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Manès Sperber (12 December 1905 – 5 February 1984) was anAustrian-Frenchnovelist,essayist andpsychologist. He also wrote under the pseudonymsJan Heger andN.A. Menlos.
Sperber was born on 12 December 1905 inZabłotów nearKolomea, in theAustrian Galicia (todayZabolotiv,Ukraine). Sperber grew up in theshtetl of Zabłotów in aHasidic family. He was the son of David Mechel Sperber[1] and the older brother ofMilo Sperber born 1911, who was to become an actor inBritain.
In the summer of 1916 the family fled from war toVienna, where Sperber who, having lost faith, at 13 had refused to do hisbar mitzvah, joined the JewishHashomer Hatzair youth movement. There he metAlfred Adler, the founder ofindividual psychology, and became a student and co-worker. Adler broke with him in 1932 because of differences in opinion about the connection of individual psychology andMarxism.
In 1927 Sperber had moved toBerlin and joined theCommunist Party. He lectured at theBerliner Gesellschaft für Individualpsychologie, an institute for individual psychology in Berlin.
After Hitler hadtaken power Sperber was taken to jail, but was released after a few weeks on the grounds that he was an Austrian citizen. He emigrated first toYugoslavia and then in 1934 toParis where he worked for theCommunist International withWilli Münzenberg. In 1938 he left the party because of theStalinist purges within the party. In his writing he started to deal withtotalitarianism and the role of the individual within society (Zur Analyse der Tyrannis).
In 1939 Sperber volunteered for theFrench Army. After the defeat, he took refuge inCagnes, in the so-called "zone libre" (free zone) of France, and had to flee with his family toSwitzerland in 1942, when the deportation of Jews started in that zone too.
After the end of the war, in 1945, he returned to Paris, and worked as a writer and as a senior editor at the Calmann-Lévy publishing house.
Manès Sperber was the author of a novel trilogy:Like a Tear in the Ocean: A Trilogy, (1949–1955); of an autobiographical trilogy:All our Yesterdays (1974–1997), and numerous essays on philosophy, politics, literature, and psychology. Sperber received theFriedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels in 1983. In awarding the prize, the association described Sperber as a "writer, who tracked the path of the ideological aberrations of the century, and freed himself from them entirely. Throughout his life he retained the independence of his own judgement, and incapable of indifference, summoned the courage, to get himself onto that non-existing bridge that only opens up in front of those who step out over the abyss."[2] The German writerSiegfried Lenz gave the speech highlighting Sperber's lifetime achievement.[3]
One of his closest friends was the novelistConstantine Fitzgibbon, who translated much of his work into English.
Manès Sperber is the father of Italian historianVladimir Sperber and French anthropologist and cognitive scientistDan Sperber. His first wife, Miriam Sperber, eventually emigrated toChampaign, Illinois, and became a counselor at the Psychological and Counseling Center there.
His younger brotherMilo was an English actor. Milo spent the last years of his life travelling around Britain reading from his brother's works.
Manès Sperber died on 5 February 1984 inParis. He was buried in theMontparnasse cemetery in Paris.
In 1988, the city of Vienna dedicated a park in the Leopoldstadt quarter to Sperber.[4]
The Manès Sperber Prize for Literature[5] (Manès-Sperber-Preis für Literatur) was established in 1985 by the Austrian Ministry of Art and Culture in honour of Sperber, withSiegfried Lenz winning the inaugural prize. As of 2023[update] it is worth 8000 euros.[6]
