Soma Morgenstern (3 May 1890 – 17 April 1976) was a Jewish-Ukrainian writer and journalist.
Biography
Soma (real name Salomo) Morgenstern spent his childhood in various villages in Galicia. His father worked as a bailiff, but was also a Jewish scholar and fulfilled the functions of a prayer leader in the area where the Morgensterns lived at that time. The Morgenstern family were adherents of
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Judaism, Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory ...
, and so religion played a significant role in Soma's childhood.
Morgenstern's upbringing was not only religious but also multilingual. In his childhood memories
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
was his first language, though
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
became his native tongue. He also learned ancient
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
in order to understand religious texts, and sometimes went to Polish, sometimes Ukrainian village schools, in which he was also taught German. German would later be the language in which he wrote, in large part because his father held the language in high esteem.
He did not however take after his father in all things; after he completed his basic education he went to the grammar school in
Tarnopol
Ternópil ( uk, Тернопіль, Ternopil' ; pl, Tarnopol; yi, טאַרנאָפּל, Tarnopl, or ; he, טארנופול (טַרְנוֹפּוֹל), Tarnopol; german: Tarnopol) is a city in the west of Ukraine. Administratively, Ternopi ...
, a regional cultural centre at the time. During this period he became an atheist, but later rediscovered his religion, which strongly influenced his work:
"But I stood before a lectern, on which a neglected prayer-book lay. ..My eyes fell onto a verse which I knew well, but only now recognised as a great truth. ..He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? salm 94.9, KJVWhat a verse! What a question! I had learned from the Darwinists how an organ for seeing can come into existence. ..But, as I suddenly asked myself, who invented ''seeing''? Who had put it into words as the psalmist did?! Who had questioned so deeply and written so highly?! I felt my atheism faltering." (From ''In another time. Youth in East Galicia'', his incomplete autobiography)
After he left grammar school, Morgenstern left for
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
to study law in 1912, where his studies were interrupted by his military service during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, meaning he only graduated in 1921. Afterwards he worked as, among others, as the Vienna correspondent for the ''
Frankfurter Zeitung
The ''Frankfurter Zeitung'' () was a German-language newspaper that appeared from 1856 to 1943. It emerged from a market letter that was published in Frankfurt. In Nazi Germany, it was considered the only mass publication not completely controlle ...
'' and moved in the intellectual circles of Vienna, and was befriended by, for example, the composer
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
and the authors
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'' ( ...
and
Robert Musil
Robert Musil (; 6 November 1880 – 15 April 1942) was an Austrian philosophical writer. His unfinished novel, ''The Man Without Qualities'' (german: link=no, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), is generally considered to be one of the most important ...
.
In March 1938, at the time of the ''
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...
'', he fled Vienna via France (where he was repeatedly detained as a "foreign enemy") to New York in 1941, where he lived until his death in 1976. His son
Dan Morgenstern
Dan Morgenstern (born October 24, 1929) is a jazz writer, editor, archivist, and producer. He is the son of the German-language Jewish author Soma Morgenstern.
Morgenstern was raised in Vienna and Copenhagen and arrived in the United States in ...
is a
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
writer and is a former director of the
Institute of Jazz Studies The Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) is the largest and most comprehensive library and archives of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world. It is located on the fourth floor of the John Cotton Dana Library at Rutgers University–Newark in Newa ...
at
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
.
Bibliography
* The Son of the Lost Son (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1946)
* In My Father's Pastures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947)
* The Testament of the Lost Son (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1950)
The following eleven works appear on Soma Morgenstern's entry a ZuKlampen-Verlags (German)
*The ''Funken im Abgrund'' (Eng: ''Sparks in the abyss'') trilogy of novels:
**Volume I. ''Der Sohn des verlorenen Sohnes'' (''The son of the lost son'') Springe, 1996.
**Band II. ''Idyll im Exil'' (''Idyll in exile'') Springe, 1996.
**Band III. ''Das Vermächtnis des verlorenen Sohnes'' (''The legacy of the lost son'') Springe, 1996.
*''Flucht in Frankreich'' (''Flight into France''), a novel-reportage. Springe, 1998.
*''Der Tod ist ein Flop'' (''Death is a flop''), novel. Springe, 1999.
*''Die Blutsäule. Zeichen und Wunder am Sereth'' (''The pillar of blood. Omens and miracles at Sereth''), novel. Springe, 1997.
*''Joseph Roths Flucht und Ende'' (''Joseph Roth's flight and end''), memoirs. Springe, 1994.
*''Alban Berg und seine Idole'' (''Alban Berg and his idols''), memoirs and letters. Springe, 1995.
*''In einer anderen Zeit. Jugendjahre in Ostgalizien'' (''In another time. Youth in East Galicia''), Springe, 1995.
*''Dramen. Feuilletons. Fragmente'' (''Dramas. News. Fragments'') Springe, 2000.
*''Kritiken. Berichte. Tagebücher'' (''Reviews. Reports. Diaries'') Springe, 2001.
Awards
* 1951:
National Jewish Book Award
The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.the equivalent German-language Wikipedia article retrieved on February 17, 2006, which uses the following references:
**Kitzmantel, Raphaela: ''Eine Überfülle an Gegenwart. Soma Morgenstern. Biografie.'' Vienna, 2005.
**Weigel, Robert G. (Hrsg.): ''Vier große galizische Erzähler im Exil: W.H. Katz, Soma Morgenstern, Manès Sperber und Joseph Roth''. Frankfurt, 2005.
*Weidner, Cornelia: ''Ein Leben mit Freunden. Über Soma Morgensterns autobiographische Schriften''. Springe, 2004.
*Jacques Lajarrige (ed.), ''Soma Morgenstern – Von Galizien ins amerikanische Exil / Soma Morgenstern – De la Galicie à l'exil américain'', Berlin, Frank und Timme, 2014 (Forum : Österreich, 1).