Mynona
MYNONA
MYNONA (Salomo Friedlaender ; 1871–1946), German philosopher and author. Born in Gollantsch in Posen, Mynona studied medicine, philosophy, German literature, archaeology, and art history in Munich, Berlin, and Jena between 1894 and 1902. In Jena he wrote his dissertation on Schopenhauer and Kant (1902), seeing from then on in Kantian philosophy not only the solution of the central problems of 20th century in general, as did his contemporary teacher, the neo-Kantian Ernst Marcus, but also an expression of modern Judaism. Also in his later, main philosophical work Die schoepferische Indifferenz (1918), Mynona relied on Kant to overcome the classical dualism of subject and object in a purified, absolute self. In 1906, Mynona went to Berlin, starting to write under the literary name "Mynona," an anagram of "anonym" (i.e., anonymous), poetry, which he published in books like Durch blaue Schleier (1908) and expressionist publications like Der Sturm and Die Aktion, being intimate with the Berlin expressionist circle of Herwarth *Walden, Else *Lasker-Schueler, and Samuel *Lublinski. At the same time he wrote satirical and grotesque prose works (Rosa, die schoene Schutzmannsfrau, 1913; Mein Papa und die Jungfrau von Orleans, 1921; Das Eisenbahunglueck oder der Anti-Freud, 1925; Mein hundertster Geburtstag und andere Grimassen, 1928); in these philosophical satires Mynona exposed the other side of Kantian rationalism. In 1933, he fled to Paris, where he wrote his last published literary work, the grotesque Der lachende Hiob (1935), confronting the will to annihilation of the Nazis with his idea of the purified self by answering torture with laughter. Other works, like Vernunftgewitter and Das Experiment Mensch,remained unpublished. The autobiographical work Ich was published in 2003. Mynona died in Paris. In 1980, H. Geerken published two volumes of Mynona's prose.
bibliography:
Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona. Ausstellungskatalog der Akademie der Kuenste (1972); P. Cardorff, Salomo Fried-laender (Mynona) (1988).
[Andreas Kilcher (2nd ed.)]