Wassermann, Jakob

Wassermann, Jakob (yä`kôp väs`ərmän), 1873–1934, Austrian novelist, b. Bavaria. He won international fame with Christian Wahnschaffe (1919; tr. The World's Illusion, 1920), a novel whose moral intensity and characterization have suggested comparison to Dostoyevsky. Other works popular in his lifetime include the novels Casper Hauser (1908, tr. 1928) and Ulrike Woytich (1923; tr. Gold, 1924). He also wrote an autobiography, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (1921; tr. My Life as German and Jew, 1933), plays, biographies, and essays.

Bibliography

See study by J. C. Blankenagel (1942).

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Wassermann, Jakob

(born March 10, 1873, Fürth, Bavaria—died Jan. 1, 1934, Altaussee, Austria) German novelist. After an unsettled youth he achieved success with such works as Die Juden von Zirndorf (1897), Caspar Hauser (1908), and Christian Wahnschaffe (1919). His popularity was greatest in the 1920s and '30s, when he wrote The Maurizius Case (1928), treating the theme of justice with the carefully plotted suspense of a detective story, and extended the tale of a post-World War I youth into a trilogy with Etzel Andergast (1931) and Kerkhoven's Third Existence (1934). He is frequently compared to Fyodor Dostoyevsky in both his moral fervour and his sensationalizing tendency.

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Wassermann, Jakob 

Born Mar. 10, 1873, in Fürth, Bavaria; died Jan. 1, 1934, in Alt-Aussee, Austria. German writer. Born into a bourgeois Jewish family.

Wassermann was the author of the novels The Jews of Zirndorf (1897; Russian translation, 1909), Story of the Young Renata Fuchs (1900; Russian translation, 1908), Caspar Hauser (1908; Russian translation, 1926), The Goose Man (1915; Russian translation, 1925), Christian Wahnschaffe (1919), and others in which social and ethical themes are combined. In the trilogy from the life of German youth—the novels The Maurizius Case (1928; Russian translation, 1929), Etzel Andergast (1931), and Kerkhoven’s Third Existence (1934)—the dissolution of the bourgeois family and the inhuman character of bourgeois relations are portrayed; however, Wassermann did not go beyond the ideals of bogoiskateVstvo (god-seeking). He wrote the satirical play Comedy of Lies (1898) and the book Pilgrim’s Spirit (1923; Russian translation—excerpts under the title Kakhamarka s Gold—1956).

WORKS

Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1-7. Zürich, 1944-48.
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols. 1-5. Moscow, 1912-13.

REFERENCES

Istoriia nemetskoi literatury, vol. 4. Moscow, 1968. Chapter 33.
Lennartz, F. Dichter und Schriftsteller unserer Zeit, 7th ed. Stuttgart [1957].
Voegeli, W. Jakob Wasserman und die Trägheit des Herzens. Winterthur, 1956.