Jasný firmament chlapecké duše coby azyl
The Clear Firmament of a Boy’s Soul as a Refuge

Johannes Urzidil and Hannes Beckmann’s Friendship and Collaboration

Summary/Abstract: The novelist, poet, essayist, and art historian Johannes Urzidil (1896_1970) was a Prague-based author who wrote in German. His life re_ects the multicultural milieu of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918_1938) before the Second World War and also the subsequent events of the ‘age of chaos’, which tore apart social and cultural bonds, destroyed the homes of many people, and, if they did not lead to their violent deaths, made them ‘nameless’ refugees seeking to begin a new life elsewhere. Further testimony to that appears in previously unpublished correspondence between Johannes Urzidil and the painter Hannes Beckmann (1909_1977) as well as in other preserved documents. Together with two of Urzidil’s essays about Beckmann’s works, with additional commentary, speci_c dates, references, and biographical information, they constitute testimony about questions that these two men were interested in and the in_uences on their creative environments in Czechoslovakia and the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s.

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