Lti lingua tertii imperii victor klemperer biography 7
Victor Klemperer - Biography
Victor Klemperer (9 October – 11 February ) was a businessman, journalist and eventually a Professor of Literature, specialising in the French Enlightenment at the Technische Universität Dresden.
His diaries detailing his life under successive German states—the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic—were published in His recollections on the Third Reich have since become standard sources; extensively quoted by Saul Friedlander, Michael Burleigh and Richard J.
Evans.
Early life
Klemperer was born in Landsberg an der Warthe (now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland) to a Jewish family. His father was a rabbi (Dr. Wilhelm Klemperer, wife Henriette born Frankel), cousin to conductor Otto Klemperer and brother to the surgeon Georg Klemperer, a personal physician to Lenin.
He was a second cousin of actor Werner Klemperer through Otto, Werner's father.
Victor Klemperer attended several Gymnasien. He was a student of philosophy, Romance and German studies at universities in Munich, Geneva, Paris and Berlin from to and later worked as a journalist and writer in Berlin until he continued his studies in Munich from He completed his doctorate in and was habilitated under the supervision of Karl Vossler in From to , Klemperer lectured in Naples, after which he became a decorated military volunteer of World War I.
In Nazi Germany
Despite his conversion to Protestantism in and his strong identification with German culture, Klemperer's life started to worsen considerably after the Nazi rise to power in
He kept a diary, which, from through the end of the war, provides an exceptional historical and humane account of day-to-day life under the tyranny of the Third Reich.
Lti lingua tertii imperii victor klemperer biography 3 LTI is a firsthand account, drawing upon conversations, newspaper articles, radio commentaries, nonfiction, and novels of the time. Klemperer was not only a competent scholar, but also a witness and victim of the regime; LTI was assembled from his diaries. Klemperer passed on a copy of Partenau to the aunt. In , the inconceivable became reality. In his diary entries, Klemperer reflected on how the Nazis had been able to seize power.Two of the three published volumes of his diaries, "I shall bear witness" and "To the bitter end," concern this period. This diary also insightfully details the Nazis' perversion of the German language for propaganda purposes, which Klemperer would use as the basis for his later book LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii.
Chiefly, Klemperer's diary chronicles the daily life of restricted Jews during the Nazi terror, including the onset of a succession of prohibitions concerning many aspects of everyday existence (e.g., finances, transportation, medical care, the maintenance and use of household help, food and diet, and the possession of appliances, newspapers, and other items).
Particularly harrowing are accounts of 'suicides', household searches, and evacuations of friends, mostly to Theresienstadt.
Lti lingua tertii imperii victor klemperer biography youtube: LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen () is a book by Victor Klemperer, Professor of Literature at the Dresden University of Technology.
In one May passage, the Klemperers are forced to put down their household cat, a tomcat named Maschel, because of a restriction on pets. In addition, the diary hints at the profound paucity of information Klemperer and his fellow victims had available to them concerning the nature of atrocities being conducted in places such as Theresienstadt following transports and evacuations.
From , under the Nuremberg Laws of Citizenship and Race, Klemperer was stripped of his academic title, job, citizenship and freedom and eventually forced to work in a factory and as a day laborer. (In some passages, Klemperer writes of being made to work shoveling snow with a bad heart.) Since his wife, Eva, was "Aryan," Klemperer dodged deportation for most of the war, but in he was rehoused under miserable conditions in a ghetto (Judenhaus), where he was routinely questioned, mistreated and humiliated by the Gestapo.
Lti lingua tertii imperii victor klemperer biography His father was a rabbi Dr. Wilhelm Klemperer, wife Henriette born Frankel , cousin to conductor Otto Klemperer and brother to the surgeon Georg Klemperer, a personal physician to Lenin. He was a second cousin of actor Werner Klemperer through Otto, Werner's father. Victor Klemperer attended several Gymnasien. He was a student of philosophy, Romance and German studies at universities in Munich, Geneva, Paris and Berlin from to and later worked as a journalist and writer in Berlin until he continued his studies in Munich fromIn the diary, the much-feared Gestapo is seen carrying out daily, humiliating and brutal house searches, delivering beatings, hurling insults, and robbing inhabitants of coveted foodstuffs and other household items.
Flight
On 13 February , the day preceding the night bombing of Dresden, he assisted in delivering notices of deportation to some of the last remaining members of the Jewish community in Dresden.
Fearful that he too would soon be sent to his death, he used the confusion created by Allied bombings that night to remove his yellow star, join a refugee column, and escape into American-controlled territory. He and his wife survived and Klemperer's diary narrates their return (largely on foot through Bavaria and Eastern Germany) to their house in Dölzschen, on the outskirts of Dresden.
Lti lingua tertii imperii victor klemperer biography 2
Victor Klemperer is remembered for his seminal study of the language of the Nazis. Baptized Protestant, he volunteered for the front in the First World War. With the rise of German fascism, he was declared a Jew. He lost his professorship in Romance languages, his home, had no access to radio, newspapers, or libraries, could not publish, go to the cinema or theatre. After the war, Klemperer supported socialism as an anti-fascist new beginning.They managed to reclaim the house, which had been "aryanised" under the Nazis.
Post-war
Klemperer went on to become a significant post-war cultural figure in East Germany, lecturing at the universities of Greifswald, Berlin and Halle. He became a delegate of the Cultural Union in the GDR Parliament (Volkskammer) in
Klemperer's diary was published in as Tagebücher (Berlin, Aufbau).
It was an immediate literary sensation and rapidly became a bestseller in Germany. An English translation has appeared in three volumes: I Will Bear Witness ( to ), To The Bitter End ( to ) and The Lesser Evil ( to ).
In , Victor Klemperer was posthumously awarded the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis for his work, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten.
Tagebücher –.
Documentary
In , Herbert Gantschacher wrote, together with Katharina and Jürgen Rostock, the documentary play Chronicle by using original documents from the biographies of Robert Ley and Victor Klemperer.
Lti lingua tertii imperii victor klemperer biography e Lingua Tertii Imperii studies the way that Nazi propaganda altered the German language to inculcate people with the ideas of Nazism. The book was written in the form of personal notes which Klemperer wrote in his diary, especially from the rise of the Nazi regime in , and even more after , when Klemperer was stripped of his academic title because he was of Jewish descent. His diary became a notebook in which he noted and commented on the linguistic relativity of the German used by Nazi officials, ordinary citizens, and even fellow Jews. Klemperer wrote the book, based on his notes, in — LTI demonstrates changes in the German language in most of the population.The first performance took place in in the documentation centre at the planned "Strength Through Joy" beach resort Prora of the island of Rügen in Germany.
In , Stan Neumann (Stan Neumann in French wikipedia) directed a documentary based on Klemperer's diaries, La langue ne ment pas (Language does not lie), which considers the importance of Klemperer’s observations and the role of the witness in such situations, and reflects on how we must vigilantly observe how those in power manipulate language.
See also
- Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime
Literature
External links
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