Max Cahner i Garcia (3 December 1936 – 14 October 2013) was a
Catalan politician, and editor and historian of
Catalan literature
Catalan literature is the name conventionally used to refer to literature written in the Catalan language. The focus of this article is not just the literature of Catalonia, but literature written in Catalan from anywhere, so that it includes writ ...
.
Career
Cahner was born in
Bad Godesberg
Bad Godesberg ( ksh, Bad Jodesbersch) is a borough ('' Stadtbezirk'') of Bonn, southern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. From 1949 to 1999, while Bonn was the capital of West Germany, most foreign embassies were in Bad Godesberg. Some buildings ar ...
, now a municipal district of
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, to a Jewish-Catalan father and a Catalan mother who had left during the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
. The Cahner family moved to Galicia in 1937 to avoid persecution from the rise of
National Socialism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...
,
and then to Barcelona in 1939.
He enrolled at the
University of Barcelona
The University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat de Barcelona, UB; ; es, link=no, Universidad de Barcelona) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, in Spain. With 63,000 students, it is one of the biggest universities i ...
in 1952 studying chemistry.
Via
Ramon Bastardes, Cahner was introduced to and began working on ''
Serra d'Or
''Serra d'Or'' () is a Catalan magazine that appeared in October 1959. It was promoted by a group of university students, and was published by the Montserrat abbey press, with a monthly circulation of 8.000 copies.
Origins
The origins of the magaz ...
'', an influential Catalan magazine published by
Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey. In 1964, he was expelled from
Francoist Spain
Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...
for his Catalan nationalist activity.
From exile he continued he work on Catalan literature.
In 1980, Cahner was appointed as the
Minister of Culture in the
Generalitat de Catalunya under
Jordi Pujol, where he served for four years until 1984, when
Joan Rigol
Joan Rigol i Roig (Torrelles de Llobregat - 4 April 1943) is a Spanish politician. He is a former president of the Parliament of Catalonia.http://www.parlament-cat.net/portal/page?_pageid=34,34329&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL Rigol also sat in the ...
took his place.
In 1986, Cahner joined the
Democratic Convergence of Catalonia
The Democratic Convergence of Catalonia ( ca, Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya; , CDC), frequently shortened as Convergence ( ca, Convergència; ) was a Catalan nationalist, liberal political party in Catalonia (Spain), currently still exist ...
, where he led the party's cultural work, and was elected as an MP in the 1988 elections.
He died, aged 76, in 2013, and was posthumously awarded the
Gold Medal of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
References
External links
Entry for Max Cahner i Garciain the ''Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana''
1936 births
2013 deaths
Writers from Catalonia
Culture ministers of Catalonia
{{Catalonia-writer-stub