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17 September 2008 – 1 February 2009

The “dangers of versatility”: 100th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Torberg

“On paper he was a horrible man, in the flesh he was delightful,” wrote Günter Nenning in his obituary to Friedrich Torberg (1908–1979). Opinions remain divided even today: to his friends Torberg, whose Tante Jolesch anecdotes written after his return from exile, provided an inimitable evocation of the “good old days”; to his enemies he is the initiator of the Brecht boycott and a cultural executioner, a Cold War warrior pure and simple.
On 16 September 2008 – the 100th anniversary of Torberg’s birth – the Jewish Museum Vienna is opening an exhibition in cooperation with the Vienna Library in the Town Hall. As a child Torberg joined the Jewish sports club Hakoah in Vienna where, as “Schani Kantor”, as he was known, he had considerable success. In 1928 he was a member of the national water polo champions Hagibor in Prague. In Der Schüler Gerber hat absolviert (1930) Torberg presented a devastating debut novel in which he describes the timeless nightmare existence of a schoolboy. He lived the life of a Bohemian and sports journalist, commuting between Vienna and Prague. His book Die Mannschaft (1935) was one of the first sporting novels, and with the Olympic Games in Berlin coming up in 1936 it also attracted attention in the German Reich. In 1938 Torberg fled via Zurich to Paris, where he enlisted in the Czech army in exile. Following France’s defeat, he fled via Spain to Portugal. As one of ten “outstanding anti-Nazi writers” he was hired by Warner Brothers in Hollywood in 1940. But Torberg didn’t want to stay long in the Dream Factory. In 1944 he moved to New York, where he had close contact with Hermann Broch, Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel. But writing in German, he lacked readers. His only book written in exile, Mein ist die Rache, was published in 1943. This artful short story is about guilt and atonement in the face of mass murder in the concentration camps. Torberg’s controversial novel Hier bin ich, mein Vater, the confessions of a Jewish Nazi spy, appeared in 1948. In spring 1951 Torberg, by now an American citizen, returned to Vienna. Thanks to his versatility he became a prominent cultural figure: the magazine FORVM published by him on behalf of the Congress for Cultural Freedom from 1954 onwards was controversial and yet typical of its time. He also wrote countless theatre reviews, screenplays and translations. His renditions of the works of Ephraim Kishon are not only amusing but also an advertisement for the state of Israel. He popularised hitherto forgotten authors like Peter Hammerschlag and Fritz Herzmanowsky-Orlando. Torberg’s work as a lyricist and novelist suffered as a result of all this activity. In order to write his last novel Süsskind von Trimberg (1972), he resigned from FORVM and moved to his beloved Ausseerland. Although Torberg’s archive was lost in 1938, his estate in the Vienna Library includes more than 50,000 letters, probably the largest collection of correspondence in post-war Austria.

The “dangers of versatility”: 100th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Torberg

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