Horst Schröder, schroeder@horst-schroeder.com
CH-492
Bilthoven, 6 september 2010
Dear Mr. Horst Schröder,
Excuse me for writing in the English language to you. You could respond in German if you wish.
On my website www.meijenfeldt.nl I pay some attention to Max Meyerfeld. He is not related to me, but perhaps his greatgrandfather was allowed to use the family name of one of my ancestors.
Recently I found your website with an interesting start of the biography of him. Do you have a planning to finish this? You start with a lot of family information that corresponds with my information. Could you already inform me if his death in Berlin-Schöneberg 3 October 1940 is right? Of course I am interested in a draft of the continuation of the story, if you have.
I would like to thank you in advance for the trouble taken.
Kind regards,
Hugo von Meijenfeldt
19 september 2010
Dear Mr von Meijenfeldt,
Thank you for your interest in Max Meyerfeld and apologies for this late reply: I have not been able to discover your reference to MM on your website!
Yes, the date 3 Oct. 1940 is correct with regard to MM’s death.
I have no definite plans as how to proceed with my work on Meyerfeld. I can only give him my undivided attention on and off, between research work on Oscar Wilde.
A few days ago I completed my bibliography of MM’s theatre reviews for 1922-1925, and a friend has put the thing on my website.
Towards the end of this year I hope to continue the biography of MM and write a few paragraphs about his two semesters at the University of Strassburg.
Meanwhile you will perhaps find the attached short bio useful which I published in The Wildean, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society (London), no. 31 (July 2007).
Best wishes,
Horst Schröder
Max Meyerfeld was born on 26 September 1875 in Giessen, a small town north of Frankfurt, where he also went to school. In the summer term of 1894 he matriculated at the university of his home town to study modern languages. Half a year later he left Giessen and continued his studies at the University of Strasbourg. Towards the end of 1895 Meyerfeld changed his alma mater again and went to Berlin where he remained all his life and where he completed his university education in 1898 with a Ph.D. thesis on Robert Burns.i
He then set up as a literary critic, writing essays and book reviews of English literature as well as theatre criticism. In 1900 he became the Berlin theatre correspondent of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, an office which he held for more than thirty years.ii
But Meyerfeld, very quickly, also made his name as a translator: of George Moore, John Millington Synge, John Galsworthy, and, in particular, of Oscar Wilde. For his translations of Wilde, his friendship with Robert Ross, whom he met for the first time in the spring of 1904, was certainly instrumentaliii: almost on the spot Ross authorised Meyerfeld to bring out The Duchess of Padua (1904), though the play had not as yet been properly published in the original. Another two similarly authorised editions followed soon afterwards: De Profundis (1905; enlarged edition 1909) and The Florentine Tragedy (1906/1907). In 1909 Meyerfeld enlarged his list of Wildeana still further by issuing Ästhetisches und Polemisches, a collection of short pieces, taken from volumes no. XI and XIV of Ross’s Collected Edition of 1908 and comprising ‘The English Renaissance of Art’, ‘Lecture to Art Students’, the letters to the press with regard to Dorian Gray, the two letters to the Daily Chronicle on prison life, and La Sainte Courtisane. Then there was a long break caused by the First World War and the death of Robert Ross (Oct. 1918). But in 1925 Meyerfeld went into print again by publishing – authorised by Vyvyan Holland – the ‘first unabridged edition’ of De Profundis, now renamed Epistola in Carcere et Vinculis.iv The same year also saw Meyerfeld’s last contribution to Wilde studies with the edition of Letzte Briefe, Wilde’s post-prison letters to Robert Ross, which had first been published under the title After Reading (1921) and After Berneval (1922) and to which were now added, again authorised by Vyvyan Holland, another thirty-three letters as yet unpublished.v
Among Meyerfeld’s English friends in the 1920s were Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell and Siegfried Sassoon, whose writings Meyerfeld promoted in various literary periodicals.vi On 8 September 1927, Sassoon’s 41st birthday, the three men, accompanied by Nellie Burton (d. 1935), the legendary housekeeper of 40 Half Moon Street, visited Meyerfeld in Berlin.vii A photograph taken on the occasion is the only picture I know of Meyerfeld.viii
When the Nazis came to power, Meyerfeld stayed on, probably assuming, like so many others, that what happened was only a passing nightmare. For some time he continued to write his theatre reviews for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, but with less and less frequency. In the curriculum vitae attached to his Ph.D. thesis, Meyerfeld had stated that his denomination was Protestant. Unimpressed by this, the Authors Directory now registered his name as Max Israel. Still, his death on 3 October 1940 at a Berlin hospital was a natural death.ix His life still needs to be written.x
i Curriculum vitae in Max Meyerfeld, Quellenstudien zu Robert Burns, Ph.D. thesis Berlin 1898, n.p.
ii See E.K. (Eduard Korrodi [1885-1955]), ‘Dreißig Jahre M.M.’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, no. 2256, 21 Nov. 1930, [p. 1].
iii See Max Meyerfeld, ‘Robert Ross’, Das literarische Echo 21, no. 13 (1 April 1919), coll. 779-785.
iv For the various editions (both in their English and German forms) of De Profundis, see my article ‘The Importance of Reading Max’ (The Wildean 28 [Jan. 2006], pp. 79-83).
v On one occasion, it may be added in passing, his interest in Wilde inspired Meyerfeld to write a one-act play on Oscar, called Robert Anstey (1912).
vi See, for example, the January 1925 issue of Die Literatur, edited and introduced by Max Meyerfeld (vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 193-194, 201-206, 212-218).
vii Meyerfeld included Nellie Burton in his portrait gallery of English people (1924), calling her facetiously ‘Dame Nellie’, in allusion to the opera singer Dame Nellie Melba (‘Englische Menschen’, Die Neue Rundschau 35, pt. 2, no. 11 [Nov. 1924], pp. 1151-1179). Reference was made to this – though Meyerfeld’s name was not mentioned – in Nellie Burton’s obituary: ‘Miss Burton of Half Moon Street’, Manchester Guardian, no. 27793, 11 Oct. 1935, p. 10.
viii National Portrait Gallery, The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s (London 1994), p. 203.
ix Death certificate of the registry office of Berlin-Schöneberg, dated 4 October 1940.
x In When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971), Judith Kerr, the daughter of Meyerfeld’s friend and colleague Alfred Kerr (1867-1948), has given us a charming pen-portrait of Meyerfeld in the character of Onkel Julius. In contrast to his model, though, Onkel Julius commits suicide in the end.