Background

Bernhard Kellermann was born on March 4, 1879, in Fürth, the Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire (now Fürth, Bavaria, Germany). He was the son of Johann Friedrich Kellermann and Margarethe Katherina Kellermann.

Education

Bernhard Kellermann matriculated to Technical University Munich in 1899 but later focused on German literature and painting.

Career

Bernhard Kellermann began his writing career in 1904 with the book Yester und Li. The next novel is Ingeborg (1906) which also considered as one of his most successful books. His early writings, including 1909 Der Tor, were marked with impressionism and prose.

In 1910 he moved to social themes with the book Das Meer (The Sea). The novel was made into a film by Peter Paul Felner and Sofar-Film-Produktion GmbH, featuring prominent film stars. His Der Tunnel, which appeared in English variously as The Tunnel and the Transatlantic Tunnel, was his only international bestseller. Der Tunnel is about an attempt by an engineering genius to construct a transatlantic tunnel. The novel inspired three movie versions - The Tunnel, in 1935, by both French and German production companies, and Transatlantic Tunnel, in 1935, by a British company - and in the 1940s inspired similar novels about fantastic large-scale construction projects. With The Tunnel, Kellermann helped develop the genre later known as industrial science fiction.

During World War I Kellermann was a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt. He wrote newspaper columns and several longer accounts of the war, including Der Krieg im Westen (The war in the West) and Krieg im Argonnerwald (War in the Argonner Forest). In 1920, his novel Der 9. November (The Ninth of November) appeared, which argued critically against the behavior of soldiers and officers to the people. This book doomed Kellermann during the Nazi era. From that time, he published numerous novellas and short stories. In 1926 he became a member of the Prussian poet academy, from which he was excluded in 1933. In those days Kellerman left Berlin with Lene Schneider-Kainer and traveled by donkey or caravan to Russia, Persia, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Tibet, and China.

In the years of the Nazi dictatorship, Kellermann stayed in Germany. His book Der 9. November was banned and burned publicly. The writer was pressured to force him to serve the Third Reich. However, throughout the entire period of Hitler's dictatorship, Kellerman refused to write racist brochures. Following World War II, Kellermann lived in East Berlin, where he founded the Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands (the League for the Democratic Renewal of Germany). In 1948 he published his last significant novel Totentanz.

Achievements

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  Bernhard Kellermann received the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic in 1949. There is a memorial plate for Bernhard Kellermann on a pedestrian area in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany. One of the streets in this city is named in honor of Bernhard Kellermann.
  
  His most popular work Der Tunnel was sold in million copies in 25 languages and was made into four movies.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Walk in Japan

    (A Walk in Japan is an English translation of the book Ein...)

    1910
  • The Saints

    (The book The Saints is an English translation of the book...)

    1922
  • The Tunnel

    (The book The Tunnel is a 1915 translation of the book Der...)

    1913

Membership

• Prussian poet academy

  1926 - 1933

Interests

• theater, tea house culture

Connections

Bernhard Kellermann married Mabel Giberson in 1915. Mabel died in 1926. In 1939 Kellermann married Else Michaelis.

Father:

Johann Friedrich Kellermann

Mother:

Margarethe Katherina Kellermann

late wife:

Mabel Giberson

Wife:

Else Michaelis