Gustav Pollak

Background

He was born on May 4, 1849 in Vienna, Austria, of Austrian Jewish parents, Lazar Pollak, a doctor, and Magdalena (Klein). Gustav was the second of their four children.

Education

He was educated in the public schools of Vienna, and emigrated to America at the age of seventeen. Since it had been the belief of Vienna physicians that he was threatened with consumption and that a warmer climate would be better for him, he went almost immediately to the South.

Career

At Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he worked in stores as a clerk and tutoring at the same time. He had gained a sound knowledge of English through study before he came to America; but he was always delicately scrupulous in his use of words and, not content with mere correctness, he aimed at a precise and completely idiomatic style. For years he made it a point to look up in the dictionary every English word concerning which he had any doubt. The result was that in an amazingly short time he was writing English with the same ease as German.

Shortly after his arrival in America he established a friendship with Michael Heilprin, who exercised a profound intellectual influence upon him, and whom he almost idolized. His health having been fully restored, he returned for a year or two to Vienna, and appears for a time to have contemplated remaining there permanently, but in 1874 he was back in America.

Pollak began to contribute to the New York Nation in 1874, and joined the New York Evening Post as cashier in 1881 when the latter journal acquired the Nation. It was not long before the editorial staff of the Evening Post recognized his remarkable knowledge of European affairs, and he soon became a regular contributor to the paper, first on foreign politics and later on literary subjects. He remained cashier of the Evening Post Publishing Company until 1893, and continued his literary connections with the Nation and the Evening Post thereafter.

From 1884 to 1909 he edited the magazine Babyhood with Dr. L. M. Yale. He contributed an article on Vienna to Appletons' American Cyclopædia (1876), and was connected with the editorial revision of The Century Cyclopedia of Names in 1895, The New International Encyclopædia from 1902 to 1904, and Nelson's Encyclopædia from 1906 to 1907. He lectured on the Austrian dramatists at Johns Hopkins in 1905.

From 1884 to 1901 he resided at Summit, New Jersey, and took an active part in Democratic politics. He was one of the founders of the German-American Reform Union during the presidential campaign of 1892, and a candidate of the Gold Democrats for state senator from Union County, New Jersey, in 1896. He was also interested in local political activities in Summit, and served on the board of health and on the board of education of the town for a number of years.

Pollak was the author of The Century Book for Mothers (1901); Franz Grillparzer and the Austrian Drama (1907); The Hygiene of the Soul (1910), a memoir of an Austrian physician and others. He wrote occasional verse, and at the age of fifty began to paint as a diversion.

He died of heart disease at Cambridge, Massachussets.

Achievements

• Gustav Pollak was a regular contributor to the New York Nation, New York Evening Post due to his remarkable knowledge of European affairs. His book on the Austrian dramatist and critic, Grillparzer, is still the standard work in English on the subject. His International Perspective in Criticism is an admirable example of his merits as a critic. The three main figures treated in it are Grillparzer, Goethe, and Sainte-Beuve. These essays are gracefully written, balanced, scholarly, and distinguished, and deserve to be better known than they are.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Michael Heilprin and his sons: A biography,

    (High Quality FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION: Pollak, Gustav :Mich...)

  • Franz Grillparzer and the Austrian Drama

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

Politics

His sympathies in the World War were with America. He was disgusted with the terms of the peace treaty, however, and depressed particularly by the break-up of Austria-Hungary.

Views

He was an ardent admirer of Cleveland.

Personality

Pollak's equal mastery of English and German is an index of his powers as a linguist. He also read French and Italian, and in his later years a great deal of Latin and some Greek. His conversation enjoyed a rather remarkable reputation for its high spirits, its geniality, and its spontaneous wit; he was, in short, an authentic example of the traditional Viennese.

Connections

On May 23, 1875 he married Heilprin's daughter, Celia. She was a woman of extraordinarily fine character, and the marriage, until her death in 1911, appears to have been one of ideal felicity. The eldest of his three children, Francis D. Pollak, a New York lawyer, predeceased him.

Father:

Lazar Pollak

Mother:

Magdalena (Klein)

Spouse:

Celia Heilprin

Son:

Francis D. Pollak

coworker:

L. M. Yale

Friend:

Michael Heilprin