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Robert Neumann (writer)


Robert Neumann (born 22 May 1897 in Vienna, died 3 January 1975 in Munich) was a German and English-speaking writer. He published numerous novels, autobiographical texts, plays and radio plays as well as some screenplays. Through his parody collections, with borrowed plumes (1927) and Under False Flag (1932), he is the founder of "parody as critical genus in the literature of the 1920s."

Robert Neumann was the son of a bank clerk of Jewish ancestry and social democratic leanings. He studied medicine, chemistry, and one semester of German studies from 1915 to 1919 in Vienna. He worked as a cashier, swim coach, and associate for a food importing company, but was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1925. Afterwards he worked for a short time as a sailor and cargo supervisor on a cruise ship.

Having already published small volumes of lyric poetry in 1919 and 1923, he succeeded in a literary breakthrough in parody with the collection with borrowed plumes in 1927. In a survey called Thomas Mann, this book was judged the best of the year. Neumann thus established himself and became a freelance writer. In rapid succession, other novels, parodies and plays were published. In addition, he lectured and worked as a literary critic (Die Literatur, Die Literarische Welt). His parodies were so successful that his other work faded by contrast. Rudolf Walter Leonhardt later wrote in his obituary of Robert Neumann of his public success: "Two narrow bands have a lifetime of fifteen thick volumes buried."

Neumann's works were victims of the Nazi book burnings in 1933 and were banned by the Third Reich. Immediately after the establishment of the Austro-fascist dictatorship in February 1934, he left Vienna and went into exile in Britain. In 1936 and 1937 he spent a few months in Austria, where the libraries were "cleansed" of his works. Until 1938 his novels still appeared in Switzerland.

He was one of the few writers in exile who managed to get published in England. ' == ERROR--this film came out in 1935!!!' == In 1936 he wrote the screenplay for the British film Abdul the Damned with Fritz Kortner in the lead role. After the occupation of Austria in 1938, he organized the "Free Austrian P.E.N.-Club" in London to assist writers who were threatened by Nazis to leave their country. In 1939, he applied for British citizenship, but did not received it until 1947. Instead, he was interned in 1940 for a few months as an "enemy alien". During the war years he periodically delivered reviews for the BBC. From 1942 he published six novels in English. As editor and part-owner of the publishing house "Hutchinson International Authors," he initiated the publication of English translations of German writers in exile such as Arnold Zweig and Heinrich Mann. His request for an entry visa into the United States was rejected, despite an invitation to Hollywood. Rudolf Walter Leonhardt maintained that the novel An den Wassern von Babylon (By the rivers of Babylon), published in 1939 in English and 1945 in German, was Neumann's best book: a Jewish epic of overwhelming urgency.


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