Background
Bernard von Brentano was born Euren Ludwig Franz Bernard Maria von Brentano di Tremezzo, on October 15, 1901, in Offenbach, Hessen, Germany. He was the son of Otto von Brentano, a notary, and Lilia (Schwerdt) von Brentano.
(This novel of a German-Catholic community center against ...)
This novel of a German-Catholic community center against the background of the wartime is an excellent book, mastered with easy and sure hand, clever, clear and captivating.
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1936
(Berlin 1929: The republic has hardly recovered from the w...)
Berlin 1929: The republic has hardly recovered from the war, it already crumbles in anticipation of the impending global economic crisis. Leopold Chindler, journalist and author, meets in his brother's apartment his childhood sweetheart from study days again - Franziska Scheler, who now divorced and lives alone in Berlin with her young son.
https://www.amazon.com/Franziska-Scheler-German-Bernard-Brentano-ebook/dp/B00XLPHXWY/?tag=2022091-20
1945
Bernard von Brentano was born Euren Ludwig Franz Bernard Maria von Brentano di Tremezzo, on October 15, 1901, in Offenbach, Hessen, Germany. He was the son of Otto von Brentano, a notary, and Lilia (Schwerdt) von Brentano.
Brentano studied German and philosophy, first at Freiburg and later at Munich and Frankfurt, leaving university in 1922 without having completing the requirements for a degree.
Descended from two noble houses, Bernard von Brentano first claimed his place in his family’s long line of creative intellectuals at the age of seventeen when he began as an editor for Neuland, a literary journal in which his first poetry appeared. Two years later, in 1920, he commenced the short academic career that would mark the end of his formal schooling.
Brentano’s scholastic oversight did him little harm; in 1923, he moved to Berlin and began work at Germania, a journal that served the interests of Germany’s Centrist Party (Zentrumspartei). A couple of years later, Brentano accepted a position as a special correspondent for the leftist daily newspaper, Frankfurter Zeitung. Brentano was simultaneously working on his own literary projects, and by 1923, he had published a collection of poetry (Gedichte), followed in 1924 by his comic play Geld. His personal literary output, combined with the status of his position at the Zeitung, brought him into contact with many luminaries of the Berlin literary scene: Bertoldt Brecht, Gottfried Benn, Ernst Glaeser, among others.
By 1927, Brentano had joined the Neue Bucherschau, another politically leftist periodical, and by 1928 had become associated with an organization known as the Bund Proletarisch-Revolutionärer Schriftseller (the League of Proletarian-Revolutionary Authors). By this time, Brentano appears to have made a personal commitment to leftist, even revolutionary, politics. In 1930, he found he could no longer work for the Zeitung since the paper’s editorial policy had shifted to a more conservative political stance.
Instead, he struck out on his own as a freelancer, and together with Brecht and Walter Benjamin, began discussions about launching a journal of their own, Krisis and Kritik. They intended to use it, states Hans- Christian Oeser in Dictionary of Literary Biography, “to destroy false consciousness by initiating fruitful debate among intellectuals not only about the subject matter of their fields but also about their social situation and their methods and techniques.” The project never got off the ground, in part due to a dispute between the would-be founders and the German Communist Party.
In March 1933, Brentano fled to Vienna, just two months before his books were banned by the government and his 1932 volume Der Beginn der Barbarei in Deutschland was burned by the Nazis. From Vienna, Brentano ultimately moved on to Zurich, Switzerland, which became his home in exile. Here he would make his home until 1949, although he did return to Germany for visits beginning in 1940. It was during this period of exile that Brentano underwent the political change of heart that earned him much condemnation from his former leftist fellows and that resulted in his being ignored for much of the post-World War II period. Although he continued to participate in party activities for a time, the party leaders expelled him in September 1933.
Brentano’s writings began to reflect the re-evaluation of his political stance, and by 1936 his fellow exile in Zurich, Thomas Mann, was asserting that perhaps he had the best return to his homeland. In Zurich at the time there were two very different populations of German emigrants. The first, with whom Brentano associated on arriving in Switzerland, were committed to anti-fascism and to the communist cause. The second, known as the Ecole de Zurich, adopted a more neutral attitude to the German government and its policies. As early as 1936, Brentano had switched his allegiance to this second group. From this time onward, his earlier anti-fascist message became muted.
By 1937, Brentano had begun confronting the issue of despotism, a theme that forms the core of his novel Prozess ohne Richter (Trial without Judge). His audience among the German emigrants in Zurich tended to view the political system described in the novel as a fictionalized depiction of Hitler’s fascist regime, but Brentano deliberately kept the identification obscure. Brentano himself, in a letter to the German authorities, referred to Stalin’s Soviet Union. And when Germany went to war in 1940, Brentano petitioned the German government to be permitted to return home. In his letter of petition, he avowed his patriotism and even expressed gratitude that his 1932 volume had been destroyed.
Brentano’s petition was not wholly successful. He did receive permission to return for a visit in 1940, and he succeeded in getting some of his work published there, beginning with his biography of August Wilhelm Schlegel (1943). But his request for repatriation was denied, and although his book was successfully published, it was immediately confiscated. Brentano had insufficiently made his case to the authorities, but in attempting to make it he alienated his former associates in Zurich. It would not be until 1949 that he could finally return home. He settled in Wiesbaden, where he remained until his death, in 1964, of multiple sclerosis and tuberculosis.
(This novel of a German-Catholic community center against ...)
1936(Berlin 1929: The republic has hardly recovered from the w...)
1945Brentano never felt completely comfortable with the Communist Party. Although he was ideologically drawn to many of the principles espoused by the party, he nonetheless frequently took positions that put him at odds with his fellow revolutionaries. Thus, although he published work in Communist journals, he frequently came under critical attack by members of his own party. Still, he remained committed to his cause, and with the rise of Hitler in 1933, he joined many of his fellow leftists in the literary world to oppose the new fascist government. Along with Brecht, Heinrich Mann, Leonhard Frank, and others of Berlin’s literati, he hoped to organize an effective force of resistance against Hitler’s Third Reich, but within months it became clear that such resistance would be futile.
In Frankfurt, Brentano became an active member of the catholic student association Bavaria. In Munich, he was a member of the K. St. V. Rheno-Bavaria. Brentano became a member of the PEN-Club in 1920.
Quotes from others about the person
“After the crushing defeat of the Communists by the Nazis Brentano questioned not only the party’s leadership but the role and structure of the party itself, as well as the trustworthiness of its ‘masterminds’ in the Soviet Union.” - Oeser
In November 1922, Bernard married Marie Elisabeth von Esebeck, a baroness, but they divorced in February 1929. In September 1929, Bernard married Margot Gerlach. The couple had two children: Georg Michael and Peter Christian.