A Life in Two Worlds: An Experiment in Autobiography

Blume, Bernhard

ISBN 10: 0820417653 / ISBN 13: 9780820417653

Published by Peter Lang, NY, 1992

About this Item

240 pp. with Bibliography and Notes. Translated by Hunter and Hildegarde Hannum. Literature and The Sciences of Man Vol. 3. Binding tight, text clean. Just a very slight bow to the boards. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Bookseller Inventory # 40135

Bibliographic Details

Title: A Life in Two Worlds: An Experiment in ...

Publisher: Peter Lang, NY

Publication Date: 1992

Binding: Hard Cover

Book Condition:Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

Edition: First Printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

A Life in Two Worlds is the autobiography of a man who lived two lives, one as an Expressionist dramatist in the cultural ferment of Germany's Weimar Republic and the other as eminent teacher and scholar of German literature after his emigration to the United States in 1936. In these pages, Hitler's Germany is seen from the inside, as is American academic life in both its positive and negative aspects. Innovative in its form, this book successfully mirrors the discontinuities and disorder of modern experience. Further, it treats with insight and originality such universal themes as the centrality of choice in human life, the problems of aging, and, particularly relevant in the contemporary world, the fate of the exile and outsider.

About the Author:

The author: Bernhard Blume, born in Germany in 1901, was a successful playwright in the twenties and early thirties whose work was compared to that of his contemporary Bertolt Brecht. Denied access to the stage by the Nazis in 1933, he emigrated in 1936 with his Jewish wife to the United States where he taught German literature. Blume held, among other positions, the prestigious chair of the Kuno Francke Professorship of German Art and Culture at Harvard. He was a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung and was awarded the Gold Goethe Medal in 1964. Among his many publications are penetrating studies of Goethe, Thomas Mann, and Rilke.