Albert Drach
Albert Drach was an Austrian writer and lawyer born in Vienna in 1902. Initially drawn to poetry and storytelling, he faced the challenges of a diminishing cultural scene in Vienna and the rise of political tensions. Drach pursued a law degree and practiced law while continuing to write, but the political climate became increasingly hostile, prompting his escape from Nazi-occupied Austria. He faced significant hardships during World War II, including detention in French camps, but managed to survive the war in hiding.
After the war, Drach returned to Austria and resumed his law practice, marrying a concert singer in 1954. His literary career gained traction with the publication of his first significant work in 1964. Drach's writing often reflects the impact of political and social issues on individuals, with notable works addressing anti-Semitism and the complexities of the legal system. His contributions to literature were recognized with several prestigious awards, and he is regarded as an important chronicler of early twentieth-century Austrian society.
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Albert Drach
Writer
- Born: December 17, 1902
- Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
- Died: March 27, 1995
Biography
Albert Drach was born in Vienna in 1902, the son of a mathematics teacher who also managed a small theater. His grandfather had moved to Vienna in the late nineteenth century. By the time of World War I, Drach had already begun to publish a few poems, but Vienna was already fading from its earlier glory as a cultural center, and while many intellectuals were leaving for Berlin, Drach realized that he would not be able to make a living in Vienna by writing. Consequently he began to study law at the University of Vienna and opened a law practice while he continued to write stories, poems, and plays.
In the changing political climate, his chances for publication were slim, and when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, Drach fled first to Yugoslavia, then to Paris, then to the south of France, where in 1940 he was arrested and sent to a series of French detention camps. He was released by mistake in 1942, and spent the rest of the war in hiding. After the war, he returned to Austria and his law practice. In 1954, he married a concert singer. His first serious collection of work was published only in 1964.
Not surprisingly, Drach’s work takes many themes from the effects of politics on the individual. His novel Das grosse Protokoll gegen Zwetschkenbaum: Roman concerns a hapless Hasidic Jew who undergoes a series of trials and humiliations at the hands of an anti-Semitic bureaucracy after World War I. Drach explores similar themes in his later work. “Z.Z.,” das ist de Zwischenzeit deals with the rise of Nazism and Untersuchung an Mädeln: Kriminal-Protokoll concerns the inhuman workings of the legal system as it investigates two young women accused of murder. Legal language characterizes much of Drach’s work.
Drach was awarded the Franz Theodor Csokor Prize, P.E.N. Club, in 1982; the Georg Buchner Prize by the German Academy for Language and Poetry in 1988; and the Manes Sperber Prize for Literature also in 1988. His work is seen as an important record of Austrian society in the early twentieth century.