persons Wilder, Thornton

General Info | TEI

Name Wilder, Thornton
Alternative Names
ID 672
Gender male
Lifespan 1897-04-17 - 1975-12-07
Professions writer (Q36180), lecturer (Q1569495), university teacher (Q1622272), novelist (Q6625963), librettist (Q8178443), translator, dramatist
Collection(s)
  • Default import collection
  • Transatlantic Networks
  • webclient
  • Uri(s) https://id.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/ica/persons/1_163
    https://ica.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/apis/api2/entity/672/
    https://d-nb.info/gnd/118632817
    Notes Wilder came to know Vienna and Austria in 1928, established a close friendship with his translator Herbert Egon Herlitschka and repeatedly returned to Vienna. He was an admirer of the Salzburg Festival and he benefited greatly from the theatre tradition in Austria. He was inspired by his reading of Nestroy and visits to the Wiener Volkstheater. His 1938 play “The Merchant of Yonkers” was an adaptation of Nestroy’s play “Einen Jux will er sich machen” (1842). Under the direction of Max Reinhardt, the play premiered on Brodway in 1938 but was not met with much commercial success, unlike Wilder’s rewriting of it, which was published under the title “The Matchmaker” in 1954. During WWII, Wilder helped (or, in some cases, tried to help) many of his friends and acquaintance to emigrate. (see Zacharasiewicz, Waldemar. Transatlantic Networks and the Perception and Representation of Vienna and Austria Between the 1920s and 1950s. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Science Press, 2018). Wilder was eager to explain his duties to other friends and aquaintances and he mentioned a number of people whom he had met socially during his sojourns in Vienna or Salzburg and who had been ostracized in Austria after the Nazi takeover, reduced to indigence, and had fled. The ties of friendship that had developed pompted Wilder’s characteristic generosity in helping those in need. He listened to their appeals. In a letter to his friend Herbert Herlitschka he mentioned his own efforts on behalf of "a number of Viennese ... trying to help them find work." He listed Dr. Bermann, Dr. Franz Lehner, Hertha Schweiger, Dr. Ernst Waldinger and others. Wilder had established a close relationship with the Jewish (Austrian) dramatist and poet Richard Beer-Hofmann, whose precarious existence in his American exile is reflected in Beer-Hofmann’s letters to Wilder in German. Notes of thanks bear witness not only to Wilder’s generous support of exiled friends but also to his sharing news about the progress of Wilder’s adaptation of the material from the "Wiener Volkskomödie" for the stage with the exiled writer, who had lost his audience. Wilder supported not only the publication of a translation of Beer-Hofmann’s complex play "Jaakobs Traum", for which he composed an introduction, but also tried to promote its staging with prominent actors. Furthermore, Wilder had a very personal correspondence with Beer-Hofmann’s daughters in the 1950s which reflects his loyalty and ongoing support for the family of his exiled peer and his legacy, as well as his interest in their efforts to reclaim confiscated property in Austria.
    References Niven, Penelope. Thornton Wilder: A Life, New York: Harper Collins, 2012 [Foreword by Edward Albee] Thornton Wilder Papers. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University Library. Yale U, New Haven. Donald Gallup, The Journals of Thornton Wilder 1939-1961, New Haven: Yale UP, 1985. Horst Oppel, Thornton Wilder in Deutschland: Wirkung und Wertung seines Werkes im deutschen Sprachraum, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz (1976 /77) and the relevant articles in Horst Frenz and Hans-Joachim Lang, eds., Nordamerikanische Literatur im deutschen Sprachraum seit 1945, München: Winkler, 1973, 80-4, 185-6, 225-40. Discussions of individual plays, for instance, by Rudolf Haas and Franz Link, in Hans Itschert, ed., Das amerikanische Drama, Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1972, 209-19, and 177-94, by Rudolf Germer in Paul Goetsch, ed., Das amerikanische Drama, Düsseldorf: Bagel, 1974, 170-82, and a review of research by Heinz Kosok in Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien 9 (1964), 196-227

    Relations

    Event

    Start End Other relation type Related Event
    1949 related >> participated in Goethe Bicentennial Convocation and Music Festival
    1928-11 related >> participated in >> hosted Early reading from working draft of "The Woman of Andros"
    1931-05 related >> participated in Promotion tour for German translations of Thornton Wilder's books
    1935-08 related >> participated in >> attended class in symphony conducting

    Institution

    Start End Other relation type Related Institution
    1930 1936 related >> worked for/at >> taught at University of Chicago
    1938 related >> won Pulitzer Prize
    1925 1926 related >> studied at Princeton University
    1921 1928 related >> worked for/at >> taught at Lawrenceville School
    1928 related >> won Pulitzer Prize
    1945 related United States Army, Air Forces
    1928-12 related >> visited >> stayed at Hotel Bayerischer Hof
    related American citizenship
    1938-09-10 related >> worked for/at >> taught at Max Reinhardt Workshop of Stage, Screen and Radio
    1931 1931 related >> visited >> stayed at Hotel Bristol, Vienna

    Person

    Start End Other relation type Related Person
    1928-11 1970 related >> friendship with >> close friendship with Herlitschka, Herberth Egon
    related >> translated by Herlitschka, Herberth Egon
    1951-11 related >> friendship with Mahler-Werfel, Alma Maria
    related >> acquainted with >> had contacts with >> mentor of Davis, Robert
    1935 related >> friendship with >> close friendship with Stein, Gertrude
    related >> friendship with Luhan, Mabel Dodge
    related >> acquainted with Mann, Thomas
    related >> collaborated with Reinhardt, Max
    1928 related >> acquainted with >> correspondence with Herlitschka, Herberth Egon
    related >> related to >> sibling of Wilder, Isabel

    Place

    Start End Other relation type Related Place
    1934-09 1934-09 related >> visited Taos, NM
    1929 1975 related >> lived in New Haven, CT
    1935-08 related >> visited Salzburg
    1948 related >> visited >> went on a speaking tour to Germany
    1954 related >> visited >> went on a speaking tour to Germany
    1939-02 related >> stayed in >> stayed in for work Corpus Christi, TX
    1937-08 related >> visited Schloss Kammer
    1935-07-27 related >> stayed in Gertrude Stein's house, Rue des Tourterelles, Belley, France
    1935-09 1935-10 related >> visited Josefstädter Straße 68, Vienna
    1935-09 related >> visited Gymnasiumstraße 37, 1180 Vienna

    Work

    Start End Other relation type Related Work
    1928 related >> wrote >> author of The Angel that Troubled the Waters and Other Plays
    1931 related >> wrote >> author of The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays
    related >> translator of >> translated into English Die Braut von Torozko
    1967 related >> wrote >> author of The Eight Day
    1973 related >> wrote >> author of Theophilus North
    related The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder
    related The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder
    1979 related >> wrote >> author of American Characteristics
    1926 related >> wrote >> author of The Trumpet Shall Sound
    1933 related >> translator of >> translated into English Le viol de Lucrèce

    Label

    Label Start End Label type ISO Code
    Wilder, Thornton Legacy name (merge) deu

    Texts

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