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Jean Amry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jean Amry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jean Amry (October 31, 1912 October 17, 1978), born Hanns Chaim Mayer, was an Austrian essayist whose work was often informed by his experiences during World War II.

Born

Hanns Chaim Mayer October 31, 1912 Vienna, Austria-Hungary

Died October 17, 1978 Formerly a philosophy and literature student in Vienna, Salzburg, Austria Amry's participation in organized resistance against the Nazi occupation of Belgium resulted in his detainment and Occupation Author torture by the German Gestapo, and several years of Nationality Austrian imprisonment in concentration camps. Amry survived internments in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and was finally liberated at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. After the war he settled in Belgium.

His most celebrated work, At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (1966), suggests that torture was "the essence" of the Third Reich. Other notable works included On Aging (1968) and On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death (1976). Amry killed himself in 1978.

Contents
1 Early life 2 Religion 3 During Nazi rule 4 After the war 5 Literary and philosophical legacy 6 Works 6.1 In German 6.2 Translations into French 6.3 Translations into English 7 Notes 8 Further reading 9 External links

Early life
Jean Amry was born Hans Mayer in Vienna, Austria in 1912, to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. His father was killed in action in World War I in 1916. Amry was raised as a Roman Catholic by his mother.[1] Eventually, Amry and his mother returned to Vienna, where he enrolled in university to study literature and philosophy, but economic necessity kept him from regular pursuit of studies there.

Religion
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While Amry's family was "estranged from its Jewish origins, assimilated and intermarried", this alienation itself, in the context of Nazi occupation, informed much of his thought: "I wanted by all means to be an antiNazi, that most certainly, but of my own accord."[1] The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the text of which he soon came to know by heart, convinced Amry that Germany had essentially passed a sentence of death on all Jews.[1] His The Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew speaks to this inner conflict as to his identity. He suggests that while his personal identity, the identity of his own childhood past, is distinctly Christian, he feels himself nonetheless a Jew in another sense, the sense of a Jewishness "without God, without history, without messianic-national hope".[2]

[F]or me, being a Jew means feeling the tragedy of yesterday as an inner oppression. On my left forearm I bear the Auschwitz number; it reads more briefly than the Pentateuch or the Talmud and yet provides more thorough information. It is also more binding than basic formulas of Jewish existence. If to myself and the world, including the religious and nationally minded Jews, who do not regard me as one of their own, I say: I am a Jew, then I mean by that those realities and possibilities that are summed up in the Auschwitz number. Jean Amry, At the Mind's Limits, p. 94

During Nazi rule

In 1938, when the Nazis were welcomed into Austria and the country joined with Germany into a "Greater Reich", Amry fled to France, and then to Belgium with his Jewish wife, whom he had chosen in opposition to his mother's wishes. Ironically, he was initially deported back to France by the Belgians as a German alien, and wound up interned in the south. After escaping from the camp at Gurs, he returned to Belgium where he joined the Resistance movement.
The railway to Auschwitz Involved in the distribution of anti-military propaganda to the German occupying forces, Amry was captured by the Nazis in July 1943 and routinely tortured at the Belgian Gestapo center at Fort Breendonk. When it was established that there was no information to be extracted from him, he was "demoted" from political prisoner to Jew, and shipped to Auschwitz.

Lacking any trade skills, he was assigned to the harshest physical labors, building the I.G. Farben factory at Auschwitz III, the Buna-Monowitz labor camp. In the face of the Soviet invasion in the following year, he was evacuated first to Buchenwald and then to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated by the British army in April 1945.

After the war

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After the war, the former Hanns Mayer changed his name to Jean Amry (the surname being an anagram in French of his family name) in order to symbolize his dissociation from German culture and his alliance with French culture.[1] He lived in Brussels, working as a culture journalist for German language newspapers in Switzerland. He refused to publish in Germany or Austria for many years, publishing only in Switzerland. He did not write at all of his experiences in the death camps until 1964, when, at the urging of German poet Helmut Heienbttel, he wrote his book Jenseits von Schuld und Shne ("Beyond Guilt and Atonement"). It was later translated into English by Sidney and Stella P. Rosenfeld as At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities.

The main gate of Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

In 1976 Amry published the book On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death. He took his own life by overdose of sleeping pills in 1978.[3]

Literary and philosophical legacy

The publication of At the Mind's Limits, Amry's exploration of the Holocaust and the nature of the Third Reich, made him one of most highly regarded of Holocaust writers. In comparing the Nazis to a government of sadism, Amry suggests that it is the sadist's nature to want "to nullify the world". For a Nazi torturer, [a] slight pressure by the tool-wielding hand is enough to turn the other along with his head, in which are perhaps stored Kant and Hegel, and all nine symphonies, and The World as Will and Representation into a shrill squealing piglet at slaughter. Amry's efforts to preserve the memory of the Holocaust focused on the terror and horror of the events in a phenomenological and philosophical way, with what he characterized as "a scant inclination to be conciliatory".[4] His explorations of his experiences and the meaning and legacy of Nazi-era suffering were aimed not at resolving the events finally into "the cold storage of history",[5] but rather keeping the subject alive so that it would not be lost to posterity, as an abstraction or mere text. As he wrote in his 1976 preface to Beyond Guilt and Atonement: I do not have [clarity] today, and I hope that I never will. Clarification would amount to disposal, settlement of the case, which can then be placed in the files of history. My book is meant to prevent precisely this. For nothing is resolved, nothing is settled, no remembering has become mere memory.[5]

Works
In German
Karrieren Und Kpfe: Bildnisse Berhmter Zeitgenossen. Zurich: Thomas, 1955. Teenager-Stars: Idole Unserer Zeit. Vienna: Albert Mller, 1960. Im Banne Des Jazz: Bildnisse Groer Jazz-Musiker. Vienna: Albert Mller, 1961. Geburt Der Gegenwart: Gestalten Und Gestaltungen Der Westlichen Zivilisation Seit Kriegsende. Olten: Walter, 1961.
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Gerhart Hauptmann: Der Ewige Deutsche. Stieglitz: Handle, 1963. Jenseits Von Schuld Und Shne: Bewltigungsversuche Eines berwltigten. Munich: Szczesny, 1966. ber Das Altern: Revolte Und Resignation. Stuttgart: Klett, 1968. Unmeisterliche Wanderjahre. Stuttgart: Klett, 1971. Lefeu Oder Der Abbruch. Stuttgart: Klett, 1974. Hand an Sich Legen. Diskurs ber den Freitod. Stuttgart: Klett, 1976. Charles Bovary, Landarzt. Stuttgart: Klett, 1978. Bcher Aus Der Jugend Unseres Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981. Der Integrale Humanismus: Zwischen Philosophie Und Literatur. Aufstze Und Kritiken Eines Lesers, 19661978. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1985. Jean Amry, der Grenzgnger: Gesprch mit Ingo Hermann in der Reihe "Zeugen des Jahrhunderts." Ed. Jrgen Voigt. Gttingen: Lamuv, 1992. Cinema: Arbeiten Zum Film. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1994. Jean Amry: Werke. 9 vols. Edited by Irne Heidelberger-Leonard. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2002-2008. The collected works in German.

Translations into French

Charles Bovary, mdecin de campagne: portrait d'un homme simple. Roman/essai traduit de l'allemand par Franoise Wuilmart. Actes Sud : Arles, 1991. Par-del le crime et le chtiment : essai pour surmonter l'insurmontable. traduit de l'allemand par Francoise Wuilmart. Actes Sud : Arles, 1995. Du vieillissement. Payot : Paris, 1991 [1968] ; rd. Petite Bibliothque Payot 2009 Le feu ou la dmolition. Actes Sud : Arles, 1996 [1974] Porter la main sur soi - Du suicide. Actes Sud : Arles, 1999 [1976] Les Naufrags. Actes Sud: Arles, 2010 [1935]

Translations into English

Preface to the Future: Culture in a Consumer Society. Trans. Palmer Hilty. London: Constable, 1964. At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Grave of Jean Amry at the Auschwitz and Its Realities. Trans. Sidney and Stella P. Zentralfriedhof Vienna. Rosenfeld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. Radical Humanism: Selected Essays. Trans. Sidney and Stella P. Rosenfeld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. On Aging: Revolt and Resignation. Trans. John D. Barlow. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death. Trans. John D. Barlow. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Notes
1. ^ a b c d Amery: a biographical introduction (http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/p/jean-amery-biographicalintroduction.html)
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2. ^ Amry, Jean. At the Mind's Limits. 1998, page 94 3. ^ Amry, Jean (1998). "Afterword" (http://books.google.com/books?id=2UoP_7jdn5cC&pg=PA104). At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (http://books.google.com/books? id=2UoP_7jdn5cC). Indiana Holocaust Museum Reprint Series. Translated by Stella P. Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld. Indiana University Press. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-253-21173-6. Retrieved August 30, 2009. 4. ^ Amry, Jean. At the Mind's Limits. 1998, page 71 5. ^ a b Brudholm, Thomas and Murphy, Jeffrie G. Resentment's Virtue. 2008, page 72

Further reading
Irne Heidelberger-Leonard, The Philosopher of Auschwitz: Jean Amry and Living with the Holocaust (http://www.ibtauris.com/Books/Humanities/History/History%20specific%20events%20%20topics/Gen ocide%20%20ethnic%20cleansing/The%20Holocaust/The%20Philosopher%20of%20Auschwitz%20Je an%20Amery%20and%20Living%20with%20the%20Holocaust.aspx?menuitem=%7B6D00AE6F976D-4418-ACF0-B75CB610346A%7D). Translated by Anthea Bell. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010. First published in German as Jean Amry: Revolte in der Resignation (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2004). Also published in French as Jean Amry (Arles: Actes Sud, 2007) and Spanish as Jean Amry: Revuelta en la resignacin (Valencia: Universitat di Valencia, 2010). G. Risari, "Jean Amry. Il risentimento come morale", Milano: Franco Angeli, 2002 W. G. Sebald, "Against the Irreversible" in On the Natural History of Destruction, Penguin, 2003, pp. 14772.

External links
Jean Amery biography (http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/p/jean-amery-biographical-introduction.html) Jean Amry's Gravesite (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9490) An essay on Jean Amry (http://www.guiarisari.com/ITALIANO/amery_info.html) Essay on Jean Amry's suicide (http://asymptotejournal.com/article.php? cat=Special_Feature&id=81&curr_index=28&curPage=current) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean_Amry&oldid=596310192" Categories: 1912 births 1978 deaths Writers from Vienna People from Uccle Austrian Jews Austrian writers Drug-related suicides in Austria Burials at the Zentralfriedhof Writers who committed suicide Works about the Holocaust Victims of human rights abuses Holocaust historiography Auschwitz concentration camp survivors Buchenwald concentration camp survivors Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors Austrian philosophers This page was last modified on 20 February 2014 at 08:43. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

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