Kurt Kusenberg
Kurt Kusenberg was a Swedish-born writer and art historian, born on June 24, 1904, in Goteborg, Sweden. His early life was marked by frequent relocations due to his father's career as a German engineer, which influenced the settings of many of his short stories, particularly Lisbon. Kusenberg pursued higher education in Germany, earning a doctorate in art history in 1928. His professional career began in the art world, transitioning from a dealer to a newspaper art critic, eventually becoming chief deputy editor of the cultural magazine Koralle.
During World War II, Kusenberg was drafted into the German army and later became a prisoner of war, a period he humorously described. After his release in 1947, he settled in Munich as a freelance writer. Kusenberg had a prolific writing career, producing nearly seventy short stories that often blended elements of fantasy with sly humor. He launched a successful paperback series focused on cultural leaders and contributed to various media, including radio and television. Despite his achievements, Kusenberg's work has faded from prominence in the twenty-first century, though efforts by his daughter Barbara Kusenberg have sought to revive interest in his literary contributions. Kusenberg passed away on October 3, 1983, in Hamburg, leaving a complex legacy as a "humorist of the fantastic."
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Subject Terms
Kurt Kusenberg
Writer
- Born: June 24, 1904
- Birthplace: Goteborg, Sweden
- Died: October 3, 1983
- Place of death: Hamburg, Germany
Biography
Kurt Kusenberg was born on June 24, 1904, in Goteborg, Sweden, to Carl and Emmy Kusenberg. His father was a German engineer whose work required frequent relocation. One such move, when Kurt was two years old, took the family to Lisbon, Portugal, which would become the setting for many of his short stories. His family later returned to Germany, where he attended the local schools before enrolling in the Universities of Munich and Berlin.
In 1928, Kusenberg earned a doctorate in art history from the University of Freiburg. With his trademark droll humor, he pretended to complain about the hardship of visiting museums in four European countries for his dissertation research. His academic training led to a series of jobs in the art world, first as a dealer in Berlin, and soon after as a newspaper art critic; in 1935, he became chief deputy editor at Koralle, a cultural magazine.
In 1941, Kusenberg entered a marriage that would soon end in divorce, though a daughter was born in 1943. The same year, he was drafted into the German army. He spent his military service largely without incident until 1945, when he was taken prisoner at Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy. Once again his drollery surfaced when he observed that his two-year sentence in a Naples labor camp was the only way he could have afforded such a long stay in Italy.
Released in 1947, he returned to Germany, settling in Munich as a freelance writer. In 1954 he married Beate Mohring. The birth of a daughter and son prompted Kusenberg to seek greater financial stability; in 1958 he went to work for Rowholt, a Munich publisher, and remained there for the rest of his life.
One highlight of his career was a paperback series he launched for the publisher, entitled Rowholts Monographien (later called Rororo Bildmonographien), about cultural leaders throughout the world. At the same time, he continued to produce his own work, which included radio plays, television and film scripts, book introductions, and translation of other writers’ works. He believed, however, that his greatest accomplishment were his short stories, of which he wrote nearly seventy during his life. The stories’ characters inhabit a kind of borderland where dream and fantasy meet reality, sometimes with an element of the grotesque but always with the sly humor that marked the author himself. Critic Jean Pearson characterized Kusenberg as a “humorist of the fantastic” in a 1991 book of that title. Behind much of the fantasy is an allegorical message about the futility of human striving to impose order on the material world.
When he died in Hamburg on October 3, 1983, Kusenberg was widely known in Europe and in the English-speaking world, many of his fantasies having been translated and published in prestigious periodicals such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 1972. a collection of his work in translation had been published as The Sunflowers, and Other Stories. In the twenty-first century, however, Kusenberg’s work is little remembered even in Germany, though in the late 1990’s his daughter Barbara Kusenberg took steps to restore recognition of his name.