Leonhard, Rudolf
LEONHARD, RUDOLF
LEONHARD, RUDOLF (1889–1953), German essayist and poet. Leonhard, who was born in Lissa, studied law at Goettingen. He subsequently worked as a freelance writer in Berlin, but in 1927 moved to Paris. Leonhard was a radical pacifist, but, nevertheless, fought in the French underground during the Nazi occupation of France. He returned to East Berlin after World War ii. His works include essays on literary and political topics, some of them in French; two volumes of collected poems entitled Polnische Gedichte (1918) and Katilinarische Pilgerschaft (1919); a book of aphorisms, Alles und Nichts (1920); and a tragedy, Geiseln (1945). Leonhard, an accomplished critic, also translated the works of Anatole France. From 1961 to 1970 four volumes of selected works (Ausgewaehlte Werke in Einzelausgaben) appeared in East Germany.
bibliography:
M. Scheer (ed.), Rudolf Leonhard erzaehlt (1955). add. bibliography: B. Pubanz, "Drei Begegnungen": Ehm Welks Verhältnis zu Rudolf Leonhard, in: … damit ich nicht noch mehr als Idylliker abgestempelt werde. Ehm Welk im literarischen Leben Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns nach 1945, ed. by R. Roesler and M. Schuemann (1998), 81–86; H. Hirsch, "Ein bemerkenswerter Schriftsteller: Rudolf Leonhard," in: Exil, 20:1 (2000), 28–43; J. Ross, "'Leiden verpflichtet': Recast Jewish Figures in Rudolf Leonhard's Post-War Anti Fascist 'Erzaehlungen,'" in: P. O'Dochartaigh (ed.), Jews in German literature since 1945 (2000), 391–402; S. Mensching (ed.), Rudolf Leonhard. In derselben Nacht: das Traumbuch des Exils (2001).
[Rudolf Kayser /
Kurt Feilchenfeld (2nd ed.)]