What makes a writer so special that someone has been dealing with him for such a long time – more than 50 years – has been asked more often by the author Alfred Huebner. After completing his dissertation in 1975 (“The worldview in Paul Zech’s drama”), he has now presented an almost thousand-page biography of the poet, playwright and storyteller Paul Zech (1881-1946).
Awarded the Kleist Prize in 1918 for his poetry, Zech, known as one of the main exponents of Expressionism, was denied permanent recognition as early as 1930. He emigrated to Argentina in 1933 and cut him off from his home reading public. But the public of the exiled writers also meant a constant struggle for recognition and publication opportunities, as Huebner’s research and processing of the extensive correspondence show. Zech shared the lot of many writers in exile who did not succeed in making a fresh start in the Federal Republic after the end of National Socialism. His reception was somewhat better in the GDR, where he was one of the ranks of authors persecuted by National Socialism, especially because of his temporary sympathy for the KPD’s popular front policy, which writers were close to in the 1930s.
Even though the list of Zech’s book publications alone comprises several dozen titles and he was valued by well-known writers, only “The Ballads and Vicious Songs of Mr. François Villon” are known to a wide audience. Even when it was published in 1931, it was criticized: It is not really a copy of the old French author. The verse “I am so wild for your strawberry mouth”, known mainly from Klaus Kinski’s reading, does not occur in Villon himself, but is a creation of Zech. This very free approach to authorship is one of the character traits of Zech, which, in turn, brought him a number of plagiarism affairs.
Dealing with the intellectual property of others caused calamities for Zech, who often publishes under a pseudonym. But he remained free from any awareness of wrongdoing. His free inventions about his biography were noticed again and again during his lifetime and basically known in research. They are now comprehensible in detail through Hübner’s meticulous elaboration on the basis of Zech’s extensive correspondence. Where Zech’s contemporaries and readers have accumulated considerable anger over a liar, Hübner always remains distanced and objective.
Escape into exile
It is not uncommon for a writer to change style, subject and literary genre in the course of his life. In their will to destroy against Wilhelminism, which was perceived as decadent, the Expressionists certainly enjoyed the role of frightful citizens. Zech loved to dress as a vagabond all his life. In a group of writers who had devoted themselves to the so-called cult of life, a tendency going back to Nietzsche against what was perceived as stiffness, Zech then distanced himself from those representatives whose thoughts National Socialism later took up. After Hübner, however, Zech ultimately always remained connected to the so-called philosophy of life.
The young Zech spent one of his other lives as a miner, albeit briefly. His collection “The Black Area” should make him famous and bring him the identification as a working writer who literarily expresses the social hardship of the time. But this is only one of his many lives.
With the beginning of the First World War, Zech believes that in order to earn money, Zech has to move from criticism of the times to popular “patriotic chants of the fatherland” (Hübner, p. 199). He later became an ardent pacifist and supporter of the majority social democracy. However, this is not the immediate reason for Zech’s escape in 1933, but rather a public prosecutor’s investigation into his embezzlement of massive book holdings as an assistant librarian at the Berlin city library.
In his Argentine exile, Zech continued to cultivate his literary feuds and fell out with representatives of the German community who could have given him more publication opportunities there. The bitter Zech died of a stroke in Buenos Aires in 1946. Later, a posthumous reception began in Germany and Argentina. In 1971, Zech’s urn was moved to an honorary grave of the State of Berlin at the Schöneberg III cemetery.
Zech’s mental instability, which often brought him to psychiatric clinics, raises questions that Huebner answers with a quote. The psychoanalyst Brigitte Boothe suspected that Zech was a histrionic personality disorder according to ICD-10, F60.4 (Freud: “hysteria”). Zech probably lacked the insight into illness required for psychoanalytic treatment, especially since his behavior probably also brought him an illness gain in literary terms. However, Hübner does not go into that.
Hübner’s initial question should actually result in what such a preoccupation with Zech would bring. The reviewer cannot find a clear answer at Hübner. A scientific gain is that in 15 years of research and 100 pages of bibliography, Huebner demystifies Zech’s self-scattered legends, some of which were caught. In addition, Hübner introduces us to a writer who suffered from the world and was in constant conflict with his contemporary literary and political opponents.
The life of Paul Zech. A biography, Alfred Huebner, Morio Publishing House. Heidelberg 2021
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