Oskar Maria Graf - Life

Life

Graf was born in Berg, Kingdom of Bavaria, as the ninth child of master baker Max Graf and his wife Therese (née Heimrath), a farmer's daughter. Beginning in 1900, he went to the public school in Aufkirchen — part of the community of Berg — located in the picturesque landscape around Lake Starnberg near Munich. After his father died in 1906, he learned the profession of baker and worked for his brother Max, who had taken over their father's bakery.

In 1911, hoping for an existence as a poet, he fled to Munich to escape his brother's maltreatment of him. He joined Bohemian circles and survived with little jobs such as post office helper or lift boy. In 1912 and 1913, he traveled as a vagabond in Ticino and in northern Italy.

On December 1, 1914, he was drafted for military service. A year later, in 1915, the magazine Die Freie Straße (in English: "Free road" or "Free street") published one of his tales for the first time. In 1916, Graf was nearly sentenced to jail for refusing a command. However, after 10 days of a hunger strike, he was taken to a psychiatric hospital and dismissed from the military.

On May 26, 1917, he married Karoline Bretting. One year later, their daughter Annemarie, called Annamirl, (June 13, 1918–2008) was born. In the beginning of the same year, Oskar Maria Graf was arrested for participating in an ammunition worker's strike. He also met the woman who later became his second wife, Mirjam Sachs, sister of Manfred George and cousin of Nelly Sachs. In 1919, Graf was arrested again for participating in revolutionary movements in Munich—compare with Bavarian Soviet Republic.

In 1920, he was active as a dramaturg at the working class theater Die neue Bühne ("The New Stage"), until in 1927, he realized a literary breakthrough with his autobiographical oeuvre Wir sind Gefangene ("We are prisoners"), which allowed him to live as a freelance author.

On February 17, 1933, he traveled to Vienna to lecture, a trip which began his voluntary exile. Graf's books were not destroyed during the Nazi book burning then taking place, rather were recommended reading. As a result, on May 12, 1933, he published in the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung ("Worker's Newspaper") his famous anti-Nazi appeal, Verbrennt mich! ("Burn me!"). He felt abused by Nazis because of misunderstood völkisch content.

A year later, in 1934, his books were prohibited in Germany. On February 16, he emigrated to Brno in Czechoslovakia. On March 24, Graf was expatriated by the Third Reich. He left Brno to take part in the First Congress of Socialist Writers in Moscow.

In 1938, he left Europe without his wife and child via the Netherlands, arriving in the United States, where he settled in New York City in July. Mirjam Sachs followed him, but his wife and child remained in Germany. In October 1938, he was appointed president of the German American Writers Association. In 1942, he founded with Wieland Herzfelde and other emigrated German writers a publishing house (Aurora-Verlag, New-York, succeeding Malik-Verlag. His first wife agreed to a divorce in 1944, allowing Graf and Sachs to get married.

In 1958, Graf received his United States citizenship and he set out on a journey to Europe for the first time after World War II.

In 1960, "in recognition of his uncompromising spiritual attitude," he was awarded the honorary degree of doctor by Wayne State University in Detroit. In 1962, he was awarded the Honorary Prize of Munich "in appreciation of his important literary works".

Graf died in 1967 in New York. A year after his death, his urn was buried in the cemetery "Alter Bogenhausener Friedhof" in Munich.