Ödön von Horváth


Edmund Josef von Horváth was an Austro-Hungarian playwright and novelist who wrote in German, and went by the nom de plume Ödön von Horváth. He was one of the most critically admired writers of his generation prior to his untimely death. He enjoyed a series of successes on the stage with socially poignant and romantic plays, including Revolte auf Côte 3018, Sladek, Italienische Nacht, Hin und Her, and Der Jüngste Tag. His novels include Der ewige Spießer, Ein Kind unserer Zeit, and Jugend ohne Gott.

Early life and education

Ödön von Horváth was the eldest son of an Austro-Hungarian diplomat of Hungarian origins from Slavonia, Edmund Josef Horváth, and Maria Lulu Hermine Horváth, who was from an Austro-Hungarian military family.
From 1908, Ödön attended elementary school in Budapest, and later attended the Rákóczianum, where his education was in the Hungarian language. In 1909, his father was ennobled and assigned to Munich, unaccompanied. In 1913, Horváth attended secondary school in Pressburg and Vienna, where he learned German as a second language, and earned the Matura then reunited with his parents at Murnau am Staffelsee, in Upper Bavaria; from 1919, Horváth studied at the Ludwig Maximilians University, in Munich.

Later life and death

He started writing as a student, from 1920. After quitting university without a degree in early 1922, he moved to Berlin. Later, he lived in Salzburg and Murnau am Staffelsee. In 1931, he was awarded, along with Erik Reger, the Kleist Prize. In 1933, at the beginning of the Nazi regime in Germany, he relocated to Vienna. Following the annexation of the Federal State of Austria with Nazi Germany in 1938, Horváth emigrated to Paris.
Horváth was hit by a falling branch from a tree and killed during a thunderstorm on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, opposite the Théâtre Marigny, in June 1938. Ironically, only a few days earlier, Horváth had said to a friend: "I am not so afraid of the Nazis...There are worse things one can be afraid of, namely things one is afraid of without knowing why. For instance, I am afraid of streets. Roads can be hostile to one, can destroy one. Streets scare me." And a few years earlier, Horváth had written poetry about lightning: "Yes, thunder, that it can do. And bolt and storm. Terror and destruction."
Horváth was buried in the Saint-Ouen Cemetery, in northern Paris. In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of his death, his remains were transferred to Vienna and reinterred at the Heiligenstädter Friedhof.

Literary themes

Important topics in Horváth's works were popular culture, politics, and history. He especially tried to warn of the rise of Fascism in Europe and its dangers. Among Horváth's more enduringly popular works, describes the youth in Nazi Germany from the point of view of a disgruntled teacher who initially is an opportunist but is helpless against the racist and militaristic Nazi propaganda that dehumanizes his pupils.
The English title of his novel Ein Kind unserer Zeit was used by Michael Tippett for his oratorio, composed during World War II.

Works

Plays

Das Buch der Tänze, 1920Mord in der Mohrengasse, 1923Zur schönen Aussicht, 1926Revolte auf Côte 3018, 1927; rewritten as Die Bergbahn, 1929Sladek der schwarze Reichswehrmann, 1929, originally Sladek oder Die schwarze Armee Rund um den Kongreß, 1929 Italienische Nacht, 1930 Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung, 1932 Kasimir und Karoline, 1932 Die Unbekannte aus der Seine, 1933Hin und Her, 1934

Novels

Sechsunddreißig Stunden, 1929Der ewige Spießer, 1930 Jugend ohne Gott, 1937 Ein Kind unserer Zeit, 1938

Other prose

Sportmärchen, 1924–1926Interview, 1932Gebrauchsanweisung, 1932

Quotes

A few select quotes amongst many by Horváth:
  • "Nothing conveys the feeling of infinity as much as stupidity does."
  • "Eigentlich bin ich ganz anders, nur komme ich so selten dazu." "Actually what I'm really like is very different. I just so rarely find time for it."
  • Ödön von Horváth was once walking in the Bavarian Alps when he discovered the skeleton of a long dead man with his knapsack still intact. Von Horváth opened the knapsack and found a postcard reading "Having a wonderful time". Asked by friends what he did with it, von Horváth replied "I posted it".
  • "If you ask me what is my native country, I answer: I was born in Fiume, grew up in Belgrade, Budapest, Pressburg, Vienna and Munich, and I have a Hungarian passport, but I have no fatherland. I am a very typical mix of old Austria-Hungary: at once Magyar, Croatian, German and Czech; my country is Hungary; my mother tongue is German."

In popular culture