Jakob Wassermann was a German novelist, writer and editor, who mainly worked in Austria. Wassermann's work includes poetry, essays, novels, and short stories.
Background
Jakob Wassermann was born on March 10, 1873, in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany. He was the son of a Jewish merchant, Adolf and his wife, Henriette Traub Wassermann. His early life was lonely and poverty-stricken. However, he showed literary interest early and published various pieces in small newspapers.
Education
As his father was reluctant to support his literary ambitions, Jakob began a short-lived apprenticeship with a businessman in Vienna after graduation.
Career
After Wassermann completed his military service in Würzburg, he began his career as an office clerk. In 1894 he moved to Munich. Here he worked as a secretary and later as a copy editor at the paper Simplicissimus. In 1896 he released his first novel, Melusine.
In 1898 Wassermann moved to Vienna and eventually established himself as a writer, working there also as a theatre critic. In 1926, he was elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts but resigned in 1933, narrowly avoiding expulsion by the Nazis. In the same year, his books were banned in Germany owing to his Jewish ancestry. However, in his later years, he was widely acclaimed as a novelist in Europe and the United States.
Wassermann died on 1 January 1934 at his home in Altaussee of a heart attack.
Among Wassermann's recurring themes are those of man's inhumanity to man, the plight of the Jew, the conflict between generations, postwar adjustments after World War I, the problems of justice, unhappy marriage, the misery of the exploited, and the difficulties that beset youth in a sordid and selfish society. He also combined a romanticized psychoanalysis with an almost journalistic sensationalism and used a narrative technique that verged at times on the surrealistic and was heavily laden with symbol and constructed myth.
Membership
In 1926, Wassermann was elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts. He resigned in 1933, narrowly avoiding expulsion by the Nazis.
Personality
Wassermann was a somewhat uneven and laboured person.
Connections
In 1901 Wassermann married Julie Speyer, whom he divorced in 1915. Three years later he married again to Marta Karlweis. The couple had no children.