Paul Kornfeld
Paul Kornfeld was a notable playwright and essayist born on December 11, 1889, in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His literary journey was influenced by the untimely death of his brother, motivating him to pursue writing. Kornfeld was a prominent member of the Prague Group, which included renowned figures like Franz Kafka and Rainer Maria Rilke. He played a vital role in advocating for expressionism in German drama, emphasizing the need for theater to explore the depths of human experience rather than adhering to realism and naturalism. His 1918 essay, "Der beseelte und der psychologische Mensch," outlined his vision for a new dramatic form rooted in the subconscious and dream-like experiences. Throughout his career, Kornfeld's plays often reflected themes of liberation through death and the complexities of human relationships, even in comedic works. He spent much of his professional life in Frankfurt and Berlin, with his last produced play, Jud Suss, appearing in 1930. Tragically, Kornfeld's life ended in the Lodz concentration camp in 1942, during a period of great peril for Jewish individuals in Germany. His contributions to theater and dramatic theory remain significant in the context of early 20th-century literature.
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Paul Kornfeld
Playwright
- Born: December 11, 1899
- Birthplace: Prague, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Czech Republic)
- Died: April 25, 1942
- Place of death: Lodz concentration camp, Poland
Biography
Paul Kornfeld devoted his life to the drama, writing plays and essays dealing with dramatic theory and criticism. Kornfeld was born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on December 11, 1889. The untimely death of his brother, who had ambitions for a literary career, inspired him to assume the same ambitions for himself. He joined with such major literary figures as Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Max Brod in what has come to be known as the Prague Group.
Kornfeld was a major spokesman for the cause of expressionism as it was emerging as a new movement in German drama. His essay, “Der beseelte und der psychologische Mensch” (“The Soulful and Psychological Person”), published in 1918, calls for new forms of drama to replace the superficiality of realism and naturalism. In their place, he insisted the theater deal with the essence of human experience and provide means by which one can transcend the pettiness and self-centeredness of society. To do so, he argued, required techniques that derive from the depths of the human soul, techniques that reflect how the subconscious mind presents experience in dreams, such as distortions, multiple identities, and compressions of time and space. He also asserted that theater should emphasize its artifice and not pretend to recreate “real” life. Thus, his name is often linked with the prior experiments in expressionism of August Strindberg and with early German expressionist plays such as Johannes Sorge’s Der Bettler (1912), and Walter Hasenclever’s Der Sohn (1914).
Kornfeld’s plays are written in the style he promoted in his essays. Die Verführung (1916), for example, his first produced play, uses dream devices to depict the struggle of the soul to free itself from the trammels and travails of this earth. Here, and elsewhere in Kornfeld’s plays, liberation comes by way of death, including murder and suicide. This is particularly true of Himmel und Hölle (1919), in which the tormented characters can only reconcile themselves to one another when they meet in afterlife. Even in his comedies, such as Der ewige Traum (1922), Palme, oder der Gekränkte (1924), and Killian,oder die gelbe Rose (1926), characters endure torture and humiliation in their relationships.
Most of Kornfeld’s professional life was conducted in Frankfurt and in Berlin. His last produced play was Jud Suss (1930), about a Jewish character named Suss, produced in Berlin under the direction of the famous expressionist director, Leopold Jessner. Ironically, Kornfeld, himself Jewish, avoids any indication of the imminent danger to German Jewry, and instead presents Suss as an individual whose execution at the end of the play is simply an inexplicable injustice.
Kornfeld returned to Prague in 1932. He proclaimed that year that Nazism was a passing vogue and Adolf Hitler a politician of no enduring importance. In 1941, he was taken to the concentration camp at Lodz, Poland, where he died on April 25, 1942.