By FLAVIO AGUIAR*
A conversation with researcher Laura Rivas Gagliardi
Anatol Rosenfeld arrived in Brazil, at the port of Santos, in the last days of 1936. He had left Nazi Germany in a hurry because he was Jewish, a political activist and the target of a police investigation, which accused him of resisting arrest and of making propaganda against the Third Reich. He was 26 years old and until the academic year of 1934 he had been a university student at the then Königliche Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, browse Humboldt University of Berlin, Humboldt University in Berlin.
In Brazil, where he became a brilliant intellectual in the field of Theater Studies, Dramaturgy and Literary Theory, it was always said that he had finished writing a doctoral thesis, but that he had been unable to defend it. Dormant for almost a century and preserved in archives that have now been digitized, this text by Anatol Rosenfeld has finally seen the light of day thanks to the work of Laura Rivas Gagliardi,[1] Brazilian professor who works at the University of Cologne, Germany.
Researching since 2023, Laura Gagliardi has also collected documents about the police trial targeting Anatol Rosenfeld and his anti-Nazi activism, as well as others about his life, studies and activities in Berlin, as well as his escape to Brazil. See the details in the interview below, given especially to the website A Terra é Redonda, represented by the writer and journalist Flávio Aguiar.
How did you find out about Anatol Rosenfeld, or how did Anatol Rosenfeld find out about you?
Laura Gagliardi – My first contact with the work of Anatol Rosenfeld was as a student of Literature and, later, as a researcher of the work of Roberto Schwarz, but the starting point for my current work on Anatol was an invitation to participate in a Congress here in Germany on Jewish Culture and Literature in the Portuguese-Speaking World. When preparing my speech for the Congress, I was inspired by Roberto Schwarz's article, published in Piauí magazine, No. 85, in October 2013, “On the roller coaster of the century”. Thanks to him I reached the volume of chronicles Anatol Rosenfeld “on the road”, published in 2006 by Editora Perspectiva.
This volume, organized by Nanci Fernandes, has an introduction by her and Jacó Guinzburg, as well as an autobiographical preface by Anatol himself, with a lot of information about him, citing various documents. It was a surprise to me, because Anatol Rosenfeld's life has always been shrouded in mystery. Out of curiosity, I started checking some information in the preface and discovered that Anatol Rosenfeld's archive was housed in the Casa do Povo, in São Paulo, in the Bom Retiro neighborhood. I already lived in Germany, but I was in São Paulo on vacation. This happened in 2023.
I was very well received at Casa do Povo and they made available to me all the material they have, a treasure, even considering that this material still needs, due to lack of resources, adequate archival treatment and definitive cataloging. At Casa do Povo, the decisive discovery was that Anatol Rosenfeld actually had two first names, Anatol Herbert. And that in Germany he always lived as Herbert, not as Anatol. He became Anatol in Brazil. Anatol was not a war name or a pseudonym; it was one of his registered names that, for some reason, he had not used in Germany.
I thus had the key to the research in Berlin: to look for the name Herbert Rosenfeld. If someone searched for “Anatol” in Germany, they would find nothing, because here he was Herbert.
Where was Anatol born? How did he come to Berlin? What did he do in Berlin?
Laura Gagliardi – This is a good question because it touches on a crucial point in the aura of mystery surrounding Anatol Rosenfeld’s life. Brazilian sources, copied so far in Germany itself, have always said that he was born in 1912, in Berlin. Perhaps this idea arose from this autobiographical text by Anatol Rosenfeld, which is in the Casa do Povo, and was reproduced in the volume on the road, where he states that he is “originating” from Germany. He was very precise in his choice of word because he states that he “would have come” from Germany, not that he was “a native” of that country. 1912 is the date on which his family came to Berlin.
The documents I found here show that he was born in 1910 in a town called Przemyśl, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918 but is now in Poland. In the Polish Public Archives in Warsaw, which keeps local birth records, including those from Przemyśl, I found the birth certificate of Anatol Herbert Rosenfeld. In 1912 the family moved to Berlin, so when he was two years old. Between 1914 and 1936, the family lived in the same Berlin neighborhood, Steglitz, where Anatol attended schools and did gymnastics, especially long jump.
According to his obituary, written by Arnold von Buggenhagen, Anatol would have studied medicine for two years, probably in 1928 and 1929, before moving on to study philosophy at what is now Humboldt University. His last semester of enrollment was in the academic year of 1934; he was retired at the beginning of 1935 for not having enrolled again. Furthermore, according to a letter I found from his great friend Kurt Maier to the aforementioned Buggenhagen, Anatol Rosenfeld was active in the political movement. Reichsbanner, a clandestine arm of the Social Democracy (SPD). And he was already publishing texts as a fiction writer, especially in a newspaper that was very famous at the time, which was called Vossische Zeitung, founded by Friedrich Voss in 1721. The newspaper closed its doors in 1934. Intellectuals such as Lessing in the XNUMXth century, Theodor Fontane in the XNUMXth century, and Kurt Tucholsky and Walter Benjamin in the XNUMXth century wrote for it.
What did you find in terms of texts by and about Anatol Rosenfeld?
Laura Gagliardi – In addition to the texts published in Vossische Zeitung, here in Germany I found the case brought against Anatol Rosenfeld by the Berlin Criminal Police. He was charged with theft at a railway station and resisting arrest in August 1936. The theft charge seems evidently trumped up, which is made clear by the fact that it was dropped, leaving only the charges of resisting arrest and of having made propaganda against the Third Reich, a crime called Gräuelpropaganda, “horror propaganda”, a term used by the Nazis to characterize what they considered to be lies about the Third Reich.
This last charge was already a political crime, which violated the duties of a foreigner, which was Anatol Rosenfeld's legal status under the laws of the Third Reich. What is most surprising about this court case, which has been preserved in its entirety, is that the defense letter written by Anatol Rosenfeld's lawyer in October 1936 enclosed an academic paper that Anatol Rosenfeld had submitted to the university in 1933, entitled Lessing und der Sturm und Drang. The lawyer decided to attach this academic paper of almost 100 pages to prove that the accusation of theft was absurd, given that Anatol Rosenfeld was a university student preparing for his doctorate with an academic life ahead of him. This paper was attached by the lawyer with the evaluation signed by the professor, who gave him the grade of very well, the highest on the scale.
What can be said about this text whose theme is Sturm und Drang? Is it a doctoral thesis, is it a thesis project? Would it be a preliminary version of the thesis? A draft?
Laura Gagliardi – In Brazil, people have always known about this thesis, but they only knew that it dealt with German Romanticism. There is strong evidence that this academic work I found is a doctoral thesis. First, because of its length. It is very unlikely that a final year paper would be so long. Furthermore, at that time, doctoral theses were actually that long. Second, because the text has the structure and format of a doctoral thesis. It has a title page, summary, introduction, development, conclusion and bibliography.
More than anything, he discusses an issue with strong theoretical repercussions: the limits of the opposition between Enlightenment, represented in the figure of Lessing, and the movement Sturm und Drang, traditionally considered irrationalist, contrary to the supposed Enlightenment rationalism. However, the strongest evidence of all is in this letter I mentioned from Maier to Buggenhagen. In it, Maier states that Anatol had the thesis ready, and cites, in quotation marks, that is, exactly, its title “Lessing und der Sturm und Drang”, adding that Anatol Rosenfeld did not actually deliver it as such.
This information is confirmed by the arguments of Anatol Rosenfeld's defense attorney, who says that his client had to interrupt his doctorate in 1933 because he was Jewish. I believe that the fact that his potential advisor, Julius Petersen, who had given the text the highest grade in 1933, declared himself a Nazi sympathizer and published, in 1934, a seminal work that associated German Literary Theory with Nazi principles: “Nostalgia for the Third Reich in German Poetry and Saga” must have also contributed to Anatol Rosenfeld not handing it in.
Is the text relevant to anyone reading it today? Do you see any connection between it and Anatol Rosenfeld's intellectual activity in Brazil?
Laura Gagliardi – The thesis certainly has value as a historical document, but it also has value in itself. It shows how Anatol’s Brazilian work has a very solid foundation in the training he acquired in Germany. Thanks to this document and the fictional texts, we can speak of a German work and a Brazilian work by Anatol Rosenfeld. What Anatol Rosenfeld developed in Brazil was born in Germany, something that was already known, but now has a concrete source and form. His elaborations on the basic concepts of Literary Theory, for example, were generated when he wrote the thesis.
Furthermore, its theme, the debate on the Sturm und Drang and its relationship with Enlightenment, especially from the perspective of theater – that is, the discussion about the three Aristotelian unities, the notion of genius and literary form, the effect of the theatrical work on the spectator – remains open, always stimulated by new contributions. Anatol Rosenfeld's text constitutes yet another of these contributions and, in fact, takes an original and unique position through the considered hypothesis it develops, announcing a dialectical understanding between literary form and history.
This is an important and timely text, written in transparent, objective prose that complies with the German academic protocol for obtaining a doctorate, but with a subtle, sometimes ironic and very pleasant style: the prose of a writer. Let us consider the situation of Anatol Rosenfeld: a Jew, who was born outside Germany, and who needed to demonstrate, with his thesis, that he had mastered German culture, history and language.
Anatol Rosenfeld had to leave in a hurry, that is, he fled Germany in 1936. What happened?
Laura Gagliardi – As I mentioned, the criminal case dates back to August 1936. Anatol Rosenfeld was arrested and handcuffed in public, although he was later released. His lawyer argued that he resisted arrest because the police officers were not in uniform. In fact, he resisted arrest by shouting to the people around him, “I am being kidnapped because I am a Jew,” which allowed him to be charged with defaming the Third Reich.
After being released, Anatol Rosenfeld was summoned to appear before the police on November 14, 1936, but he sent a letter on that date, saying that he was ill and could not attend. According to the court records, Anatol Rosenfeld had left on November 18 to study abroad for a year. In fact, realizing that the noose was closing in, on November 12 he had already purchased a ticket to the port of Santos, in Brazil.
How did he get to Brazil?
Laura Gagliardi – In December of that year, a second letter that Anatol sent to the police states that he “had gone to America” with the intention of completing his doctorate, arguing that he might not be able to complete it in Germany due to the charges brought against him. He left Germany and boarded a French steamer called Kerguelen, of the French company Chargeurs Réunis, in the Belgian port of Antwerp, on December 1, arriving in Santos on December 28, 1936, in the company of many other Jews, whom the official records of his arrival in Santos distinguished from the other passengers.
What will or could happen with all this material you found? Is there any interest in sharing it? How?
Laura Gagliardi – I am currently trying to clarify the issue of copyright, since Anatol Rosenfeld left no descendants or ascendants, nor does he have any known collateral relatives. This is important because I already have a publishing contract with the German publisher De Gruyter, currently one of the leading publishers of academic works. The book with Anatol Rosenfeld’s doctorate should be released in early 2026, with an introduction by me and the reproduction of some of the documents from the criminal case. As soon as possible, I intend to translate the volume and publish it in Brazil.
From this material that you are gathering, what profile would you draw for, let's say, “young Anatol”?
Laura Gagliardi – I don’t think there is a “young Anatol” or a “German Anatol” alongside a “mature” and “Brazilian” Anatol. The research I am doing aims to reconstruct his thinking, his trajectory and his work in a more comprehensive dimension. I did not know Anatol Rosenfeld personally and at no time did I want to invade the privacy that he preserved throughout his life. I see in these documents the testimony of a generation, of a dramatic historical moment, whose importance goes beyond the individual figure of Anatol Rosenfeld, since the legal proceedings against him also bear witness to a history that concerns us to this day. I also believe that, with these documents, the understanding of his intellectual and political role and his human figure is broadened and completed.[2]
* Flavio Aguiar, journalist and writer, is a retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP. Author, among other books, of Chronicles of the World Upside Down (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/48UDikx]
Notes
[1] Laura Rivas Gagliardi is an assistant professor at the Luso-Brazilian Institute (PBI) at the University of Cologne, Germany. Between 2021 and 2024 she developed the postdoctoral project “New perspectives on postcolonial theory: on history and knowledge in Brazilian literary studies”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). She holds a master's and a doctorate in Romance Literature from the Free University of Berlin and a bachelor's degree in Portuguese-French Literature from the University of São Paulo. She is the author of Literaturgeschichte und Ideologie: Ferdinand Wolf's literaturpolitisches Projekt Le Brésil littéraire (1863) {Literary history and ideology: Ferdinand Wolf's political-literary project in Literary Brazil (1863)} (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). Organized the German translation of A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism, by Roberto Schwarz (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), writing a critical introduction for the volume. He participated in the discussion group “Anatol Rosenfeld: Mediation and Translation between Brazil and Germany” alongside Maud Meyzaud and Flavio Aguiar, with mediation by Susanne Klengel.
[2] Zinka Ziebell and Jorge Grespan collaborated on the interview.
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