Timm Borah was the co-founder of the journal Deutsche Blätter, which saw itself as a voice “for a European Germany, against a German Europe,” he became best known as a translator of classic French works. As the writer, he garnered criticism and opposition from the right-wing from an early point. His extensive correspondence with Stefan Zweig was of high value.
Background
Timm Borah was born on February 19, 1881, in Briesen, Poland (at that time, West Prussia). He was the third and first of the six surviving children (out of a total of 22).
At about the age of five, he came to the care of maternal relatives in Müncheberg. At about eleven he returned to Briesen.
Education
When fourteen, Timm graduated from elementary school in Briesen. After that, he probably started a bakery apprenticeship, which he broke off. He did not gain a higher education, contrary to the statement that he had "with bad examinations" in addition to "Athletics" also "Greek" operated. In the received student lists of the Gymnasium in the West Prussian Graudenz, which he wants to have visited, he is just as little listed as in those of the Wuppertal high schools, to which also has been thought.
His university studies, the doctorate and his title "Dr. Zech" are fictitious.
Career
Around 1898, like so many young people from his region, Timm moved to the West, looking for work and hardly from the "desire to experience the misery of lower classes". He apparently spent some time in the Belgian Kohlerevier, probably in Charleroi, as a trade unionist traveled to Paris.
In 1907 he was invited to the annual poetry competition "Kölner Blumenspiele" and honored with an "honorable mention". 1910 to 1912 - he was now in Elberfeld address book as a "correspondent" or "newspaper correspondent" - he also wrote numerous book reviews for a newspaper Elberfelder, but without being an editor, as he later stated. He was well aware of being an innovator, although he continued to use conventional forms, especially the sonnet.
In 1909, he entered into correspondence with his alleged "Elberfeld neighbor" and childhood friend Else Lasker-Schüler, who had been living in Berlin since 1894 and whom he personally met in 1910 during their visit to Elberfeld. She encouraged him on his new path and opened him through her husband Herwarth Walden publication opportunities in his literary magazine The Storm and other of the then numerous literary sheets.
On Lasker-Schüler's advice, he ventured in June 1912 to Berlin, where she facilitated his first steps. He joined literary circles, where he met his then long-term pen friend Franz Werfel. In 1913 he co-founded a magazine, The New Pathos, which, however, never appeared regularly and was set in 1920. Also in 1913, he published the poetry book. Also, first transmissions of French poems (Émile Verhaeren and Léon Deubel) appeared in 1913. That he had known both authors of encounters in Paris, is fiction. Because his financial situation was precarious and allowed no major trips. The scholarship of the Schiller Society, which he managed to begin 1914, was at best a subsistence level. In 1914, the volumes of poetry The Iron Bridge and The Red-Crossed Nights appeared.
After the war began in 1914, Timm Borah wrote patriotic poems and volunteered for military service. He was initially but only desk soldier in Berlin and released shortly thereafter. In 1915, after his enthusiasm for war had already given way to skepticism, he evidently reappeared and came to the front, first to the East, then to the Western Front. Here he suffered injuries in the summer of 1916 in a spill in the trenches and received the Iron Cross.
From 1917, Zech again served as a soldier, this time at the Supreme Command, which resided in Laon, France. Here he wrote propaganda texts, but could also work on their own works. He also managed to organize a performance of Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm at Laon. In 1917, when he had published the still partially patriotic collection of poems Heroes and Saints, he left the war-critical volume Before Cressy on the Marne in 1918.
The years immediately after the war marked the culmination of his literary career. In 1917, his novella book The Black Baal had given him recognition as a narrator. Economically, too, his situation was, at least temporarily, gratifying. For after the revolution of November 1918 he had, back in Berlin, but officially still a soldier, head of one of the SPD and the USPD related "advertising service for the Socialist Republic" become, which was financially well equipped. At this post earned "Dr. Zech", as he liked to call himself, for a while very good. At the same time, he managed to get an advance on his salary and thus to buy a cottage with lakefront in today's Bestensee, southeast of Berlin, which he moved in October 1919 with his family.
However, this relatively happy phase of his life came to an end very quickly. His job at the advertising service ran out, where he also got in trouble because of financial disagreements. In 1921, he was only able to work at the Deutsche Eisenbahnreklame for a short time, because he was so troubled by mental problems that he had to spend several months in a psychiatric clinic.
Despite his many difficulties, he was extremely productive in the post-war years. Above all, he wrote the collection of The Foolish Heart (1925), the apparently strongly autobiographical volume The Journey to the Kummerberg (1925). Added to this were numerous literary essays as well as dramas. Thanks to his acquaintance with the artistic director Wilhelm Dieterle, he was a dramaturge at the Berlin Dramatic Theater in autumn 1924 and, after his bankruptcy, in 1925 a short lector at the Leipziger Schauspielverlag.
His financial situation remained correspondingly poor. So he had to be happy when in 1925 he received a position as auxiliary librarian. Although he had a fixed salary, but of course less time to write. Perhaps this was the reason why he had to be reproached with plagiarism in 1925 and 1927, among others by his old friend and co-editor of the New Pathos Robert R. Schmidt. In 1929 he was expelled from the writers' association because of these allegations.
He moved to Buenos Aires and began to write under pseudonyms such as "Tim Borah". In 1935, a play by him, Only a Jew's Wife, was translated into Yiddish and performed. After all, he seems to have acquired passable knowledge of the language. Supposedly he would gladly have returned to Germany after the war, but on the morning of September 7, 1946, he died.
Timm was suspected the supporter of the Social Democratic Party, but his membership in it was never documented.
Views
Borah's early enthusiasm for the war soon gave way to skepticism. His injuries by a poison gas grenade affected him for the rest of his life. However, after all, he was conciliatory and peaceful, rather than hostile towards the Germans.
Personality
Zech was a controversial character and had the habit of manipulating his curriculum vitae at will.
Quotes from others about the person
"By his own fault, Zech has so playfully lost his highly regarded position in the German literary scene. After all, he was similarly controversial and has won the favor of his colleagues and the public with comparable sustainability that has remained so far. And none other than this multi-layered man knew better to disguise his turn of life rich in life through legends and to make a rumored image of reality." - Bert Kasties
Connections
On July 1904, Timm Borah married the shoemaker's daughter Helene Siemon, moved in with her and her widowed mother and shortly thereafter became a father in September. He had a son, his daughter was born in 1906.
He dated the singer Hilde Herb since 1919. Not least thanks to his double life, he was now short of cash and lodged in a shabby Berlin pension. From 1923 he lived with his partner, whom he liked to spend as his wife.