Pinthus, Kurt

AUTHOR, JOURNALIST (GERMANY)
BORN 29 Apr 1886, Erfurt, Thüringen - DIED 11 Jul 1975, Marburg am Neckar, Baden-Württemberg
GRAVE LOCATION Marbach am Neckar, Baden-Württemberg: Friedhof bei der Alexanderkirche

Karl Pinthus came from a Jewish family. He studied literary history, philosophy and history in Freiburg im Breisgau, Berllin, Geneva and Leipzig. In 1910 he was promoted in Leipzig. He was important for literary expressionism in Germany and in close contact with Johannes R. Becher, Gottfried Benn, Max Brod, Albert Ehrenstein, Walter Hasenclever, Franz Kafka and Franz Werfel. He worked as a literary advisor for Rowohlt Verlag and as an editor for Kurt Wolff Verlag. In 1920 his anthology of expressionist poetry "Menschheitsdämmerung" ("Twilight of Mankind") was published.

In the early 1920s he worked as a dramatist in Berlin for the theatres of Max Reinhardt. After that he was a journalist and a broadcaster. The nazis banned his work in 1933 and he fled to the USA in 1937. His doctorate was revoked by the University of Leipzig in 1940. From 1941 to 1947 he worked for the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and from 1947 to 1961 he taught theatre history at Columbia University. In 1967 he returned to Germany where he worked for the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar until his death in 1975.

Related persons
• was a friend of Hasenclever, Walter
• was a friend of Kokoschka, Oskar

Images

The grave of Kurt Pinthus at the Friedhof bei der Alexanderkirche, Marbach.
Picture by Androom (29 Jan 2010)

 

Sources
Kurt Pinthus - Wikipedia (DE)


Pioche, Charles Augustin

Published: 26 Sep 2023
Last update: 26 Sep 2023