Queer Places:
Bogenhausener Friedhof
Bogenhausen, Stadtkreis München, Bavaria (Bayern), Germany
Joseph Breitbach (born September 20, 1903 in Ehrenbreitstein, † May 9, 1980 in Munich, was a
German-French writer and publicist who has worked since his move to France in 1930 to improve cultural and political
German-French relations.
Report on Bruno (original German title: Bericht 'ber Bruno) is a novel by Joseph Breitbach, published in 1962 by Insel1; a French translation was published by Gallimard in 1964.
The novel describes, through a homosexual relationship and an illegitimate union of a notable and politician, morality in the early 1960s and the legal situation on sexuality. It stirs controversy against conservatism and sexual freedom limited by law, such as paragraph 175. Joseph Breitbach was friends with numerous writers and intellectuals or was in correspondence, for example
Klaus Mann (with whom he later split),
Julien Green, Golo Mann and
André Gide.
Obsessed with politics, social issues, literature and painting, Breitbach was one of the first in his stories to address the fate of the employees and became interested in the reality of the little man. Even before Hitler seized power, he moved to Paris. It was not until the early 1960s that he also took up residence in Munich. In addition to his continuous work as a writer between 1921 and 1980, he was a consultant and publicist who had a strong influence on the political and cultural relations between France and Germany. Through
Jean Schlumberger he had direct access to high-ranking personalities in the French government, as well as in Germany by General Hans Speidel. Breitbach was particularly committed to the
German-French understanding after the Second World War.
Breitbach was the son of the rector of the Ehrenbreitstein Elementary School. He left the Koblenz Empress-Augusta-Gymnasium in 1921 before graduating from high school to become a bookseller and studied publishing business at the Koblenz daily newspaper Rheinische Rundschau. From 1925 to 1928 he worked as a bookseller in the landauer department store in Augsburg. Here he had close contacts with the KPD. The department store released him after the publication of the stories Red vs. Red. The Augsburg period was marked by trips to Berlin, Paris, Prague, Vienna and Munich, where he was able to establish important contacts with writers and publishers. Breitbach also maintained close contacts with artists, collecting art from a young age.
From 1929 Breitbach lived in France, from 1931 in Paris, where he also worked as a businessman. At the same time, he wrote for French newspapers. On 2 November 1932, his first novel, The Transformation of Susanne Dasseldorf, was published by Kiepenheuer-Verlag in Berlin. In 1933 his books were banned in Germany. In 1937, he returned his German passport and applied for French citizenship. For the time being, he was stateless.
In 1939 he was interned as a native German. He decided to work in the Foreign Legion and in the French secret service. After the German invasion of Paris in 1940, the Gestapo confiscated Breitbach's library and
his manuscripts. Some of these documents were later taken to Silesia, where they were captured by the Red Army in the final stages of the war and taken to Moscow. Later the Soviet Union handed over the papers to the GDR, but Breitbach never heard about it and believed until his death that the material was completely destroyed. After reunification, the material was then taken to the German Literature Archive Marbach, where it was assigned to the rest of the Breitbach estate. Large parts of the papers confiscated in Paris at the time, including Breitbach's diaries and allegedly the libretto for a comic opera, which he had written on behalf of Paul Hindemith, have been lost to this day [1]. A European College of Translators in Straelen has a partial discount, in any way.
In 1945 Breitbach became a French citizen. He advocated for German prisoners of war. From 1948 to 1951, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit published Breitbach's articles on the culture and politics of France. From 1961 the author had a second residence in Germany. Thirty years after the first novel, Breitbach published his second
Report on Bruno in 1962. Especially in the USA, the plant was a great success.
Breitbach translated some of his works into French himself, and he also made minor changes in the plot. However, he was also extremely critical of his own work: he revised his manuscripts several times and was not satisfied with them; so it happened that a whole number of larger works were never completed and not published. He also criticized published, older texts later and did not want to have them reprinted – for example, the novel "The Transformation of Susanne Dasseldorf", which was banned after 1933, was reprinted only after his death, although interested readers had repeatedly inquired about them. Breitbach often promoted young writers whose talents he was convinced of. Through his diverse relationships with publishers and literary critics, he was able to help them publish their works, he did not spare them criticism of stylistic negligence and gave hints of their improvement. In addition, he often provided financial assistance, even beyond his death: in his will, the author had the award of a prize to German-speaking writers. The Joseph Breitbach Prize, named after him, is awarded annually and financed by the foundation of the same name in Vaduz. It is the highest endowed award for German-speaking writers. Breitbach's works have been republished in recent years, so that his work gained new notoriety.
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