Hans Sahl
Hans Sahl was a notable German writer and literary critic, born on May 20, 1902, in Dresden to a wealthy Jewish family. He grew up in Berlin, where he developed a strong affinity for Communism and embraced his Jewish heritage. Sahl gained recognition in Germany as a critic and writer between the world wars, known for his early support of authors like Thornton Wilder and Ernest Hemingway, as well as his insightful writings on film. However, with the rise of the Nazis in 1933, he fled Germany due to his Jewish identity and political beliefs, eventually settling in France and later the United States.
In the U.S., he became a literary translator, bringing the works of major American playwrights into German, and penned significant works reflecting on his experiences, such as "Die Wenigen und die Vielen" and "Wir sind die Letzten." His writing often explored the interplay between individual experiences and broader historical contexts. Sahl returned to Germany in 1989 and passed away in 1993, leaving behind a legacy that included numerous awards for his contributions to literature and translation. His work encapsulates themes of empathy, identity, and the moral responsibilities of individuals within society.
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Hans Sahl
Writer
- Born: May 20, 1902
- Birthplace: Dresden, Germany
- Died: April 27, 1993
- Place of death: Tubingen, Germany
Biography
Hans Sahl was born May 20, 1902, in Dresden, Germany, to Paul David Sahl and Anna Maasz Sahl. The wealthy, politically conservative Jewish couple had assimilated into German society and, as Sahl described it, “prayed in German.” Growing up in Berlin, Hans developed contrasting views, embracing Communism and his Jewish heritage. He attended several German universities before earning a Ph.D. in 1924 at the University of Breslau.
Sahl won a reputation in Germany between the world wars as a rising young critic, an early exponent of authors Thornton Wilder and Ernest Hemingway, and one of the first and best writers about film. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Sahl, a Jewish Communist, knew Adolf Hitler would regard him as an enemy. He quickly left Germany for France, where he became a protégé of Walter Benjamin, the renowned Jewish and Marxist philosopher and critic. Later, Sahl worked with Varian Fry, an American who rescued thousands of Jewish artists from the Nazis.
In 1941, Sahl arrived in the United States to become an American citizen and begin a new career as a literary translator, rendering works by Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, and Tennessee Williams in German. In 1961, he married Melinda Albrechtova and the couple had two sons before divorcing. Sahl later remarried.
As an exile in New York during the 1940’s, Sahl received help from refugee groups, as he had helped them in Europe. Little by little, he composed Die Wenigen und die Vielen: Roman einer Zeit (1959; The Few and the Many, 1962), a fictional account of Nazi Germany up to 1933. This classic and shocking portrayal of life in a totalitarian state made a name for Sahl, who displayed a rare talent for presenting characters both as concrete individuals and as symbols of an epoch.
In 1976, Sahl published Wir sind die Letzten, poems written over many years about Sahl’s troubled odyssey from Nazi Germany to New York. As in his fiction, the figures in the poems are at once self-directed individuals and the playthings of history. Concerning this marriage of the tangible and the emblematic, he expressed his literary philosophy in his memoirs, Memoiren eines Moralisten (1983): “If not you, who. . . can claim he was present [when] Berlin was not yet a legend, but a city?”
An autobiographical remark of Sahl’s suggests that, ultimately, he accepted his parents’ assimilation as well as his own individuality. Sahl’s Jewishness, which began as a rebellion, became the underpinnings of his art: empathy, curiosity, and “above all, a critical view of the world. The Jews. . . were moral critics, worried about the future of humanity,” he said, though he admitted that Jews share these traits “in common with the Germans.”
Sahl returned to Germany in 1989 and died in Tubingen on April 27, 1993. His many literary awards included the West German Officers Cross of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1959, the Thornton Wilder Prize for Distinguished Translation in 1979, and the Goethe Medal from the Goethe Institute in 1991.