Otto Mainzer (26 November 1903 in
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
– 28 June 1995 in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
) was a German-American writer. He was unconventional, and wrote about issues such as free love.
Mainzer was the son of Bertha Loeb. He graduated in Law in 1928 and received his doctorate in law. He then worked as a lawyer at the
Berlin Court of Appeal. When he removed in 1933 because of his Jewish origin, he emigrated to Paris. There he made the acquaintance of
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement, to the advent o ...
,
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann (; 27 March 1871 – 11 March 1950), best known as simply Heinrich Mann, was a German author known for his Social criticism, socio-political novels. From 1930 until 1933, he was president of the fine poetry division of the ...
,
Arnold Zweig
Arnold Zweig (10 November 1887 – 26 November 1968) was a German writer, pacifist and socialist.
He is best known for his six-part cycle on World War I.
Life and work
Zweig was born in Glogau, Prussian Silesia (now Głogów, Poland), the son ...
and
Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December 1893 – 30 March 1966) was a German theatre director and producer. Along with Bertolt Brecht, he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of ...
, who supported him financially. At the time of his Paris exile, Mainzer became acquainted with the writings of psychoanalyst
Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich ( , ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian Doctor of Medicine, doctor of medicine and a psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst, along with being a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author ...
. Under the influence of Reich's ideas about sex-economy, Mainzer produced some major works on sexual coercion. In 1941 Mainz continued his emigration, and went to the USA. There he met his girlfriend Ilse Wunsch and lived for 25 years, "unmarried, in two different apartments, but in an intimate love relationship" until they married.
After his death in 1995 his wife established the
Otto-Mainzer-Preis in New York for the science of love, worth 5,000 U.S. dollars. The last prize was awarded in 2015.
Works
* ''Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz, Gerechtigkeit und Recht.'' Dissertation, Frankfurt 1929.
: ''als
Nachdruck:'' Keip Verlag, Goldbach 1996.
* ''Die sexuelle Zwangswirtschaft. Ein erotisches Manifest.'' (1937) Parabel-Verlag, München 1981, .
* ''Der zärtliche Vorstoß. In 66 Gedichten.'' Kirchheim Verlag, München 1986, . (Nachdruck der Exil-Ausgabe Paris 1939)
* ''Prometheus'' (Roman, 1939) Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main und Basel 1989, .
* ''"Auf die höchsten Sterne will ich zielen."'' Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main (noch nicht erschienen, angekündigt), .
Literature
* Ilse Wunsch-Mainzer: ''Zurück nach vorn. Mein Leben mit Prometheus.'' Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main und Basel 1998, .
* Michael Lukas Moeller: ''Auf dem Weg zu einer Wissenschaft von der Liebe – Dyadologie: die Lehre vom Dialog der Dyade.'' Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2002, .
External links
*
References
German sexologists
German emigrants to the United States
1903 births
1995 deaths
German male writers
{{Germany-writer-stub