An Inventory of His Correspondence at the Harry Ransom Center
Creator:
Schoenberner, Franz,
1892-1970
Title:
Franz Schoenberner Correspondence
Dates:
1933-1947
Extent:
1 document box (.21 linear feet)
Abstract:
This collection consists entirely of
incoming correspondence written to Franz Schoenberner between 1933 and 1947 by
a
number of significant European and American writers and artists. Correspondents
include Henri Barbusse, George Grosz, Thomas Theodor Heine, Heinrich Mann, Romain
Rolland, and Stefan Zweig.
Franz Schoenberner was born in on 18 December 1892 as the eleventh and last child
of
a Berlin pastor. After graduation from Berlin's Humanistisches Gymnasium he pursued
studies in cultural history and literature in the universities of Berlin and Munich
in the years 1911 to 1914.
Following military service in the Great War, Schoenberner began his literary career,
working for Musarion Verlag in Munich and, from 1923, as editor of the Auslandpost and other journals. He succeeded Georg Hirth
as editor of the art periodical Jugend in 1927, later
moving to the satirical weekly Simplicissimus, where
from the end of 1929 until Hitler's accession to power in March 1933 he was the
chief editor.
Like his coworker the satiric artist Thomas Theodor Heine, Schoenberner quickly left
Germany after the Nazi consolidation of power, settling at Roquebrun-Cap-Martin
in
France, where he wrote for Klaus Mann's Die Sammlung
and other German-language émigré periodicals. With the outbreak of
the Second World War in 1939 Schoenberner was interned by the French government
as
an enemy alien at a former brickyard at Les Milles near Toulon along with other
German exiles.
With the assistance of the Emergency Rescue Committee and the Unitarian Service
Committee, Schoenberner escaped from French internment during 1941, eventually
settling in the United States with "very little money and
even less English." For two years he lectured on behalf of the Council for
Social Action of the Congregational Christian Churches; beginning in 1943 he worked
for the Office of War Information as an editor and began writing articles for
American publication.
The first volume of his memoirs, Confesssions of a European
Intellectual, was published in 1946; it was followed in 1949 by The Inside Story of an Outsider. After surviving a
brutal attack that left him with permanent physical handicaps, Schoenberner
published the third and final volume of his memoirs under the title You Still Have Your Head: Excursions from Immobility
(1957). Franz Schoenberner died at Teaneck, New Jersey, on 11 April 1970.
Sources:
Heine, Thomas Theodor. Die Wahrheit ist oft
unwahrscheinlich: Thomas Theodor Heines Briefe an Franz Schoenberner aus dem
Exil. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2004.
Schoenberner, Franz. Confessions of a European
Intellectual. New York: Macmillan, 1946.
________________. The Inside Story of an Outsider.
New York: Macmillan, 1949.
________________.You Still Have Your Head: Excursions from
Immobility. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
Scope and Contents
This collection consists entirely of incoming correspondence written to Franz
Schoenberner between 1933 and 1947 by a number of significant European and American
writers and artists. Correspondents include Henri Barbusse (2 letters, 1933),
George
Grosz (1 letter, undated), Thomas Theodor Heine (125 letters, 1933-1940,
1945-1947), Heinrich Mann (2 letters, 1933-1936), Romain Rolland (2 letters,
1933), and Stefan Zweig (4 letters, 1933-1936). The materials are arranged as
one
folder of letters in alphabetical order and four folders of letters from Heine
ordered chronologically.
Within the Heine correspondence is one letter (dated 16 January 1939) from Dagny
Gulbransson to her uncle Björn Björnson present in German translation. Also included
with this group is a proof copy of the foreword for Heine's Das spannende Buch date stamped "28 vii 1934" along with a number of
clippings, some with marginal notations by Heine.
Related Material
The Ransom Center's D. H. Lawrence collection includes seven letters from D. H.
Lawrence to Schoenberner, written in 1927-1928. These letters arrived at the Center
as part of the Lawrence collection and were never part of the Schoenberner materials
described in this finding aid.
Separated Material
Prior to 1990, several groups of letters which were originally part of this
collection were moved to other collections and cataloged separately in the Ransom
Center's card catalog. Letters to Schoenberner from André Gide (9 letters,
1940-1949) are now part of the Carleton Lake Collection; those from Thomas Mann
(2
letters, 1933-1952) are now in the Center's Little Alphabet collection; and those
from Upton Sinclair (7 letters, 1942-1957) are located in the Center's Sinclair
materials.
