Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

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Memorial stone at Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz' last residence in Berlin

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, pseudonym John Grane (April 19, 1915, Berlin – October 29, 1942, North Atlantic), was a German author.

Life[]

Boschwitz was the son of a Jewish businessman who died as a soldier in WW I, the same year Boschwitz was born. Ulrich Boschwitz received a strictly Protestant upbringing from his mother, Martha Wolgast Boschwitz. During the Nazi era, Boschwitz emigrated to Sweden with his mother, in 1935, after he had received a draft order from the Wehrmacht. From Sweden, he moved to Norway and in 1936 to France. In 1937/38, he stayed in Luxembourg, where he was expelled by the police and moved to Belgium. From there he and his mother went on to England, in 1939.

After the outbreak of WW II, they were interned as "enemy aliens" in a camp on the Isle of Man. After the British government decided to deport all male internees overseas, he was shipped to Sydney, Australia, on the HMT Dunera in the summer of 1940. From there he was taken to a camp in New South Wales. During his return trip to England, on 29 October 1942, he was on the MV Abosso, which was torpedoed in the Atlantic by the German submarine U-575 and sank. Boschwitz died at the age of 27, and his last manuscript probably sank with him.^[1]

Literary works[]

His novel Menschen neben dem Leben (People Parallel to Life) recounts the lives of a variety of characters living through the post-First World War economic crisis in Germany. The novel was first published in a Swedish translation in 1937.

His second novel, Der Reisende, is set in Nazi Germany in November 1938 immediately after Kristallnacht. Jewish businessman Otto Silbermann realises he and his wife must flee their home. He stuffs his money into a suitcase, heads to the station and boards the first of what will be a succession of train journeys as he seeks the way to cross the border, terrified that he will be discovered as a Jew.^[2]

Chris Barsanti in a review on the Rain Taxi, writes that The Passenger shows the heat and speed of its composition. A number of its conversations can feel repetitive, while Silbermann’s state of mind is not always clearly conveyed. But Boschwitz has a knack for illustrating a particular brand of racist self-delusion in which the non-Jewish German characters deny any responsibility for the dark forces harrying Silbermann. Like the woman to whom he opens himself up, they are uninterested in what happens to him, blame him for what is happening, or see no moral responsibility to help. ^[3]

The novel appeared under the pseudonym John Grane in 1939 in London in English, titled The Man Who Took Trains, and in 1940 the same version was published in the United States.

Both books were not published in their German language originals until 2018 (Der Reisende) and 2019 (Menschen neben dem Leben).

In 2021, Der Reisende was published in a new translation by Philip Boehm, based on the original German manuscript and the author's own notes, and retitled The Passenger.^[4]

External Links[]

Ulrich Boschwitz Collection, AR 25553, at the Leo Baeck Institute New York, provides access to digitized typescripts and correspondence of Boschwitz; Provenance: the collection was donated by Professor Thomas Hansen, Wellesley College, MA.

References[]

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