Ulrich Becher
Ulrich Becher was a notable German author and playwright, born in 1910 in Berlin to a diverse family with a Sephardic Jewish father and a Catholic mother. His early exposure to music and art led him to become an accomplished jazz pianist and artist. A close friend of artist George Grosz, Becher faced persecution under the Nazi regime, leading to his exile which spanned sixteen years across several countries, including Austria, Switzerland, and Brazil. He produced several significant works during this time, including the play *Der Bockerer*, co-written with Peter Preses, which humorously critiques the Nazi regime through the experiences of a Viennese butcher. Becher’s writing often features themes of misfits and outcasts, reflecting both his personal experiences and political beliefs. Recognized for his contributions to literature, he received multiple awards, including the Austrian First Class Order of Merit. Becher's legacy as a politically engaged writer continues to be explored, highlighting the complexity of his life and work. He passed away in 1990.
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Ulrich Becher
Writer
- Born: January 2, 1910
- Birthplace: Berlin, Germany
- Died: April 15, 1990
- Place of death: Basel, Switzerland
Biography
Ulrich Becher was born in 1910 in Berlin, Germany, the son of lawyer Richard Becher and his Swiss wife, pianist Elisa Ulrich Becher. His father was a nonpracticing Sephardic Jew, his mother was a Catholic, and Ulrich was a Protestant until he left the church in 1970. His maternal grandfather, Martin Ulrich, ran a factory in Berlin that produced dried vegetables during World War I. Becher said he never forgot the smell of those vegetables or the “militant antimilitarism” his grandfather taught him.
Ulrich started piano lessons when he was five, began to improvise when he was nine, and became a good jazz pianist. He also was a talented artist and won a prize for a work exhibited in Locarno, Switzerland, when he was in high school. He was a lifelong friend of the artist George Grosz, whom he met when he was seventeen. The two men had to leave Germany after the Nazis came to power, and their voluminous correspondence from 1932 until 1959, published shortly before Becher’s death, documents the isolation of artists in exile.
Becher attended the Werner-Siemens-Gymnasium in Berlin and then the Wickersdorf Free School in the Thuringian forest, where his teachers included the artist Ludwig Hirschfeld and the future publisher Peter Suhrkamp. He studied law in Geneva, Leipzig, and Berlin and studied art under Grosz. In Grosz’s circle of friends, Becher met the theater director Erwin Piscator and the publisher Wieland Herzfelde. Like them, Becher came under attack by the Nazis, and he was the youngest author to have his book burned.
His sixteen years in exile took him first to Vienna, Austria, where his marriage on November 4, 1933, to fellow student Dana Marie Roda in the Reformed Viennese Stadtkirche was a major event. She was the daughter of the Austrian author and equestrian Alexander Roda Roda. Their son, Martin Roda Becher, was born on October 21, 1944, in New York and also became an author.
When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Becher moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where the authorities harassed him because of his antifascist writings. He sailed for Brazil on board the Spanish ship Capo de Hornus and rented a small farm outside of Rio de Janeiro from 1941 to 1943. His novel, Brasilianischer Romanzero, is dedicated to the memory of Paul, his beloved dog whom he brought with him from Europe. In 1944, Becher and his wife went to New York to care for her father, who died of leukemia the following year. They returned to Vienna in 1948 and moved permanently to Basel, Switzerland, in 1954.
Becher was an excellent stylist and liked to include dialect and foreign languages in his works. His heroes are misfits, outcasts, and eccentrics, the people whom he liked to mix with in lower- class bars. His greatest success was the playDer Bockerer, cowritten with the Viennese actor Peter Preses; it portrays a Viennese butcher, Karl Bockerer, in his own witty war against Adolf Hitler. Becher’s lengthy novel, Murmeljagd, has been translated into English as The Woodchuck Hunt.
Becher was awarded Third Prize in the Zeit Short Story Competition in 1954. He also received the German Theater Society’s Dramatist Prize in 1955 for his play Mademoiselle Loewenzorn, the Swiss Schiller Foundation Prize in 1976, and the Austrian First Class Order of Merit of the Federal Republic for Literature and Scholarly Work in 1980.
Becher died in 1990. He believed that a writer must take a political stand. His multifaceted work has yet to be adequately critically evaluated.