Frank Thiess

Frank Thiess
Born
Died
Alma mater
Occupation
Employer
Religion
Spouse(s)
Awards

Frank Theodor Thiess (13 March 1890 – 22 December 1977) was a German writer.

Biography

Frank Thiess was born in Eluisenstein, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire (now Latvia), the son of Franz Thiess, a civil engineer from Riga, and Sophie von Eschenbach, a landowner. On his mother's side he was descended from the medieval poet Wolfram von Eschenbach.

Thiess moved to Berlin at the age of three because his family had temporarily left their homeland due to the Russification measures of the tsarist authorities. After graduating from the Gymnasium Stephaneum in Aschersleben, Thiess studied German and philosophy at the University of Berlin and the University of Tübingen, earning his doctorate in 1914 with a thesis on The position of the Swabians towards Goethe.

He worked as a journalist for four years until he was enlisted into the Germany army in World War I. Discharged after a few months because of a heart condition, he returned to Berlin and journalism. Thiess had some stage experience, as an actor, and from 1915 to 1919, he worked as editor for foreign affairs at the Berliner Tageblatt under Theodor Wolff. He was then dramaturge at the Stuttgart Public Theater (1920–1921) and critic in Hanover for the Hannoverscher Anzeiger from 1921. Later he worked as a freelance writer in Berlin and on the Steinhuder Meer from 1923.

Frail in constitution since boyhood, Thiess began systematically to subject himself to a rigorous regime of gymnastics with such good results that his photographs soon began to embellish the pages of sporting as well as literary periodicals. For a time he was better known as an athlete than as a writer.

His early novels were focussed on contemporary subjects — Time magazine once called him "the hot trumpet in Germany's jazz age." He married Florence Losey, an American singer.

Early success as a writer came with the novel The Damned (1922), which depicts the disintegration of a Baltic family. In addition to the four-part novel cycle Youth (1924–1931), which was devoted to the identity crises of young people in the years after 1918.

At the time he began to produce his mature work, expressionism was the current German literary vogue, and his books found few admirers. So unfashionable was his work that he had to resort to the expedient of presenting them in the guise of Italian translations in order to get them published at all. After his work became successful, Thiess remarked "the same publishers who returned my manuscripts unread ran after me like hungry chickens."

Thiess met Hermann Broch in the winter of 1928–1929. Broch and Thiess became close friends despite the differences in their literary leanings. Thiess took Broch under his wing. Broch called him the "Schutzengel der Schlafwandler" (guardian angel of The Sleepwalkers) for his constant advice on and public approbation of the novel.

From the 1930s on, he concentrated on historical novels. His 1936 work, Tsushima, translated into English as The Voyage of Forgotten Men, recounted the epic journey of the Russian Second Pacific Squadron, under the command of Admiral Rozhestvensky, from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan, and its defeat by the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, which was published in several hundred thousand copies, that made Thiess famous.

Thiess was made an honorary vice-president of the Mark Twain Society in the United States in 1930. In 1933, Thiess added a new preface to his novel Der Leibhaftige, recommending it to the National Socialists. Two of his novels (Die Verdammten and Frauenraub) had been consigned to the flames during the 1933 book burnings, a fact to which he referred frequently after 1945. Another ban was imposed on his novel The Empire of Demons (1941), on account of its allegorical implications. The novel described the barbarianization of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

During and shortly after the war, his two-part novel, Neapolitanische Legende and Caruso in Sorrent — based on the life and career of the great Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso — were published and met with great response. The former was adapted into a film entitled The Young Caruso in 1951.

After World War II, his 1933 novel Johanna and Esther. A Chronicle of Rural Events was censored in the German Democratic Republic. Thiess coined the term inner exile. His attacks on Thomas Mann, who had moved to the United States in 1933, strengthened reservations against the "inner exile" at home and abroad.

Thiess positively reviewed the book by American historian David L. Hoggan The Forced War as an "achievement accomplished with scholarly care, rare nobility, and exemplary justice by an American for Germany". He wrote numerous essays in postwar Germany and was vice president of the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt, where he spent the last years of his life.

On November 1, 1950 appeared the magazine Das literarische Deutschland, which he edited alongside Gertrud von le Fort. It was published bi-weekly in the format of a daily newspaper and was intended in a sense to revive the magazine Die literarische Welt, which Willy Haas from Prague had published previously in Berlin. The last numbers of this magazine were also titled Die literarische Welt.

In 1965, Thiess contributed to the Deutsche National- und Wochenzeitung; his articles were reprinted in Reichsruf, the organ of the German Imperial Party. He also contibuted to the Deutscher Studentenanzeiger, the Konservativ Heute, and the Deutsche Monatshefte.

Thiess belonged to the Witikobund. In 1967 he campaigned for the release of Rudolf Hess.

Frank Thiess died 1977 in Darmstadt.

Works

Major publications

• Cäsar Flaischlen. Ein Essay (1914)
• Die Stellung der Schwaben zu Goethe (1915)
• Der Tanz als Kunstwerk. Studien zu einer Ästhetik der Tanzkunst (1920)
• Lucie Höflich (1920)
• Der Tod von Falern. Roman einer sterbenden Stadt (1921; novel)
• Die Verdammten (1922; novel)
• Nikolaus W. Gogol und seine Bühnenwerke. Eine Einführung (1922)
• Das Gesicht des Jahrhunderts. Briefe an Zeitgenossen (1923; The Face of the Century)
• Angelika ten Swaart (1923)
• Jugend (tetralogy of novels)
  • Der Leibhaftige (1924; Design for Living)
  • Das Tor zur Welt (1926)
  • Abschied vom Paradies. Ein Roman unter Kindern (1927)
  • Der Zentaur (1931)
• Narren. Fünf Novellen (1926)
• Frauenraub (1927; novel; reprinted as Katharina Winter, 1949)
• Der Kampf mit dem Engel (1928)
• Erziehung zur Freiheit. Abhandlungen und Auseinandersetzungen (1929)
• Eine sonderbare Ehe (1929)
• Die Geschichte eines unruhigen Sommers und andere Erzählungen (1932)
• Die Zeit ist reif. Reden und Vorträge (1932)
• Johanna und Esther. Eine Chronik ländlicher Ereignisse (1933; novel; reprinted as Gäa, 1957)
• Der Weg zu Isabelle (1934; novel)
• Der ewige Taugenichts. Romantisches Spiel in 3 Akten (nach Eichendorff) (1935)
• Tsushima. Der Roman eines Seekrieges (1936)
• Stürmischer Frühling. Ein Roman unter jungen Menschen (1937)
• Die Herzogin von Langeais (1938; play)
• Die Wölfin (1939)
• Das Reich der Dämonen. Der Roman eines Jahrtausends (1941)
• Neapolitanische Legende (1942; novel)
• Der Tenor von Trapani (1942; novella)
• Caruso (1943)
• Caruso in Sorrent (1946; novel)
• Puccini. Versuch einer Psychologie seiner Musik (1947)
• Despotie des Intellekts (1947)
• Goethe als Symbol (1947)
• Geistige Revolution. Deutsches Theater – Europäisches Theater (1947)
• Shakespeare und die Idee der Unsterblichkeit (1947)
• Zeitwende. 3 Vorträge (1947)
• Ideen zur Natur- und Leidensgeschichte der Völker (1949)
• Wir werden es nie wissen (1949)
• Vulkanische Zeit. Vorträge, Reden, Aufsätze (1949)
• Die Blüten welken, aber der Baum wächst. Ein Brevier für Tag und Nacht (1950)
• Goethe der Mensch (1950)
• Don Juans letzte Tage (1950)
• Tropische Dämmerung (1951)
• Die Straßen des Labyrinths (1951; novel)
• Die Wirklichkeit des Unwirklichen. Untersuchungen über die Realität der Dichtung (1954)
• In Memoriam Wilhelm Furtwängler (1955)
• Geister werfen keinen Schatten (1955; novel)
• Das Menschenbild bei Knut Hamsun (1956)
• Theater ohne Rampe. Stücke für Zimmertheater und Studiobühnen (1956)
• Über die Fähigkeit zu lieben (1958)
• Ursprung und Sinn des Ost-West-Gegensatzes (1958)
• Die griechischen Kaiser. Die Geburt Europas (1959)
• Die geschichtlichen Grundlagen des Ost-West-Gegensatzes (1960)
• Aphorismen (1961)
• Sturz nach oben. Roman über das Thema eines Märchens (1961)
• Verbrannte Erde (1963; autobiography)
• Freiheit bis Mitternacht (1965)
• Plädoyer für Peking. Ein Augenzeugenbericht (1966)
• Der schwarze Engel (1966; novellas)
• Zauber und Schrecken. Die Welt der Kinder (1969)
• Dostojewski. Realismus am Rande des Transzendenz (1971)
• Jahre des Unheils. Fragmente erlebter Geschichte (1972)
• Der Zauberlehrling (1975; novel)

Translated into English

• The Gateway to Life (1927)
• The Devil's Shadow (1928)
• Interlude (1929)
• Farewell to Paradise (1930)
• The Voyage of Forgotten Men (Tsushima) (1937)
• Neapolitan Legend (1949)

Screenplays

• The Green Emperor (1939)
• Der Weg zur Isabel (1939)
• The Life and Loves of Tschaikovsky (1939)
• Diesel (1942)
• The Noltenius Brothers (1945)

Operas

• O du schöner Rosengarten (or: Der Fall Dr. Mann); based on his novel The Way to Isabelle; music by Carlos Ehrensperger
• Der Tanz um den Narren (1925); libretto by Thiess, freely adapted from Molière; music by Kurt von Wolfurt

Honors

• Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria, Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver (1952)
• Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Great Cross (1955)
• Johann Heinrich Merck Certificate of Honor from the City of Darmstadt
• Ring of Honor of the German Cultural Association of the European Spirit (DEKG)
• Silver Badge of Merit of the City of Darmstadt (1960)
• Goethe Plaque of the federal state of Hesse (1968)
• Konrad Adenauer Prize (1968)
• Andreas Gryphius Prize of the Esslingen Artists' Guild (1975)

References

• Alker, Ernst (1965). Frank Thiess zum 75. Geburtstag. Wien: Paul Zolnay.
• Angermann, Norbert (2008). "Frank Thiess und der Nationalsozialismus." In: Michael Garleff, ed., Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich. 2. Köln: Böhlau, pp. 245–62.
• Cahen, Aurélie (2002). Die Kontroverse zwischen Frank Thieß und Thomas Mann. München: GRIN Verlag.
• Drake, William A. (1926). "Frank Thiess." In: Contemporary European Writers. London: George G. Harrap, pp. 157–63.
• Fouret, Louis-André (1929). "Frank Thiesz," Revue d'Allemagne, pp. 312–24.
• Gottzmann, Carola L.; Petra Hörner (2007). Lexikon der deutschsprachigen Literatur des Baltikums und St. Petersburgs. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 1281–92.
• Helbig, Louis Ferdinand (2005). "Auseinandersetzungen um Diktatur und Emigration. Frank Thiess im Romanwerk und im öffentlichen Disput". In: Frank-Lothar Kroll, ed., Europäische Dimensionen deutschbaltischer Literatur. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, pp. 133–52.
• Italiaander, Rolf (1950). Frank Thiess. Werk und Dichter. 32 Beiträge zur Problematik unserer Zeit. Hamburg: Krüger.
• Kaufmann, F. W. (1932). "The Social Philosophy of Frank Thiess," Books Abroad, Vol. VI, No. 2, pp. 146–47.
• Klapper, John (2015). Nonconformist Writing in Nazi Germany: The Literature of Inner Emigration. New York: Camden House.
• Kloeden, Wolfdietrich von (1996). "Frank Thiess". In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). 11. Herzberg: Bautz, pp. 1169–73.
• Langheinrich, Leonard (1933). Frank Thieß. Bild eines deutschen Dichters. Berlin: Paul Zsolnay Verlag.
• Loewy, Ernst (1977). Literatur unterm Hakenkreuz: das Dritte Reich und seine Dichtung: eine Dokumentation. Köln/Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
• Lützeler, Paul Michael (2018). Hermann Broch und Frank Thiess, Briefwechsel: 1929-1938 und 1948-1951. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag.
• Sander, Ernst (1950). Tempo Rubato. Frank Thiess und die Sprache. Söcking: Bachmair.
• Wolf, Yvonne (2003). Frank Thiess und der Nationalsozialismus. Ein konservativer Revolutionär als Dissident. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

External links

• Frank Thieß at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by Frank Thiess at Gallica
• Works by Frank Thiess at Unz.com
• Works by Frank Thiess at Hathi Trust
• Works by Frank Thiess at German National Library