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The Southern Israelite
Page 49
The Voice of the Demi
I HE f RAGEDY OF A GENIUS' TRIUMPH OVER DEATH
By JULIUS MAYER
Yestedray but a name
ardly known to a few hun-
derd literati, Hans von
( hlumberg is today recog-
'i/ed as one of the great
which was caused by a stupid
accident in a German thea
tre. Hans von Chlumberg,
author of “Miracle at Ver
dun", was an Austrian Jew,
son of a stern militarist; he
heed omy thirty-two years—
but long enough to engrave
his name in the Golden
book of world literature.
Read his story, told in all its
dramatic reality by Julius
Muaer, Seven Arts staff
writer.—THE EDITOR.
von Chlumberg, author of
iradf at Verdun,” never lived to see
tlu- triumph of his play. While the
premiere was being given at the
• ip/ig. Germany, Schauspielhaus he
n a nearby hotel in a state of coma
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from which he never woke. When his
friends rushed into his death chamber
to announce to him the enthusiastic
reception which his work had received
he was dead, like the buried soldiers of
France and Germany he had tried to
revive in his play. A tragedy his life.
A nasty prank of destiny, his fatal fall,
during one of the final rehearsals,
which robbed him of the well-earned
enjoyment of the fame that was to
spread across the Atlantic and, this
season, reach America with the pro
duction of “Miracle at Verdun’’ at the
Guild Theatre. He had come through
the war unscathed, mentally reborn, to
slip literally from the last scale of a
ladder one rainy forenoon in an empty
Leipzig theatre.
Today a sophisticated New York is
wondering at his strange play, a hitter
satire against war, picturing the resur
rection of the soldiers who fell at
Verdun and their unwelcome return
to this earth-unwelcome to those who
had glorified them. The question is
asked: Who is this Hans von Chlum
berg? Well—he isn’t any more. But
lie was a talented youngster who at
the age o f thirty-two, on the very
threshold of immortality, stumbled and
joined the heroes of Verdun.
Hans Chlumberg was the son of a
militarist, a high officer in the Austrian
army, one of the very few Jews who
broke the unwritten law that Jews arc
not to he officers in the land of the
Hakenkreuzlers. As it sometimes hap
pened in the days of the Hapsburgs,
Chlumburg pere, through some
“patriotic” financial transaction, was
granted the privilege to buy his way
into the aristocracy of Austria. He
did, purchasing the little syllable "von,”
and thus also made it possible for his
son to enter the Officers’ Corps when
he had reached the proper age.
Chlumberg Senior believed, that
morning when he read the imperial
decree that thenceforth he would be
entitled to be known as Baron von
Chlumberg, that his son would be
eternally grateful to him for having
eradicated from his life the last vestige
of his Jewish affiliations. But destiny
just played another of its pranks, for
Hans—or, as his father proudly named
him, Hans Bardach Edler von Cleum-
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berg—was to have but one desire; to
get rid of the aristocracy his father
had brought. Forced to go through the
stern military education which his
father had outlined for him, he even
tually graduated as a lieutenant of
cavalry. But Hans von Chlumberg
never could adjust his inner world to
the "delights” of military life. Though
this life gave him the background for
writing the most powerful indictment
of militarism that has ever been con
ceived—not excluding “All Quiet on the
Western Front.” That, however, is
the tragedy of von Chlumberg Senior.
It is difficult to write a sequential
biography of Hans von Chlumberg.
His life, just like his dramatic work,
runs in quick scenes. A few highlights
without systematic chronological order.
Had his life not been cut off just after
the first act he would have become one
ofe the greatest dramatics of our era.
Yet this, of course, is mere speculation.
At the age of twelve he started to
write. It was a secret occupation. His
father would have had an applectic
stroke had he found out that his scion,
whom he visualized as a feature gen
eral, found pleasure in day-dreaming
and putting poems, sketches and
fcuilletons on paper instead of study
ing the strategy of Moltke. While a
pupil at the Military Academy of
Vienna, in obedience to his father's
wishes, he continued never the less
with his literary hobby. Under a
pseudonym his work found a ready
market in the literary reviews. The
world war broke loose; he was just
seventeen, a precocious poet forced
into a military jacket. As an officer
he fought gallantly on the Italian front,
and after the Austrian debacle strag
gled homeward like the others—dis
illusioned, hungry, estranged, unable to
find his way back into a world he hail
left too young to make it his own.
Cruel as it may sound, it was the
war that freed him from the domination
of his father, he assets with which
the elder Chlumberg had equipped his
son for the struggle of life had gone
down in value. The "von” was almost
as much of a handicap as a Jewish
ancestry. The education obtained in
the Military of Vienna was of even
les suse. The financial holdings of his
family had disappeared in the inflation
and subsequent "normalization” of
Austrian currency. In his early twen
ties he found himself waving farewell
to his spiritual and material patrimony,
an amateur man of letters at best—a
without enthusiasm, he had to face the
Jew without tradition, an Austrian
realities of life to the extent of strug
gling to obtain his daily bread.
Had he not been a genius—of this
we are convinced—had his literary en
deavors been merely the hobby of a
well-to-do idler, he would have become
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