslovakia was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1939, he was dismissed from employment by the German embassy because of his being "Halbjude" ("half-Jewish", a Nazi designation) and this situation caused Urzidil to emigrate to Great United Kingdom, Britain. There he was financially supported by the British writer Bryher (novelist), Bryher. In 1941 he and his wife, the poet Gertrude Urzidil, came to the United States, acquiring American citizenship in 1946. Although he published poetry, Urzidil is best known for his prose which, though written in exile, reflects his Bohemian heritage just as well as his new American environment. Among his more notable works are the story ''Der Trauermantel'' (1945, Trauermantel is the German name of the Camberwell beauty) about Adalbert Stifter′s youth, and his collections of short stories like ' (1956; the title refers as well to Prague which he had to leave behind when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia as to his first love), ''Prague Triptych'' (1960, whose composition is derived from that of an altarpiece), or ''Kidnapping and Seven Other Incidents'' (1964, whose eight stories are situated in the USA). Urzidil's only novel ''The Great Hallelujah'' (1959) shows as literary collage in the tradition of John Dos Passos, Thomas Wolfe, and Alfred Döblin a manifold panorama of the United States as he experienced them since his arrival in 1941. He wrote also books and essays about cultural history, e. g. ''The Fortune of Presence. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe's View of America'' (1958), ''America and the Ancient World'' (1964), and ''There Goes Kafka'' (1965, enlarged 1966), or monographs about artists and poets he admired, such as ''Wenceslaus Hollar, Hollar, a Czech émigré in England'' (1942, revised and abridged translation of his German book ''Wenceslaus Hollar - the Engraver of the Baroque Era'', 1936), or his opus magnum in this genre ''Goethe in Bohemia'' (1932, revised and enlarged 1962 and 1965). More over Urzidil translated texts and books from Czech and English into German; worth mentioning is especially his translation (1955) of ''By Avon River'' (1949) by the American poet H.D., the companion of Urzidil's life-saver Bryher. Urzidil won a number of prizes in his career, including the Charles Veillon Prize (1957) and the Grand Austrian State Prize, Großer Österreichischer Staatspreis (1964). He died in

in 1970.

Legacy

The Asteroid belt, main-belt asteroid 70679 Urzidil is named after Urzidil.

References

Johannes Urzidil at Answers.com

Biography at the Český Krumlov Encyclopedia

External links

''Guide to the Papers of Johannes and Gertrude Urzidil''
at Leo Baeck Institute, New York
Website of the Johannes Urzidil Society
with detailed biography, bibliography etc.
Website about Urzidil
by the Urzidil researcher

an
Vera Schneider
with detailed bibliography of secondary literature, annotated collection of links, news about Urzidil and his work, and much more information
''Athalia Montez, Advice'' (1964)
an American story by Urzidil, translated into English b
David Burnett

Detailed Biography
by Klaus Johann at www.exil-archiv.de
''Prague author Johannes Urzidil remembered 40 years after his death''
b
Rob Cameron
for ''Radio Prague''
''The Fictional Country You Build When Your Home No Longer Exists''
comprehensive article about Urzidil b
James Reith
in ''The Atlantic''
About the word ''hinternational'', coined by Urzidil
- an essay by Djelal Kadir in ''World Literature Today'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Urzidil, Johannes 1896 births 1970 deaths Czech writers in German Czech poets German Bohemian people Jewish Czech writers Czech male poets Czech journalists Czech expatriates in the United Kingdom Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States American people of German Bohemian descent Writers from Prague 20th-century Czech poets 20th-century male writers 20th-century journalists