 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Rudolf Kassner | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1873 (1873) |
| Died | 1959 (aged 85–86) |
| Occupation |
|
Rudolf Kassner (11 September 1873 inVelké Pavlovice – 1 April 1959 inSierre, Switzerland) was an Austrian writer, essayist, translator and cultural philosopher. Although stricken as an infant with poliomyelitis, Kassner traveled widely to northern Africa, the Sahara, India, Russia, Spain, and throughout Europe. His translations ofWilliam Blake introduced this English romantic poet to German-speaking audiences. His literary career covered six decades, including a period of isolation during theNazi years in Vienna. His writings onphysiognomy reflect his effort to understand the problems of modernity and Man's subsequent disconnectedness from time and place. His later autobiographical writings suggest a brilliant literary mind attempting to make sense of a chaotic post-nuclear world. He was nominated for theNobel prize for literature thirteen times.[1]
Before his birth, Rudolf Kassner's family emigrated toMoravia (at the time part ofAustro-Hungary) fromSilesia. His father, Oskar Kassner, was a landowner and factory owner, descended from government officials and businessmen. His maternal ancestors werepeasants. Kassner regarded himself as a German-Slavic mixture, having inherited GermanBlut (German: blood) from his mother and a SlavicGeist (German: spirit) from his father (Das physiognomische Weltbild, 116ff.).
In 1892, Kassner enrolled at theUniversity of Vienna where he set out to study Germanphilology,Latin, andPhilosophy. He spent the last two semesters, in 1895 and 1896, in Berlin, where he attended the lectures of the nationalist historianHeinrich von Treitschke. Kassner, too, was an enthusiastic theater-goer. This formed the basis for later reflections on acting and the role of the actor, important for Kassner's physiognomic worldview, the return from the world of numbers to the kingdom of images.[2] Hans Paeschke has stressed the importance of Kassner's understanding ofGestaltung for this "physiognomyagainst physiognomy".[3]
In 1896, Kassner returned to Vienna and completed his studies with a doctoraldissertation onDer ewige Jude in der Dichtung (The Eternal Jew in Poetry), which he completed in 1897.[4]
