Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
This archive contains the papers of writer and journalist Robert Lucas (formerly Ehrenzweig), who came to the UK as an exile from Austria in 1934. It includes, in series 1, records of RL’s work in and relating to theatre in Austria prior to his exile, such as scripts and photographs of political cabaret productions by the Politische Kabarett in Vienna in the late 1920s and early 1930s; the production of RL’s play Das grosse Festspiel at the Second International Workers' Olympiad in Vienna in 1931 and a complete set of the Austrian theatre journal RL edited, Die politische Bühne. Series 2 and 3 contain records mainly created in the course of RL’s activities as a writer and editor for radio. From 1940 until 1967 he was employed as a scriptwriter for the BBC’s German Service, and the archive holds over 70 scripts for wartime and post-war feature programmes. In series 2, which relates to RL’s activities during the Second World War, there are scripts, correspondence and documents relating to the reception and post-war publication of his best-known and most successful radio propaganda creation, Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal, an anti-Nazi satire which was broadcast by the BBC throughout the war to German-speaking Europe. There are also scripts of the other Features programmes RL wrote at this time, such as the series Vormarsch der Freiheit, as well as material he gathered on a research trip he made to Vienna on behalf of the BBC in 1946. Series 3 contains further BBC German Service scripts by RL but those in this series are mainly from the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to the scripts, there is a file of BBC German Service staff photographs, mainly from the post-war period but with a small number probably dating from the early 1940s. Scripts RL wrote in the post-war period for German, Austrian and Swiss radio stations are also in this series. Series 4 contains typescripts and drafts of articles RL wrote for Austrian, German, Swiss and British newspapers and journals through the course of his career as a journalist, from the late 1920s until 1983, a year before his death. Most notably, these were articles for the Austrian Arbeiterzeitung in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and for Die Zeit, Die Welt and Sie und Er in the post-war period. Series 5 contains his annual diaries dating from 1940 until 1982, and in series 6 there are drafts (in notebook and loose pages, manuscript and typescript) of short prose fiction works, drama and verse written by RL in his youth and later life. Series 7 comprises reviews, correspondence and (draft) scripts of plays RL wrote after settling in the UK. These include the play script, publicity material and newspaper reviews of his adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which was performed in London, Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. There are also scripts and related records of two further plays that he wrote: Man bites Dog (in 1947) and Die Mohocks kommen (1976-1983). Series 8 contains typescripts and related research material from around 1966 for what appears to be an unpublished novel, Der leere Himmel, and series 9 holds correspondence, publicity material and reviews relating to RL’s biography of Frieda von Richthofen (Frieda Lawrence, the wife of D.H. Lawrence), which was published in Germany, the UK, the USA and Japan between 1972 and 1974. Correspondence between Robert Lucas and various family members, friends and acquaintances, including a number of figures known for their cultural, musical, literary or scientific achievements can be found in series 10. This includes letters from novelist and poet Naomi Mitchison, architect Victor Gruen and the pianist Alice Carrard (a distant relative of Ida Lucas), as well as anti-fascist activist Ella Lingens. Series 11 holds a range of personal and official documents including certificates, passports, insignia, contracts and some work-related correspondence. It includes a number of items concerning the wider families of RL and his wife Ida Lucas (nee Klamka). Finally, there is a small number of miscellaneous items in series 12, including some ink drawings by the toy maker Yootha Rose.
The records in this archive have been ordered into the following series: 1: pre-emigration political theatre work; 2: Second World War activities; 3: post-war radio journalism; 4: print journalism (both pre- and post-emigration); 5: diaries; 6: draft scripts of drama, short stories and verse; 7: dramatic works; 8: drafts of an published novel, Der leere Himmel; 9: biography of Frieda von Richthofen; 10: correspondence; 11: personal records and 12: miscellaneous. As far as possible, the principle of original order was followed to create these series, and where it was necessary to create more coherent groupings of material, chronological order was also taken into account.
Donated by Robert Lucas's sons David and John Lucas
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
This Archive forms one of the Exile Studies collections acquired through the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies at the Institute for Modern Languages Research.
Catalogued online (click on the "contains" icon below). A pdf copy is attached to this description.
Copies may be made of the material in this collection, subject to an assessment of the material’s condition by the Archivist and on the understanding that the copies are made for the sole purposes of non-commercial research or private study. The University of London does not own the copyright of the material in this collection and users intending to publish any part of it must seek permission from both the joint donors of the collection, David Lucas (davidlucas1000@aol.co.uk) or John Lucas (johnlucas63@gmail.com) and, where applicable, from any other copyright holder(s). Copyright of the material written by Robert Lucas in the course of his employment by the BBC rests with the BBC, to which applications must be made for permission to use the material in any published form. Copyright of all other material written by Robert Lucas rests with David Lucas and his brother John Lucas. Responsibility for identifying all other copyright holders lies with the user. Two accruals were received in March 2017 and February 2018, with accession numbers 2017.4 and 2018.2.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Includes records of political cabaret (Politische Kabarett) productions by the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe, of which Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas, RL) was a leading member; records of the mass spectacle written by RL for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Second International Workers' Olympiad in Vienna in 1931; the typescript of the revue 'Die neue Büchse der Pandora', performed before members of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, written by RL and Ernst Fischer; and a complete set of the political theatre journal edited by RE, Die politische Bühne. For records of RL's other journalistic work in Austria prior to his emigration, see RLU 4.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
The Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe (socialist performance group) was formed by young members of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (then the SDAPDÖ) in December 1926. The group created their own political cabaret troupe, known as the Politische Kabarett, which staged 13 productions between 1926 and 1933, when SDAPDÖ activities were curtailed by the Austrofascist Dollfuss regime. The Politische Kabarett productions consisted of sketches and songs linked together by a Conferencier (or compère). Scripts were written jointly and no individual author was named [but from early 1929, when Jura Soyfer joined the group, it was probably he and Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) who wrote the texts]. This sub-series contains scripts, photographs and newspaper articles of reviews relating to the productions. It also includes the script of a political cabaret performance given by the same group at an internal SDAPDÖ event in Czartoriskyschlössel in July 1926.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Script entitled 'Politisches Kabarett. Robert Ehrenzweig', dated 4 July 1926. It was performed at the Czartoriski-Schlössel in Vienna's 18th district, where the left-wing Achtzehner group of the Social Democratic Party of Austria was based. The cabaret was written and produced by one of two successor theatre groups to the Rote Spielleute troupe, which had itself been formed on educational holiday camps run by the Verband Sozialistischer Mittelschüler in 1925. The troupe performing at Czartorisky-Schlössel named themselves the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe later in 1926. This script is annotated by hand as follows: Dr Franz Urbach in Freundschaft, Robert Ehrenzweig Weihnacht 1927. Previously in RLU/Box7/File4.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Bound German-language play script of Denken Verboten! Eine Politische Revue. [10th programme of the Politische Kabarett series of productions, associated with the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe Wien. First performed 8 March 1931]. No author given. Previously in RLU/Box1/File2.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
German-language scripts of scenes 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and the final scene (9?), as well as the text of the Schlusslied für Putsch, from Warum? Darum! [11th programme of the Politische Kabarett productions, associated with the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe Wien. First performed 13 December 1931.] No author given. Previously in RLU/Box7/File4 and RLU/Box7/File10b.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
39 b/w photographic prints of stage and backstage shots of productions of Politische Kabarett, Wien, and 3 newspaper cuttings from the Arbeiterzeitung of reviews of performances (1929). Some of the photographs are captioned on the verso as follows: 'The girls of the Living Newspaper; Gret[l/e?] Prucha[?] – Viktor Grünbaum. Duett Wiener Stimmen'; 'Capitalist'; and 'Editorial office of a Fascist newspaper'. However, the majority of the photographs do not have captions. The photographs show scenes such as a group of female actors holding a row of flags spelling Klugolin, a man in a top hat holding a large poster board with a single solitary question mark on it; 3 (male) actors on stage, each holding a board with a single solitary S; and female actor holding up a human-sized replica of an Austrian schilling. Previously in RLU/Box18/File1.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Records relating to the mass spectacle written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas), Das grosse Festspiel (or Das Festspiel der Viertausend), performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Second International Workers' Olympiad in Vienna, held 19-25 July 1931. There were three summer International Workers' Olympiads, held 1925, 1931 and 1937, organised by the Socialist Workers' Sport International, based in Lucerne in Switzerland. Around 260,000 spectators watched the 1931 pageant, which presented the story of proletarian liberation from the Middle Ages to the present and involved 4000 performers. This sub-series includes a narrative summary of the plot, a directions booklet for participants, photographs and newspaper and journal reviews of the spectacle.
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Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
12 page loose leaf German-language prose summary (untitled) of each of 12 scenes in the mass spectacle play, Das grosse Festspiel, written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) and performed at the Second International Workers' Olympiad in 1931. Previously in RLU/Box1/File6.
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Printed instruction booklet for participants in the mass spectacle, Das grosse Festspiel, written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) at the Second International Workers' Olympiad in 1931. Includes a play script with stage directions and costume guidelines. Published by Vorwärts. Previously in RLU/Box1/File6.
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Newspaper cuttings from Das kleine Blatt and other Austrian newspapers mainly of reviews of Das grosse Festspiel written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) for the Second International Workers' Olympiad in Vienna in 1931 but also of other articles by RE. Previously in RLU/Box1/File6.
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2 copies of Berichte zur Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte ed. by Nikolaus Hovorka, Vol 5, c.1931, containing a report on Das grosse Festspiel written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) for the Second International Workers' Olympiad in Vienna in 1931. Previously in RLU/Box12/File22.
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10 b/w photographs of Robert Lucas's play Das grosse Festspiel at the Second International Workers’ Olympiad and preparations for it in Vienna in 1931. In addition, newspaper clippings of reviews of the play and another one of celebrations at the 25th Proletarian ‘Sonntagfeier der Jugendlichen im Gspöttgraben’ (1927). Previously in RLU/Box18/File4.
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Retrospective account in English probably written by Robert Lucas for a radio programme or talk. Previously in RLU/Box12/File17.
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Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Playscript entitled ‘Die neue Büchse der Pandora’. Originally entitled ‘Wähle Mensch!’, but this title has been manually crossed through. No author given [but known to have been written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) jointly with Ernst Fischer]. [The play, a revue, was aimed at the political education of members of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, so was probably performed at (an) internal SDAPDÖ event(s) rather than for the public]. With handwritten corrections and amendments. Previously in RLU/Box5/File12.
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Published by the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe (SV) in Vienna in 1932 and 1933. The editor was Robert Lucas. Herta Scheu, wife of Friedrich Scheu, deputy chief editor of the Arbeiterzeitung, worked as the secretary. The first editions were intended to provide support and raw material to the multiple individual drama troupes formed across Austria in the spring of 1932 with the collective name, the Rote Spieler (the Red Players). The Rote Spieler troupes were created at the instigation of the SV, which was a socialist performance group attached to the Social Democratic Party of Austria. The journal also aimed to link together the Rote Spieler troupes with left-wing political cabaret troupes abroad. The Politische Bühne was only available from the address listed inside the paper itself.
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Published in February, beginning of March, beginning of May, and middle of June 1932. [Unlike the later editions in RLU 1/4/2, these four issues were reproduced as hectographic prints and without pagination]. Previously in RLU/Box18/File7.
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12 editions of Die politische Bühne, edited by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). The earliest one is not numbered but is dated July 1936. This follows on the sequence from the volumes represented in RLU 1/4/1. The rest are numbered 1-12 and dated between September 1932 and December 1933. Previously in RLU/Box18/File6.
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Pamphlets and other publications including Austrian Democracy under fire by Otto Bauer (London: Labour Publications Department, 1934), with 4 loose inserts of postcards of the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna and a leaflet Sozialistische Aktion (1936); Der Aufstand der österreichischen Arbeiter by Otto Bauer (Prague: Verlag der Deutschen sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei in der Tschechoslowakischen Republik, 1934); uncovered pages of journal headed Der Weltblick 22 February 1934 No. 8, but in content corrresponding to the same dated edition of 'Die neue Weltbühne', a left-wing journal published in exile in Prague from 1933. There is also a single page annotated Unser Kalender 1933 [assumed to be the calendar of the Social Democratic Party of Austria) on which a poem entitled 'Verwandlung' by Robert Ehrenzweig is printed. Previously in RLU/Box18/File5 and RLU/Box11/File9.
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Copy of a letter addressed to Fräulein Weltman [probably Susanne Eiselt-Weltmann], responding to her questions about the history of the Politische Kabarett, the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the Rote Spieler. Previously in RLU/Box12/File5.
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This series includes individual files of correspondence between Robert (and sometimes also Ida) Lucas and each of the following: RL's friend and anti-Nazi activist Ella Lingens (1976-1984); relatives of Emma Ehrenzweig [RL's mother], the Robinsohn family in Israel (1975-1983); IL's distant relative, the pianist Alice Carrard (1975-1992); RL's friend, the author and journalist Karl Bittmann in Australia (1975-1983); RL's friend, scientist Ernst Schmidt in the USA (1975-1983); and the German collecting society Wort (1983-1984). In addition, there are two files of letters from miscellaneous correspondents. The first includes correspondence with writer Naomi Mitchison (1934-1946); RL's friend in Vienna, Edoardo Gold, giving a detailed account of his experiences with Yugoslavian partisans during the Second World War (1945,1947); and Ella Lingens, reflecting on her experience as a medic in Auschwitz (1946). In addition, the file contains correspondence with multiple different correspondents on the subject of RL's employment in the UK, particularly before his appointment with the BBC in 1938, and his application for naturalisation as a UK citizen and to change his name from Ehrenzweig to Lucas. There are also letters from RL to IL written from Vienna in 1946 when RL was sent on a BBC research trip to the city, as well as letters from the post-war period between RL and multiple correspondents (particularly exile scientists), concerning proposals for talks that he had invited them to give on their specialisms on the BBC's German Service. In the second miscellaneous file, correpondents include BBC broadcaster, Leonard Miall (1982), RL's cousin Walter Kollman (1981) and Viennese lawyer, Heinrich Brodfeld (1981). Besides the correspondence in this series, letters relating to certain specific aspects of RL's activities can be found in other series in the archive, including the following: for correspondence relating to RL's Hirnschal letters see RLU 2/1; for correspondence relating to RL's play The Mohocks are coming, see RLU7/9; for correspondence relating to RL's biography of Frieda Lawrence see RLU 9/2 - RLU 9/5; for correspondence relating to RL's employment with the BBC see RLU 11/17; and for condolence letters following RL's death see RLU 11/12. The files in this series were previously in boxes 5,7,12 and 19.
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Letter from the Gymnasium Hagenmüllergasse and invitation to a farewell party for school Direktor, Dr Karl Mayer. Previously in RLU/Box18/File5.
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Correspondence from a large number of different correspondents, ordered chronologically. Most of it is addressed to Robert Lucas (Robert Ehrenzweig until 1946), although there are one or two items addressed to Ida Ehrenzweig/Lucas or to Oskar Ehrenzweig (RL's brother). Subjects include (but are not limited to): RL's employment and work contacts; RL's application to change his name from Ehrenzweig to Lucas and to naturalise as a British citizen; the production and reception of RL's play adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, directed by Julius Gellner; the birth of RL and Ida Ehrenzweig's (later Lucas's) son John Martin in 1942; scripts by various speakers for broadcast on the BBC's German Service; and the appointment of RL as an MBE in 1966.
Correspondents include
-Naomi Mitchison in London (April-July 1934 and undated [194?3 and 194?6]);
-grandmother of Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) in Bielsko (now Bielsko-Biala) in Poland (14 December 1934);
-Aliens Department at the Home Office, concerning RL's permission to live and work in the UK (October-November 1934, June 1938, April 1939);
-the warden of Toynbee Hall, Dr J.J. Mallon (October 1934, May-August 1938, April-June 1939 and August 1943, October 1946);
-Vernon Bartlett of the News Chronicle (undated, c. 1935);
-the editorial office of the Neue Freie Presse, Vienna (10 November 1937);
-Isobel Cheshire, multiple letters (1938-undated [c. 1958]);
-Lord Addison, M.D., concerning his support for RL's application for permission to change his name from Ehrenzweig to Lucas (April 1938, April-June 1939 and August-September 1942; March, July and November 1946);
-R.W.A. Leeper of the Press Department of the Foreign Office, concerning RL's resignation from the Neue Freie Presse following its Nazification (April 1938);
-Herr Doktor Litauer (28 April 1939):
-Österreichische Journal Actien-Gesellschaft, Vienna (May-July, 1938);
-Rudolf Bing of Glyndebourne Opera (27 May 1938);
-Local Higher Education Committee of Middlesex County Council (6 September 1938);
-the Director of Overseas Services of the BBC, thanking RL for the 'valuable help' he gave during the the 'recent period of crisis' (13 October 1938);
-Catherine Carswell (September 1938, December 1938, 23 December 1942, 12 August [1943], 16 September 1944, 22 December [194?5]-February 1946);
-The Glasgow Herald, concerning a Leader Page article RL was asked to write on relations between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (21 July 1939), congratulating him on the birth of his son (22 December 1942), reception of RL's adaptation of War and Peace) (August 1943);
-E.P. Rugg Solicitors, concerning RL's tenancy of his flat at 134 Havestock Hill (November-December 1939);
-Secretary to the Interned Enemy Aliens Tribunal, Royal Courts of Justice, Home Office, concerning a reference for Leo Freund-Corvin (12 March 1942);
-Curtis Brown publishing bureau, concerning RL's adaptation of War and Peace (March 1943);
-Constance Garnett, concerning RL's drama adaptation of her translation of War and Peace (24 May 1943);
-the Home Office, concerning RL's application for permission to change his name from Ehrenzweig to Lucas (22 July 1942), his application for naturalisation (April, June, July, October and November 1946), Ida Lucas's citizenship (November 1946, January and April 1947;
-Luise [unknown surname] [in Austria?] (June 1945);
-[illegible first name] G[?] Wolf[?] of the BBC, giving a positive review of RL's adaptation of War and Peace (7 August 1943);
-Edoardo Gold in Venice, Italy, describing experiences fighting with Yugoslav partisans and being imprisoned in Venice by the Germans. The letter is addressed to RL and his brother Ossi [Oskar Ehrenzweig] and mentions common acquaintances Kate, Martha and Ernest and Rosner and Lisa, the last of whom has not answered several letters he has sent her. There are two copies of this letter: 1) the original, signed Edi and 2) a copy, annotated by hand as follows: 'Mr Ehrenzweig. If we could get several of this sort of story, it could be well worth while starting the new series you support when we get our new schedule' [signature illegible] (12 October 1945, 8 March 1947);
-[Ella Lingens] in Heilstätte Laas, Post Kötschach, Kärnten, concerning her experiences as a doctor in Auschwitz (5 February, 6 April, 2 May, 16 September 1946);
-Jean [Frew?] (13 May 1946, December 1947);
-Captain W.T. Scott-Elliot, MP, concerning RL's application for naturalisation (May-June, October 1946);
-[illegible name] in Karlovy Vary [then in Czechoslovakia], concerning the fate of the family during the war, addressed to 'my dear aunt', in an envelope address to Madame Sender, O. Ehrenzweig, Long Ditton, Surrey (19 June 1946);
-[Ida Ehrenzweig] in London from RL in Vienna, giving an account of RL's visit in the city for a BBC research trip, listing old friends he had seen there, including Luise, Ernst, Edi [Gold], Hans Weigel, [Edmund?] Weismann, Walter Harnisch, Lisa Gold, Grete Binder (Prucha), [unknown first name] Bamberger, Hede Saxl and mentioning an evening he had spent with Lindley Fraser (29 June and 2 July 1946);
-Volkstheater Wien, concerning RL's adaptation of War and Peace (9 July 1946);
-Iverach McDonald of The Times, concerning RL's application for naturalisation (11 November 1946)
-E. Chain [Sir Ernst Boris Chain] of the University of Oxford, concerning RL's invitation to E Chain to give a talk for the BBC's German Language Service (25 December 1946, 5 May 1947, 10 June 1947);
-R.E Peierls [Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls] of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Didcot, Berkshire, concerning collaboration with RL on a new series of German language radio broadcasts (28 December 1946, 28 January 1947);
-[Anthony?] [unknown surname, possibly Ehrenzweig] to Oskar Ehrenzweig, asking for help getting permissions, visa and employment to enable the writer and his family (wife Mathilde, and children Peter, Natascha and Marie) to come to the UK [from Czechoslovakia?] (undated [?1947]);
-F.A. Paneth [Friedrich Adolf Paneth] of the University of Durham concerning a talk he was writing for the BBC (16 May 1947);
-Theater in der Josefstadt, concerning RL's new comedy [Man Bites Dog – a Comedy in 3 Acts] (9 June 1947);
-E Royalton Kisch & Co. Solicitors, concerning RL's change of name (June, August, October 1947);
-[East German satirical magazine] Eulenspiegel, asking RL for material (3 October 1947);
-O.R. Frisch [Otto Robert Frisch] of Cambridge University, concerning a talk for BBC radio (11 October and 2 December 1947, June 1948, March 1949, July 1959);
-Victor Gollancz, concerning a talk for BBC radio (2 December 1947);
-Liesel Matison [niece of Ida Lucas] of Unley Park, South Australia, to Ida Lucas (April 1948);
-[Ilona Geschmay, Ida Lucas's sister and Liesel's mother] in Adelaide South Australia, to her mother [Karolin Klamka], concerning the latter's planned travel and emigration to Australia from London (2 December 1948);
-P.C. Gordon-Walker [Patrick Chrestien Gordon Walker, Baron Gordon-Walker], of the Commonwealth Relations Office, concerning a script for the BBC relating to the Commonwealth (21 January 1949);
-Renald Fraser of the International Council of Scientific Unions, concerning a script [for the BBC] (15 October 1949);
-to Gustav [no surname given] from Robert Lucas, giving an account of his life over the past few years since he last saw Gustav, and asking for news (18 October 149);
-E[rwin] Schröderinger of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, concerning two talks he would give for broadcast on the BBC's German Service and commenting on RL's remarks on the privileged classes and the spiritual development of mankind (23 November 1949);
-[to Ida Lucas's mother and sister in Australia?] from RL, concerning the restitution of the family's property with the help of a lawyer (Dr Brodfeld) in Vienna (December 1949);
-Alfred Andersch of Hessischer Rundfunk, inviting RL to give a radio talk on the English novel (4 May and 9 August 1950);
-Viktor Grünbaum (later Grün) in Vienna (undated [1950?] and USA (October 1950, July 1952 and March 1953);
-Jean and Andrew Frew in Market Drayton, Shropshire (February 1949, September 1951) and in Charmouth, Dorset (undated [c. 1952] and January 1953);
-Rubenstein, Nash & Co. Solicitors, concerning the purchase of 4 Liverpool Road by the Lucases (November 1950);
-between RL in Austria and Ida Lucas in the UK (March-April 1951);
-[Siegfried Joseph] Charoux (May 1951);
-Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, requesting help with a radio programme about Europe (January 1953);
-Hugh Gaitskell, commenting on an article by RL about HG (18 October 1954);
-Enid Blyton, arranging a meeting and describing the projects she was then involved in (6 December 1955);
-Denis Healey, concerning the Parliamentary Labour Party's position on defence and nuclear weapons (undated [c. 1956]);
-Lilly Sauter in Innsbruck, concerning Hungarian refugees in Austria following the crushing of the Hungarian uprising by the Soviet Union in November 1956 (24 November 1956);
-Violet Bonham Carter, concerning an article by RL (September 1958);
-Harold Nicolson, concerning an introduction [to an unknown work] written by RL (October 1958);
-Professor J[ózef] Rotblat, agreeing to contribute to a series of radio programmes on atomic energy (May 1959);
-Leonard Cheshire of the Ryder Cheshire Foundation for the Relief of Suffering, concerning an extract for a talk [no further details given] and the indifference in Germany towards the Foundation's work [which included the provision of homes for concentration camp survivors] (16 July 1959);
-Robert [?], Bishop of Exeter, agreeing to contribute to a radio programme on atomic war (July 1959);
-Dr Sunario, Indonesian Ambassador, thanking RL for sending him a tape with his recording of his contribution to [the radio programme/series] 'The Corps Diplomatique' (21 September 1960);
-Vyvyan Holland, concerning the fee for his proposed contribution to a BBC radio programme on Oscar Wilde (February 1961);
-Mark Bonham Carter, accompanying a handwritten response to a series of questions about the Liberal Party (20 April 1962);
-P.C. Gordon-Walker, concerning an interview he was to give for a BBC German Service radio programme on the role of the opposition (March 1963);
-Klaus Baron Osten-Sacken (10 July 1964);
-Michael Halls of 10 Downing Street, asking for confirmation that RL would accept the Prime Minister [Harold Wilson]'s proposal to appoint him an MBE (4 May 1966);
-John Lucas, RL's son, of the University of Sussex and RL, congratulating RL on his MBE (10 June 1966);
-multiple members of BBC staff and friends congratulating RL on his MBE including Hugh Greene [Director General] of the BBC and Norman Brook, BBC Chairman; and Hanne and Martin [Hannah Norbert-Miller and Martin Miller] (June 1966);
-and multiple friends and acquaintances beyond the BBC, such as Kate [no surname given] of Wood Green, Walter Wallich of Etheldene Avenue, London (June 1966); and Hugo Zelzer of the Österreichisches Kulturinstitut (June-October 1966).
Previously in RLU/Box5/File13.
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40 letters and 3 postcards, of which around a third are from Ella Lingens to Robert Lucas; the others are from RL to EL. The tone of the letters indicates that RL and EL knew each other well and their letters covered a range of subjects in some depth, including family, friends and acquaintances; health matters, holidays and work; and political and historical developments in Israel, Austria, Poland and elsewhere. Specific events and people discussed include the death of Paul Lazarsfeld (September and December 1976), RL's play [The Mohocks are Coming!] (January and December 1978), the Labour Party (August 1978, May 1979) and RL's membership of the UK's newly formed Social Democratic Party (July 1981), the Austrian referendum on atomic energy in November 1978 (December 1978); EL's Vice-Presidency of the Sigmund-Freud Gesellschaft (December 1981); Kemija Gruen [widow of Victor Gruen, who had died in 1980) (January and February 1982); the Social Democratic Party of Austria (February 1982-June 1983); the Falkland Islands crisis of 1982 (May 1982); and Rosi Kuerti (née Jahoda) and Robert Plank in the USA (August 1982). Previously in RLU/Box7/File1.
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34 letters, of which 19 are addressed to Ida and Robert Lucas and the others are copies of letters sent by them. The correspondents in the Robinsohn family are: 1) Erwin Robinsohn [RL's cousin through the brother [Siegmund] of his mother, Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn)], and his wife, Esther Robinsohn; and 2) Jan Robinsohn [son of Otto Robinsohn, Erwin's brother, who died just before this series of correspondence starts], and his wife Barbara. There are also some letters from Blanka Robinsohn [Otto Robinsohn's widow]. The letters are mainly concerned with news about family members, such as Otto Robinsohn's death, Blanka Robinsohn, a relative in London Kurt Klappholz, and a trip to Israel in 1978 by David Lucas, RL's son. However, the letters also contain discussions of political events in Israel and the Middle East. Previously in RLU/Box19/File2.
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Contains 9 items of correspondence (mainly letters but also also some greetings cards) from Alice Carrard [Ida Lucas's cousin] to Robert and/or Ida Lucas, dated as follows: 2 in 1977, 1 in 1979, 1 in 1980, 3 in 1981, 1 in 1982, 1 in 984. The letters mainly concern family news, travel plans and her professional activities as a pianist. There is also one letter from her son Sandy Carrard dated 15 July 1975, and faxed copies of tributes and messages to Alice Carrard and a photograph on her 95th birthday. Previously in RLU/Box19/File1.
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Correspondence between Robert Lucas and multiple correspondents, including
-Leonard Miall, 2 letters, with an attached typescript of a talk by LM concerning his career in the BBC's European Service [which was previously in RLU/Box6/File8] (June 1982-October 1982);
-Heinrich Brodfeld, a lawyer in Vienna, 10 letters mainly concerning health matters and travel plans (June 1982-August 1983);
-Traut Felgentreff of Kindlerverlag, 2 letters concerning a documentary film by Barbara Gordon (June-July 1980);
-Walter Kollman, RL's cousin in San Francisco, 3 letters, making contact for the first time for 45 years (July-September 1981);
-Yootha Rose, 1 letter, thanking [Robert and Ida Lucas] for the loan of toys for her exhibition (28 January 1976);
-David Matison in Unley Park, Adelaide, Australia, 1 letter concerning family affairs (11 July 1977); and
-Gabi [Gabriella Hajnal, a distant relative of Ida Lucas] in Budapest, concerning family matters and exhibitions of her work (December 1976, December 1977).
Previously in RLU/Box12/File13.
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23 letters and 1 postcard mainly between Robert Lucas and Karl Bittmann in Roseville, Australia, covering family affairs, travel plans and holidays (particularly those to Vienna), current political events and professional activities. The latter includes updates on KB's work with the Viennese Theatre in Sydney, Australia, for which he wrote and performed, and at which the cabaret artist Fredi Durra from Israel also performed. RL and KB exchange news on a number of mutual acquaintances such as Karl Ausch, [Walter] Harnisch, Friedl Scheu, Victor [Grün], Rosi Kuerti, and KB also reports having seen a new [in 1975] Austrian cabaret group in Vienna, Der bunte Wagen, under the direction of Martin Flossman. Previously in RLU/Box7/File2.
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41 letters and 2 greetings cards, dealing mainly with family affairs, travels and health matters. Previously in RLU/Box7/File3.
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Previously in RLU/Box19/File5.
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Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
This series includes official and personal documents relating to a range of aspects of Robert Lucas's life. There are letters confirming his employment by and later dismissal from the Neue Freie Presse (in 1934 and 1938 respectively); contract letters concerning his employment by the BBC (1938-1970); passports, ID cards and building society passbooks belonging to RL himself and Ida Lucas (1930-1995); insignia and related letters awarded to him by the British and Austrian governments (in 1966 and 1981 respectively); and family and other personal and work photographs (other than other relating to the BBC) (1930-c.1976). It also includes a file of records of biographical entries on RL drafted for various literary or other publications and institutions (1941-1984), two files of material relating to RL's death containing obituaries and letters of condolence (1984-1985), and an invitation to RL from group of German POWs in Ascot camp to a performance of scenes from Goethe's Faust (1945). In addition, there are three files of material relating to members of the wider Ehrenzweig and Klamka families, including one of birth, marriage, wedding and residence certificates of various family members (1911-1975), another file of RL's brother's chattels (1969-1989) and a bound and calligraphed book of poems written for RL's mother Emma Robinsohn by her friends between 1890 and 1898. These files were previously in boxes 11,12, 18 and 20.
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The flat in question was at 134 Haverstock Hill, Hampstead, London,where the Ehrenzweigs [later Lucases] lived from 1936 until early 1940. There is also a bill for crockery addressed to Ida Ehrenzweig from the Austria firm Rasper & Söhne, dated April 1934. Previously in RLU/Box20/File6.
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The insignia is enclosed in a red box, with a newspaper cutting from 1982 concerning the award tucked inside. The certificate is accompanied by a letter of congratulations [signature illegible]. Previously in RLU/Box19/File7.
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Includes correspondence relating to his financial affairs and a draft obituary. Previously in RLU/Box12/File4.
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Previously in RLU/Box20/File8.
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Previously in RLU/Box11/File3.
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Previously in RLU/Box11/File4.
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One each for Robert Lucas and Ida Lucas. Previously in RLU/Box11/File5.
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Previously in RLU/Box11/File6.
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Records concerning Robert Ehrenzweig's (later Lucas) employment by the BBC. It includes correspondence relating to his engagement and the employment terms in 1939-1940, and records of his salary and pensions through the course of his employment from his appointment to the position of German translator in March 1939 to his retirement in 1967. There is a typed account by RL from 1963 of how he came to work for the BBC German Service in September 1938 as the translator of the speech by [Neville] Chamberlain following negotiations with Hitler over Czechoslovakia on 27 September 1938; this was the very first broadcast on the BBC's German Service. There are also two BBC German Audience Research reports dated 17 December 1968 and 2 July 1970, and 3 copies of a pamphlet about the BBC's German Service with images of many of the key staff from 1964 (see also RLU 3/1/53). Previously in RLU/Box20/File2.
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26 b/w photographic prints (of which 3 are duplicates) of Robert Lucas and others in a variety of locations and situations, including in Dubrovnik in 1930; Tintagel, Cornwall 1936; interior of his house in Haverstock Hill 1940; outside and at his desk in the Neue Freie Zeitung office of the old Times building in Printing House Square in 1935; outside Buckingham Palace with his wife Ida Lucas and two sons [at the presentation of his MBE in 1966]; at the presentation at the Royal Festival Hall of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize to Geoffrey Shelton for the translation of RL's Frieda Lawrence in 1974; and with Jacob Epstein (undated). There 3 duplicate prints of RL in a group of 4 suited men standing together with a fifth man and a woman both in costume (undated). Previously in RLU/Box11/File8 and RLU/Box20/File4.
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Draft typescripts and copies of biographical entries on Robert Lucas in German and English prepared for reference books and other publications and organisations, such as the Dictionary of International Biography, Who’s Who, Contemporary Authors and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte. The file also contains correspondence concerning the use of RL’s former name (Ehrenzweig) in library catalogues and correspondence concerning an honorary award by the Austrian state in 1982. There is also a typescript of an autobiographical account by RL's brother Oskar Ehrenzweig (1941) and cuttings of and copies of RL’s obituary. Previously in RLU/Box19/File4.
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Tenancy of 134 Haverstock Hill, Hampstead, London, granted to Robert Ehrenzweig [later Lucas] for three years from 1 February 1936 by Cyril George Lyon Bowley of 10 Lawn Road, Hampstead. Previously in RLU/Box12/File3.
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Bound and calligraphed book of poems in German belonging to Emma Robinsohn (later Ehrenzweig, mother of Robert Lucas), written by her friends in Bielitz [now Bielsko] and Rajcza [then both in Austro-Hungary] between 1890 and 1898. Previously in RLU/Box20/File3.
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Official personal documents including birth, marriage, death, residence (Heimatschein), naturalisation, name change and university degree certificates of different members of the Lucas and Klamka families. Includes a letter from the Germany Emergency Committee of the Society of Friends confirming the Klamkas' visa to the UK had been granted (March 1939); a letter from the editors of Das kleine Blatt confirming that Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) had been dismissed from his employment with the paper in 1934 as a result of its political takeover (1957); correspondence concerning a claim for restitution by Ida Lucas for the loss of assets due to political persecution (1964-1968); various wills, deeds and work contracts and agreements. The latter include 1) a contract between Kindler Verlag and Robert Lucas for Frieda von Richthofen (1972); 2) a memorandum of agreement between RL, Julius Gellner and Rodney Phillips concerning the play War and Peace (1942); 3) a memorandum of agreement between RL, Julius Gellner and [theatre producer] Tom Arnold concerning the play War and Peace (1943); 4) 2 contracts between the BBC and Robert Lucas including one marking his permanent employment in 1947 and another one concerning his feature 'The Surprised Newspaper Reader' (1967); and 5) contract letters from industrial companies where RL worked in the earliest years of his working life as a scientist, such as the Pulverfabrik Skodawerke - Wetzler A.G. in Moosbierbaum, Austria (1927). In folder marked 'Important documents'. Previously in RLU/Box18/File2.
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Records of chattels of Oskar Ehrenzweig [brother of Robert Lucas], including photographs and documents relating to their valuation; 2 copies of a text of a talk by OE on etching; and documents created following his death in 1988. Previously in RLU/Box19/File3.
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Letter with terms of employment by the Neue Freie Presse is from Harry P. Smolka (21 September 1934). There is also a letter from the Oesterreichische Journal-Actien-Gesellschaft dated 25 April 1938, dismissing RE from employment due to his Jewish heritage. Previously in RLU/Box18/File3.
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Event was held in April 1945. The invitation includes a programme listing the actors and production team members. Egon Müller-Franken starred as Faust and also directed the production. Previously in RLU/Box12/File18.
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Previously in RLU/Box20/File9.
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[Robert and Ida Lucas's sons attended this school.] Previously in RLU/Box12/File28.
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Previously in RLU/Box20/File1.
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Previously in RLU/Box11/File7.
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There are 6 bonds. The letter is addressed to the Österreichisches Credit-Institut, Vienna. Previously in RLU/Box12/File6.
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See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Includes a letter, an audio recording and 2 sketches by Yootha Rose.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
The loan was for a retrospective exhibition of Yootha Rose's work. Previously in RLU/Box21/File1.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Previously in RLU/Box21/File2.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Banknotes are dated 1902, 1912 and 1928. Receipt is dated 1986. Previously in RLU/Box11/File9.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Flyer for a Van Hauth exhibition at the Galerie Ketterer Münich (?1973); flyer for an exhibition ‘Kabarett und Satire im Widerstand 1933-1945’ at the Verein zur Förderung und Erforschung der antifaschistischen Literatur, Vienna (1985), in which Ida Lucas is noted as having contributed material. Previously in RLU/Box12/File25.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
7" open reel tape, reference LUC-AV-10
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Circumstances of this performance are unknown. Carrard was a relative of Ida Lucas, Robert Lucas's wife. Duration 43 minutes 14 seconds.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
This series contains records relating to the activities of Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas, RL) during and shortly after the Second World War, most of which were connected to his position as a (propaganda) writer for the BBC's German Service. It includes anti-Nazi scripts he wrote for broadcasting on the Service, including his best-known work, Letters from Gefreite Hirnschal (Lance-Corporal Hirnschal); official intelligence reports, propaganda leaflets; records which RL created and gathered during and after his July 1946 research trip to Vienna for the BBC; and material RL submitted to the United Nations War Crimes Commission as evidence of Nazi crimes. There is also a sub-series of audio recordings of BBC wartime broadcasts and post-war anniversary programmes marking the creation of the BBC German Service. The series does not include records of RL's wartime work as a newspaper journalist.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Includes BBC scripts of the Hirnschal Letters series, letters and other records of its reception by radio listeners during and after WW2; correspondence relating to the copyright and post-war publication of some of the letters; and retrospective and academic reflections on the series, its production and impact.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
BBC German Service radio scripts for the satirical Features series 'Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal' by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). Contains 34 of the letters, as follows: no.s 4, 5, 6, 7, 11 from France (undated); 33 from Russia, broadcast 2 March 1942; 35 from Russia, broadcast 28 March 1942; 36 from Russia, broadcast 11 April 1942; 40 from Russia, broadcast 20 June 1942; 41 from Russia, broadcast 4 July 1942; 48 from Russia, broadcast 17 October 1942; 57 from Russia, broadcast 6 March 1943; 60 from Russia, broadcast 3 May 1943; 61 from Russia, broadcast 17 May 1943; 62 from Russia, broadcast 31 May [1943]; 63 from May, broadcast 14 June 1943; 71 from Russia, broadcast 13 December 1943; 72 from Russia, broadcast 3 January 1944; 73 from Russia, broadcast 24 January 1944; 74 from Russia, broadcast 31 January 1944; 75 from Russia, broadcast 14 February 1944; 77 from Russia, broadcast 13 March 1944; 78 from Russia, broadcast 27 March 1944; 79 from Romania, broadcast 10 April 1944 (2 copies); 81 from Romania, broadcast 8 May 1944 (2 copies); 82 from Romania, broadcast 22 May 1944; 85 from the west, broadcast 3 January 1945; 86 from the west, broadcast 10 January 1945; 88 from the west, broadcast 7 February 1945 (2 copies); 89 from the west, broadcast 21 February 1945; 90 from the east of the of the Rhein, broadcast 7 March 1945; 91 from the west, broadcast 21 March 1945; 92 from Germany, broadcast 4 April 1945; and 93 from Germany, broadcast 18 April 1945 (2 copies). The series was produced by J[ulius] Gellner and ran from autumn 1940 to 1945. Previously in RLU/Box6/File.
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See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Includes letters from listeners in Switzerland during the Second World War, reports on listeners in Germany after the war, and newspaper reviews of the publication of some of the Hirnschal letters in 1984 in Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib.
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Letters from BBC German Service listeners in Switzerland (1941-1946) and post-war Germany, including one from Bundeskanzler Konrad Adenauer (1952), about the Hirnschal Letters series. Also internal BBC memoranda with transcripts of comments on the series mainly by individual listeners in Switzerland, France, Luxemburg, Holland and the Czech Republic, as well as one of an interview with a German POW (1942-1945). There is also a memo from C.H. Landon of the News Bureau on the subject of Berlin imitations of BBC programmes, particularly concerning a broadcast from a German station in the USSR zone featuring letters from a retired corporal, Gustav [?Schmarr], to his beloved sister, Amalie (1948). Previously in RLU/Box11/File8.
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Letter from the anti-Nazi resistance group in Holland, Freies Deutschland, Amsterdam, reporting that they had illegally organised a puppet theatre during the German occupation and that they had written and performed a play inspired by the Hirnschal Letters series by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). Accompanying the letter there is an 8-leaf script entitled ‘Der Weihnachtsbrief des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau Amalia’ and marked 'B.v.O' and dated 1943-1945, and a booklet entitled Na "psychologische oorlogsvoering" psychologisch vredeswerk! Over de werkzaamheden der Hollandgruppe "Freies Deutschland" [1945]. Previously in RLU/Box6/File, RLU/Box11/File8 and RLU/Box18/File5.
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Letter from Ulrich Simmerlein, who listened to the Hirnschal Letters series as a child in Germany during WW2. The attachment is US's re-writing of the German fairy tale 'The Pack of Ragamuffins' by the Brothers Grimm, inspired by the Hirnschal Letters. Previously in RLU/Box11/File8.
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Issue no. 1576 of the BBC Monitoring Service publication Germany Day by Day / Deutschlandspiegel. Contains a report on a cabaret-style performance on Radio Wien entitled 'Wiener Kleinkunst', in which reference is made to Gefreiter Hirnschal of the Hirnschal Letters series. Previously in RLU/Box6/File7.
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Contains multiple references to the Hirnschal Letters series. Previously in RLU/Box6/File7.
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Script of a performance at the Wiener Werkel commemorating the Hirnschal Letters series, written by Fritz Feldner. 2 copies. Previously in RLU/Box6/File7.
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Contains an issue of Zukunft (December 1985) and a newspaper cutting from the Arbeiterzeitung Vienna, both with a review of Robert Lucas's Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib!, published in 1984 by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag; also a cutting from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung with a review of the same, published February 1985. The latter was previously in RLU/Box12/File24.
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Correspondence concerning the publication or broadcast of the Hirnschal Letters with various interested parties, including the BBC and numerous publishers. Includes letters from R.Leonard Miall at British Political Warfare Mission in New York (1942); internal BBC memoranda and letters concerning the publication of the Hirnschal Letters and the granting of copyright of to Oprecht and Rózsavölgyi publishers (1946, 1947); 2 letters from publisher Paul Steegemann (1946); a typescript entitled Foreword to Hirnschal Letters by H. Carleton Greene (1946) and correspondence with HCG re publication (1946, 1947); a letter from Rózsavölgyi & Co. publishers (1947); a letter from the Foreign Office concerning a request by the Hungarian newspaper Hirlap to publish the Hirnschal Letters (1947); and letters from Freiheit publishers (1947), Kiepenheuer und Witsch publishers (1960) and Czechoslovakian theatre and literary agency Dilia (1965). Previously in RLU/Box6/File7 and RLU/Box6/File9.
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Mainly correspondence between Robert Lucas and Emil Oprecht concerning the publication of the Hirnschal Letters by Europa Verlag in Zürich in 1945. Previously in RLU/Box6/File10.
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Correspondence between publisher Uwe Naumann and Robert Lucas concerning UN's request for information about the Hirnschal Letters for his doctoral thesis on anti-fascist satire in exile. The folder also documents UN's attempts to find a suitable publisher for a new edition of the Letters, and contains correspondence and a contract with the Fischer Verlag, which published a new edition with a postscript by UN in 1984. The correspondence with the Fischer Verlag includes some discussion over the copyright, and there is some correspondence between Ida Lucas and the Quadriga Verlag in 1988-1989 also relating to copyright and a publication request. Previously in RLU/Box6/File10 and RLU/Box12/File10.
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Correspondence with academics interested in the Hirnschal Letters, as well as transcripts of related talks and writing.
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Letter from the founder and owner of the literary agency, International Literatuur Bureau in Amsterdam, Hein Kohn, with an attached transcription of comments on the significance of the Hirnschal Letters in a book by his brother, the historian Ernest K. Bramsted, entitled 'Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda 1925-1945'. Previously in RLU/Box6.
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Programm of a PEN Centre symposium entitled 1933-1983 - 50 Years German PEN Club Abroad, held at the Goethe Institute London on 5-7 May 1983. The programme lists a lecture by Robert Lucas entitled 'Über den Gefreiten Hirnschal und seine Briefe aus der Arbeit des Londoner Rundfunks 1940-1945'. There are two typescripts of the talk, one with numerous annotations. Previously in RLU/Box6/File4, RLU/Box6/File6, RLU/Box14/File1.
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Letter from Austrian literary specialist Konstantin Kaiser to Ida Lucas mainly concerning the records of Robert Lucas's work which she had lent to him for a touring exhibition 'Kabarett und Satire im Widerstand (1933-1945)'. Previously in RLU/Box12/File19.
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Letter from Gerhard Bauer of the Freie Universität Berlin to Ida Lucas, thanking her for the information she had provided him, and enclosing a copy of a presentation he had given at an exile studies conference in Lincoln/Nebraska, USA, in April 1989, entitled 'Der unverwüstliche Gefreite Hirnschal und die treudeutschen Hörer/innen der BBC. Previously in RLU/Box12/File11.
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Previously in RLU/Box18/File5.
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This sub-series contains recordings of wartime broadcasts of speeches, sketches and songs, as well as post-war programmes made by the BBC and by Austrian radio to mark the anniversary of the founding of the BBC German Service. The anniversary programme are composed of compilations of wartime extracts with commentary by those who were involved in the Service during the war, such as Robert Lucas. There are multiple copies of some of the recordings, some of which appear to be complete broadcasts while others are just extracts.
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Copyright of BBC and others
5" open reel tape reference LUC-AV-11
Extracts from Second World War broadcasts which were used in a programme marking 30 years since the founding of the BBC German Service.
Track 1 00:05-00:39 Friede mit Hitler, niemals!
Track 2 00:43-01:30 Thomas Mann, Deutsche Hoerer! 16 January 1943
Track 3 01:35-03:07 Kurt und Willi episode on women in the Third Reich
Track 4 03:12-04:27 Lili Marlene
Track 5 04:30-07:06 Hitler vs Hitler
Track 6 07:09-09:00 POWs speak: Macht Schluss mit dem Krieg! July 1944
Track 7 09:00-09:15 Clip from unknown radio programme about Kant
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Copyright of the BBC
Read by Hugh Carleton-Greene. Later described by the BBC as a declaration of war. Duration: 39 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
Read by Thomas Mann. Duration: 46 seconds
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Copyright of the BBC
[Kurt was played by Fritz Wendhausen; Willi was played by Peter Illing. The series was written by Bruno Adler with support from Norman Cameron.] Duration: 1 minute 30 seconds. For a complete copy of this programme see RLU/2/11/3/8.
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Copyright of the BBC
Parody of Lili Marlene written for performance by Mannheim on the BBC German Service. Duration: 1 minutes 14 seconds. See also RLU/2/11/4/4.
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Copyright of the BBC
Compiled and arranged by Robert Lucas. This episode was 'chaired' by Charles Richardson (pseudonym for Marius Goring). Duration: 2 minutes 36 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
In this extract a German POW pleads with listeners including his friend Rudi to stop supporting the war. Duration: 1 minutes 51 seconds
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Copyright of the BBC
No individual access copy for this track.
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Copyright of the BBC
3 cassette tapes, reference LUC-AV-09
9) Five part series dealing with radio broadcasts to Austria from non-Nazi sources. Produced by Franz Richard Reiter for Österreichische Rundfunk (ORF).
Part 1: 30 mins
Part 2: 40 mins
Part 3: 43 mins
Part 4: 43 mins
Part 5: 44 mins
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Copyright of Österreichische Rundfunk (ORF) and BBC.
Cassette tape with recordings on Side 1 only, reference LUC-AV-01.
Track 1: 00:00-11.16 Salzburger Fest
Track 2: Private recording by the Lucas family. This is not accessible digitally
Track 3: 12.20-17.46 Hirnschall Brief: Hirnschal arrives on the Russian front
Track 4: 17.46-23.46 Kurt und Willi episode on defeatists and the end of the Reich
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Copyright of the BBC
Sketch set at Salzburg Music Festival during Third Reich. Wounded soldiers have been invited to attend. They try to remain quiet and listen but cannot help but think back to their experiences at the front. Duration: 10 minutes 58 seconds. A script of this sketch is in RLU/2/2/14.
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Copyright of the BBC
[This was the first of the series of Hirnschal Letters to be broadcast after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hirnschal was played by Fritz Schrecker. The series was written by Robert Lucas and produced by Julius Gellner.] Duration: 5 minutes 39 seconds. This is a complete copy of the recording. There is an incomplete copy of this episode in RLU/2/11/4/3.
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Copyright of the BBC
No individual access copy for this track.
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[This episode was one of the last in the series. Kurt was played by Fritz Wendhausen; Willi was played by Peter Illing. The series was written by Bruno Adler with support from Norman Cameron.] Duration: 5 minutes 41 seconds. See also RLU/2/11/4/5 (also incomplete) or, for a complete copy, see RLU/2/11/3/1.
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Copyright of the BBC
Cassette tape. TDK SA-X90. IECII / Type 2. Reference LUC-AV-04
Track 1 00:00-06.03 Kurt und Willi on defeatists and the end of the Reich
Track 2 06:03-10:16 Frau Wernicke zu dem ‘1000 Tag des Krieges’ 28 May 1942
Track 3 10:16-15:49 Kurt und Willi on the Fuehrer's speech (1944)
Track 4 15:51-18:12 Kurt und Willi on the German army in Hungary
Track 5 18:14-21:18 Frau Wernicke on listening to foreign radio
Track 6 21:18-24:20 Kurt und Willi on the Fuehrer's speech (1945)
Track 7 24:20-29:09 Frau Wernicke zum neuen Jahr, 1 January 1944
Track 8 29:09-33:23 Kurt und Willi on women in the Third Reich
Track 9 34:38-41:10 Hirnschal Letter: Hirnschal joins a propaganda troop
Track 10 41.20-44:42 Hirnschal Letter: Tante Pauline and the con artist
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Copyright of the BBC
[This episode was one of the last in the series. Kurt was played by Fritz Wendhausen; Willi was played by Peter Illing. The series was written by Bruno Adler with support from Norman Cameron.] Duration: 5 minutes 41 seconds. See also RLU/2/11/2/4 and RLU/2/11/4/5.
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Copyright of the BBC
In this episode Hirnschal compares Tante Pauline's love for a crook who swindled her with the German people's belief in the Führer. [Hirnschal was played by Fritz Schrecker. The series was written by Robert Lucas and produced by Julius Gellner.] Incomplete. Duration: 3 minutes 15 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
[This episode was broadcast to mark one thousand days since the start of the Second World War. Frau Wernicke was played by Annemarie Hase. The series was written by Bruno Adler.] Duration: 4 minutes 9 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
[Kurt was played by Fritz Wendhausen; Willi was played by Peter Illing. The series was written by Bruno Adler with support from Norman Cameron.] Duration: 5 minutes 27 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
[Kurt was played by Fritz Wendhausen; Willi was played by Peter Iling. The series was written by Bruno Adler with support from Norman Cameron.] Duration 2 minutes 19 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
This episode concerns the issue of listening to radio broadcasts from London. [Frau Wernicke was played by Annemarie Hase. The series was written by Bruno Adler.] Duration: 3 minutes 2 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
[Kurt was played by Fritz Wendhausen; Willi was played by Peter Illing. The series was written by Bruno Adler with support from Norman Cameron.] Duration: 2 minutes 58 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
[Frau Wernicke was played by Annemarie Hase. The series was written by Bruno Adler.] Duration: 4 minutes 45 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
[Kurt was played by Fritz Wendhausen; Willi was played by Peter Illing. The series was written by Bruno Adler with support from Norman Cameron.] Duration 5 minutes 9 seconds. This is a complete copy of the recording. There is an incomplete copy of this episode in RLU/2/11/1/3. .
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Copyright of the BBC
In this episode Hirnschal joins a Wehrmacht propaganda troop in the Soviet Union. [Hirnschal was played by Fritz Schrecker. The series was written by Robert Lucas and produced by Julius Gellner.] Duration: 6 minutes 29 seconds.
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Recordings of this broadcast are also held in the British Library in London and the Deutsch Rundfunkarchiv in Frankfurt.
Copyright of the BBC
Ampex 5" open reel tape reference LUC-AV-14
6 tracks of extracts from songs and satires:
Track 1 00:05-00:42 Nachtwächterlied
Track 2 00:48-02:48 Wir fahren immer hin und her
Track 3 02:23-04:27 Hirnschal Letter: Hirnschal arrives on the Russian front
Track 4 04:30-05:43 Lili Marleen
Track 5 05:46-07:00 Kurt und Willi episode on defeatists and the end of the Third Reich
Track 6 07:00-08:07 Es geht vorueber, es geht vorbei’
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Copyright of the BBC
The label states that this is the last verse. [There were (at least) two anti-Nazi adaptations of this German Volkslied. Fritz Schrecker also performed a version of this song at the Laterndl theatre.]
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Copyright uncertain. May have originally been written for use outside BBC, eg for exile theatre, so not necessarily BBC owned.
This was one of the songs the BBC commissioned Russian-born composer Mischa Spolianski to compose for propaganda broadcasts. Duration: 1 minute 30 seconds.
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See Toby Thacker, '"Liberating German Musical Life": The BBC German SErvice and Planning for Music Control in Occupied Germany 1944-1949', in "'Stimme der Wahrheit': German-Language Broadcasting by the BBC", ed. by Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove (Brill, 2003), pp. 77-92.
Copyright of the BBC
[This was the first of the series of Hirnschal Letters to be broadcast after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hirnschal was played by Fritz Schrecker. The series was written by Robert Lucas and produced by Julius Gellner.] Duration 2 minutes 3 seconds. This copy of the programme is incomplete. See RLU/2/11/2/2 for a complete copy.
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Copyright of the BBC
Parody of Lili Marleen written for performance by Mannheim on the BBC German Service. Duration 1 minute 10 seconds. See also RLU/2/11/1/4.
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Copyright of the BBC
[This episode was one of the last in the series. Kurt was played by Fritz Wendhausen; Willi was played by Peter Illing. The series was written by Bruno Adler with support from Norman Cameron.] Duration: 1 minute 13 seconds. See also RLU/2/11/2/4 (also incomplete) or, for a complete copy, see RLU/2/11/3/1.
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Copyright of the BBC
A new verse, 'Das Lied von Stalingrad', was written for the BBC after the German defeat at Stalingrad. Duration: 1 minute 2 seconds.
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Copyright of the BBC
5" open reel tape. Tape Speed 7.5 inches per second, reference LUC-AV-12
RL’s account in German of his invitation to the BBC to translate Chamberlain’s speech. BBC tape no.: FLN903H963. Duration: 2 minutes 15 seconds
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Copyright of the BBC
Racel Zonal magnetic 5" open reel tape, reference LUC-AV-13
3 tracks, each one an extract from an interview by RL with HCG probably for the 40th anniversary programme
Track 1: 00:00-03:54 Concerns principles on which founding of German Service was based. Discuss whether the reporting of news was always truthful and about need to maintain belief in the BBC. HCG reported that only time the news was exaggerated was following 20th June plot.
Track 2: 03:55-04:50 HCG discusses German Service in the context of wider journalistic principles.
Track 3: 04:50-07:18 Discussion of role of German Service. Other European Services BBC Service played a strategic role in relation to winning the war, but German Service role was not strategic in the same way. However it did help to build trust of German population in England and English things, which greatly helped during years of occupation.
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Copyright of the BBC
BASF LH SM 90 minute cassette tape, reference LUC-AV-02
Side 1 Rundfunk mit dem Rufzeichen V. Man spricht Deutsch im britischen Rundfunk’. Eine Sendung zum 40. jaehrigen Juebileum der BBC von Robert Lucas. Duration: 39 minutes.
Side 2: (continued) Rundfunk mit dem Rufzeichen V. Duration: 20 minutes.
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Copyright of the BBC
XL Super Ferro C90 cassette tape, reference LUC-AV-05
Side 1: ‘Hier spricht London. 40 Jahre BBC in deutsche Sprache’, a BBC German Service programme by Guntram Kremer and Peter Saaler. Hamburg. Duration: 45 minutes 32 seconds.
Side 2:
Track 1 00:01-00:34 First German language news broadcast September 1938 (incomplete)
Track 2 00:36-01:53 BBC radio programme in English marking 40th anniversary of BBC's European Services. Start of ‘How it all began’ (title not confirmed) with Libby Purves. Duration 1 minute 17 seconds (incomplete).
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Copyright of the BBC
Maxell UD XL II C90 cassette tape, reference LUC-AV-03
3) Blue and White
Documentary report by Robert Lucas. Basle Feature. Similar content to RLU/2/11/7 and RLU/2/11/8.
Side 1 duration: 44 mins.
Side 2: (continues). Duration: 42 mins.
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Copyright of the BBC
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Contains a range of BBC German Service Features programme scripts written and broadcast during the Second World War, notably for the programme Vormarsch der Freiheit.
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Script no. 7 of the BBC German Service series Vormarsch der Freiheit, a German Features series broadcast weekly from 9 November 1940. This programme was transmitted in December 1940. A small team of writers worked on the series; this particular episode appears to have been written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). The series aimed to report facts and war stories from the battlefronts of the Second World War. Previously in RLU/Box5/File5.
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Script marked 'German Feature: Turn of the Tide', written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). It was produced by Hans Buxbaum and scheduled for broadcast on 24 October 1942. 2 original copies and 2 photocopies. Previously in RLU/Box5/File1.
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Script marked 'German Feature: Stalingrad', written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). It was produced by Julius Gellner and scheduled for broadcast on 10 October 1942. Previously in RLU/Box5/File8.
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Script marked 'German Feature: Stalingrad', written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). It was produced by Hans Buxbauam and scheduled for broadcast on 7 November 1942. Previously in RLU/Box5/File9.
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Script marked 'Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern' [by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas)]. It is not clear whether the programme was actually broadcast. 2 copies. Previously in RLU/Box7/File5.
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Script (photocopy) marked 'Festspiele in Salzburg' [by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas)]. An audio recording of this sketch is in RLU/2/11/2/1.
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The typescript headed 'How the generals ...' was written by Robert Lucas, contains numerous handwritten annotations and corrections. It is not dated but the script begins 'Nine months have passed since Hitler [...] stepped before a microphone to assure the German people that he was still alive' following the revolt against him. The notes of the interview with the German POW were marked as secret and distributed as background information only; they are dated 12 March 1945. The interviewee was Cpt. G of the Führerbegleitbrigade. Previously in RLU/Box6/File8.
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Script no. 14 of the BBC German Service series Vormarsch der Freiheit, a German Features series which was broadcast weekly from 9 November 1940. A small team of writers worked on the series; this particular episode, entitled 'Zum 12. Februar 1934', appears to have been written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). The series aimed to report facts and war stories from the battlefronts of the Second World War. Previously in RLU/Box5/File6.
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Script no. 20 of the BBC German Service series Vormarsch der Freiheit, a German Features series broadcast weekly from 9 November 1940. A small team of writers worked on the series; this particular episode was probably written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). The series aimed to report facts and war stories from the battlefronts of the Second World War. Previously in RLU/Box7/File7.
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Script no. 22 of the BBC German Service series Vormarsch der Freiheit, a German Features series broadcast weekly from 9 November 1940. A small team of writers worked on the series; this particular episode was probably written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). The series aimed to report facts and war stories from the battlefronts of the Second World War. Previously in RLU/Box5/File7.
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Internal BBC memo marked 'Europe in Chains: Polish programme', from John Glyn-Jones to Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas), with handwritten additional note from Walter Rilla, head of German Features. Two accompanying suggested synopses, one entitled 'Slavery in Poland' and the other 'Night over Poland'. Also a radio script marked 'Slavery in Poland', indicating that the programme was produced by Walter Rilla and broadcast in February 1942 on the BBC's Eastern, African, North American and Pacific services. Previously in RLU/Box5/File7.
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Script marked 'Behind the Scenes of the Green Reich', the Greene in the title being a reference to Hugh Carleton Green, head of the German Service from 1940 until 1946. It is not clear whether this programme was actually broadcast and it is not dated, but may well have been written in 1941, as the script mentions Molotov's flight to Britain. Previously in RLU/Box11/File9.
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Internal BBC memo from John Tudor Jones to numerous BBC staff including Walter Rilla, relating to an attached script of a German Feature programme entitled 'Terror over Europe', which was written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) and broadcast by the German Service on 11 and 12 October [1941]. This script is in English, so presumably it is a translation of the script that RE had written for the German Service. Previously in RLU/Box5/File6.
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Script marked 'German Feature: Questions and Answers. New version: 10th June 1942', written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas), scheduled for broadcast on 13 June 1942. Previously in RLU/Box5/File4.
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Script marked 'German Feature: Justitia Fundamentum, written by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). It was produced by Julius Gellner and scheduled for broadcast on 19 September 1942. Previously in RLU/Box5/File3.
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Includes BBC audience surveys, intelligence reports by the Psychological Warfare Division, and interrogation reports.
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Covers 1) German and 2) Italy. Part of European Intelligence Papers: Series 1e. Ref No. 11/42. The report includes a note on the appearance of a new radio personality in the Reichsprogramm, Lance-Corporal von Struwe of the Africa Korps, whom it describes as a 'blatant imitation of our character Hirnschal'. Previously in RLU/Box5/File10.
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Report of the testimony of a girl, a member of the Zionist youth group the Hashomer Hadati, who escaped Nazi persecution in German-occupied southern Poland. The testimony relates to the fate of other members of the group in three neighbouring cities in this area: Bedzin (then Bendin), Dabrowa (then Dabrowa) and Sosnowiec. It is not clear what the source of the report is or how it has come into the hands of Robert Lucas, but it is assumed that it came via the BBC's intelligence sources. A note from the sender [of the report] claims that the testimony was 'told by the delegate of a group of Guerilla fighters who arrived at the end of August in a neighbouring country on a special mission', and that it was recorded on 14 September 1943. Previously in RLU/Box18/File5.
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Concerns new regulations governing interviews with friendly POWs. Previously in RLU/Box18/File5.
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General Directive from the Director of European Broadcasts, N.F. Newsome; German and Austrian directives for the BBC for the week of the invasion, issued by the Political Warfare Executive, and a Special Directive on operations against western Europe, also issued by the Political Warfare Executive. Previously in RLU/Box6/File9.
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4 reports containing information released by the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) for propaganda purposes, dated 11 December 1944, 27 January 1945, 13 April 1945 and 18 April 1945. Previously in RLU/Box12/File8.
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Report marked as permissible for use in scrambled form in leaflets, radio and the press, except for underlined words. No indication of the source was to be used without special permission from Intelligence Directorate, GAD. Previously in RLU/Box12/File20.
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8 intelligence summaries (no.s 88, 96, 103, 112, 113, 114, 119 (of which there are 2 copies)), dated 15 September 1945, 26 September 1945, 5 October 1945, 19 October 1945, and 6 October 1945. They are marked 'Confidential. This document is for information only and has not yet been released for publication'. Previously in RLU/Box18/File5.
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Previously in RLU/Box18/File5.
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Of particular note are the two copies of leaflet G.96 headed 'Damals. Heute', on the verso of which was printed a letter from Private Hirnschal from the Hirnschal Letters series by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas). This leaflet was produced by the Political Warfare Executive and disseminated by aircraft over Germany in December 1943-January 1944. There are also 3 editions of the booklet 'Die andere Seite' (no.s 1,2 and 3). Previously in RLU/Box12/File 27 and RLU/Box18/File5.
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Various records relating to Robert Lucas's trip to Vienna in July 1946 on behalf of the BBC. Includes Viennese theatre programmes; miscellaneous official travel-related documents belonging to Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas); letter from the Newspaper Press section of the Information Services Branch of the Allied Commission for Austria to RE (RL), to accompany a copy of RE’s interview with Dr Körner (not present); newspaper cuttings of announcements of food rationing allowances in Vienna; newspaper cuttings on events and conditions in Austria; typed report by Werner von Alvensleben ‘Notes on the state of Austrian Youth’; set of loose leaves of handwritten notes on various aspects of rationing in Vienna; BBC Third Programme radio typescript ‘Vienna and its Hofburg: Despatch from Vienna’ [read?] by Patrick Smith; transcription of article on British soldiers in Vienna, ‘Infantrymen and Vienna’s Red-Caps’ from Soldier, The British Army Magazine. Previously in RLU/Box18/File5. Also a printed list of telephone numbers of staff working in the Vorwärts Verlag building in Vienna, which housed the Information Services Branch of the Allied Commission for Austria after the Second World War. Handwritten notes on the verso. Previously in RLU/Box12/File1. Also a notebook with very brief diarised notes from the trip [which also covers other activities and times besides the Vienna trip, but primarily concerns the trip, so has been placed here]. Previously in RLU/Box12/File1.
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Typescript testimony of a firefighter entitled 'Ich will versuchen, die Erlebnisse zu schildern, die ich hatte, als die schwersten Tage kamen, die die Wiener Feuerwehr seit ihrem Bestande mitgemacht hat'. Describes experience of returning to central Vienna against the orders of Nazi fire brigade chief [Johann] Stanzig in April 1945. Possibly written by firefighter called Mautz. The testimony have been used as a [BBC?] radio script and may have been connected to Robert Lucas's research trip to Vienna in 1946 (see RLU 2/5). Previously in RLU/Box7/File10a.
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Transcription of quotations by Hitler and other Nazi leaders which were sent by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) to the Office of the Czechoslovak Representative on the United Nations War Crimes Commission as additional proof of the guilt of Nazi leaders. Includes accompanying correspondence. Previously in RLU/Box12/File9.
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Articles include 'London Calling - Goebbels Jamming' (Saturday Evening Post, 11 April 1942) and a review of the year 1938 in the Picture post (31 December 1938). Previously in RLUBox12/File23.
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Articles on Germany's flying bomb, the bombing of Broadcasting House, the bombing of Cologne and other subject. Previously in RLUBox18/File5.
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[It is not clear how or whether the literary scripts in this file are connected.]
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Subtitled 'Ein Wort an die Jugend Europas. Ein Wort an die Jugend der Welt'. Marked 'Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg'. [The manuscript of 'Der Friede' was circulating in oppositional circles in Germany in 1943. 50,000 copies were published by the Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg' in 1945.] Previously in RLU/Box12/File26.
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With a short introduction to the poem and Ernst Wiechert [by Robert Lucas?]. Previously in RLU/Box18/File5.
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Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Includes radio scripts by Robert Lucas from 1949 until the early 1980s. The majority were written for the BBC German Service, where RL was employed as a Features writer, but there are also some he wrote for German, Austrian and Swiss radio stations. In addition to the scripts, there is also a folder of photographs of BBC German service staff members, including a small number from the wartime period.
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This sub-series is largely made up of post-war BBC German Service scripts written by Robert Lucas for Features programmes. The majority of these date from the 1960s and 1970s, though there is one from 1949 and a few from the 1950s and 1980s. The majority of the scripts are on subjects designed to introduce German and Austrian audiences to the landscape, customs and culture of the UK, including the British monarchy, famous British people and British cities. There are three scripts covering the history of the BBC's German Service itself, of which RLU had particular knowledge as he was involved from the start of the Service's activities (RLU 3/1/32, RLU 3/1/45 and RLU 3/1/56). In addition to the scripts there are also photographs of Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) with other German Service staff members. These date from 1942 to 1960. There are also some internal memoranda and items of correspondence, and there are a small number of scripts by other writers, such as Peter Ustinov.
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Script by Robert Lucas for German Features. Produced by Julius Gellner. Broadcast 13 October 1949. Previously in RLU/Box15/File7.
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2 copies of a script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by A.E. Gaum. Broadcast 3 January 1962. Previously in RLU/Box15/File12 and RLU/Box4/File14.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by W[alter] Hertner. Broadcast 29 July 1962. Previously in RLU/Box15/File14.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by M Weymar. Broadcast 18 August 1962. Previously in RLU/Box15/File11.
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2 scripts for German Features by Robert Lucas. 1) Produced by M Weymar. Broadcast 24 November 1962. 2) Produced by F. Glaser. Broadcast 5 April 1974. Previously in RLU/Box12/File34.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by H[einrich] Wiedemann. Broadcast 29 December 1962. Previously in RLU/Box12/File36.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by G[erd] Puritz. Broadcast 26 May 1963. Previously in RLU/Box15/File5.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by G[erd] Puritz. Broadcast 26 May 1963. Previously in RLU/Box15/File9.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by Walter Hertner. Broadcast 12 December 1963. Previously in RLU/Box15/File10.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by G[erd] Puritz. Broadcast 21 January 1964. Previously in RLU/Box4/File15.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by P. Sahla. Broadcast 23 February 1964. With an attached newspaper clipping from 1975 concerning the subject of the talk: the explorer Sir Richard Burton. Previously in RLU/Box15/File20.
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Script by Robert Lucas for German Features. Produced by Julius Gellner. Broadcast 8 September 1952. Previously in RLU/Box12/File31.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by P. Sahla. Broadcast 13 October 1964. Previously in RLU/Box15/File4.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by W[alter] Hertner. Broadcast 10 January 1965. Previously in RLU/Box12/File32.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by P. Sahla. Broadcast 14 May 1965. Previously in RLU/Box12/File37.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by W(alter) Hertner. Broadcast 8 July 1965. Previously in RLU/Box4/File3.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by Peter Sahla. Broadcast 13 March 1966. Previously in RLU/Box15/File16.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by Heinrich Wiedemann. Broadcast 27 December 1966. Previously in RLU/Box12/File30.
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Obituary script [for BBC German Service] written and read by Robert Lucas. Previously in RLU/Box11/File9.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by Heinrich Wiedemann. Broadcast 9 January 1967. Previously in RLU/Box12/File29.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by J[ulius] Gellner. Broadcast 29 January 1967. Previously in RLU/Box15/File6.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File17.
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Script by Robert Lucas for German Features. Produced by G[erd] Puritz. Broadcast 18 February 1953. Previously in RLU/Box12/File39.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File13.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File1.
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Script for German Service by Robert Lucas. Broadcast 28 September 1968. Produced by Walter Hertner. Produced to mark the 30th anniversary of the BBC's German Service. The speaker, Seton Anderson, traced the history of the BBC's German Service from its founding in 1938 as a counterweight to Nazi propaganda through to the post-war years, when it worked closely with West German radio stations and, through the 'Programm für Ostdeutschland, 'gave a voice to those condemned to silence by a totalitarian regime behind the Iron Curtain'. Includes an extract from the programme aimed at East German Readers, 'Zwei Genossen' by Bruno Adler. Previously in RLU/Box4/File2.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by W[alter] Hertner. Recorded 17 March 1970. Written and produced by the BBC specially for the West German radio station Sudwestfunk. Previously in RLU/Box12/File38.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. Recorded 18 January 1972. [No information about the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box15/File18.
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Document presenting four proposed programes, each with a title, a synopsis, type of programme and duration. Titles are as follows: 1) Anatomie der Mitläufer, 2) Seelenmord durch Disziplin, 3) Die Flucht vor der Vernunft and 4) Das Phänomen Enid Blyton. Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. Recorded 18 January 1972. [No information about the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File9.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. 3 copies, 1 of which has amendments in ink. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File7.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File11.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File12.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the producer.] The programme must also have been broadcast on the West German Süddeutsche Rundfunk, as the file also contains correspondence from RL relating to a criticism of the programme made by a Süddeutsche Rundfunk listener. Script previously in RLU/Box4/File10; correspondence previously in RLU/Box12/File12.
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Subtitled: Eine deutsch-englische Untersuchung durchgeführt von Robert Lucas und Erich Naused (A German-British investigation by RL and EN). Produced by Julius Gellner. A joint production by the BBC and the Süddeutscher Rundfunk. Broadcast from London 15 November 1959; broadcast from Stuttgart 17 November 1959. Previously in RLU/Box15/File8. Also a letter dated 21 October 1959 from J[acob] Bronowski of from the Process Development Department of the National Coal Board to RL concerning JB's help with writing and recording a section of the script. Previously in RLU/Box12/File16.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box15/File17.
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Scripts assumed (because of their position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File8.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by G[erd] Richter. Broadcast 30 November 1975. Previously in RLU/Box15/File2.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box15/File19.
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Scripts assumed (because of their position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box5/File11.
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Scripts assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. Entitled 1) Seit vierzig Jahren spricht die BBC auch Deutsch: ein Jubiläum des Londoner Rundfunks, annotated 85 mins; 2) Man spricht Deutsch - im Britischen Fundfunk: ein Jubiläum der BBC, annotated 60 mins. Also the insert of RL's of section of the script, recalling how he had been asked to come to the BBC to translate Chamberlain's speech in speech in 1938. [No information about the date of production or the producer.] Previously in RLU/Box14/File1.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. Annotated Feb 1979. [No information about the producer.] Also a newspaper clipping relating to one of the figures mentioned in the script, Mr Roy Rohan. Previously in RLU/Box4/File4 and RLU/Box4/File5.
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Scripts assumed (because of their position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. Research material includes newspaper cuttings and publications by the tobacco industry and the World Development Movement. [No information about the production date or producer, but the newspaper cutting is dated November 1983.] Previously in RLU/Box8/File3.
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Script assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the production date or producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File16.
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Scripts assumed (because of their position in the original filing system) to be for German Features by Robert Lucas. [No information about the production date or producer.] Previously in RLU/Box4/File6.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by A Gaum. Recorded 7 January 1960. Previously in RLU/Box15/File15.
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16 photographs (of which 7 are duplicates) of members of staff and invited speakers and others working for and with the BBC German Service. The earliest known image has no caption but is from c.1942 and shows four men and a woman (l-r Ralph Poston, ?Lindley Fraser, unknown, Robert Lucas, unknown) around a table in a BBC office. Other prints which have captions include 1) one of a farewell dinner for H[ugh] Carleton Greene on his relinquishing the post of BBC German Service Director in September 1946; 2) multiple prints of RL at his desk in 1948; 3) one of RL talking to Dr Hans Baumgarten of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at an event at Bush House on 9 June 1950; 4) RL with West German journalists and broadcasters invited by the BBC, such as those from Bavarian Radio Munich who worked with the BBC on a series of joint broadcasts called 'Albumblätter' in September 1958; 5) RL at a BBC microphone on 11 July 1960; RL with the Indonesian ambassador, Dr Sunario and his family sitting in front of a BBC microphone on 2 September 1960; and RL with a group of five unidentified men at a special event (undated). Previously in RLU/Box11/File10 and RLU/Box 11/File8.
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Typescript assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for the BBC German Service by Robert Lucas. Appears to be the outline of plot of two stories: one about a dual between a lieutenant and a doctor, and another by Freiherr von Schlicht entitled ‘Oberleutnant Kramer’. Previously in RLU/Box12/File14.
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Typescript (and manuscript copy of the same) of a talk by Peter Ustinov introducing his play 'House of Regrets'. Assumed (because of its position in the original filing system) to be for the BBC radio. [Possibly written as an introduction to a radio production of the play which was broadcast on Radio 4 in 1972.]. Previously in RLU/Box12/File15.
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Includes the publication 'BBC at War' by Antonia White [1942], 2 editions of 'Hier spricht London' (no. 32, 26 September to 2 October 1948 and no. 418 10 February 1956), a clipping from the journal 'Unsere ATH: Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte A.G' concerning a BBC German Service programme, and a pamphlet about the BBC's German Service with images of many of the key staff (1964). Previously in RLU/Box6 and RLU/Box12/File 21.
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Focuses mainly on the wartime German Service, but also reflects on the role of the BBC German Service in post-war Europe. Previously in RLU/Box14/File1.
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A first-person account by Robert Lucas of his role in the BBC's wartime German Service. Pages are numbered 35-41, but it is not clear from where they were taken. The account must have been written to be read aloud as a note at the bottom of the last page states that the voices of Lucie Mannheim, Fritz Schrecker, Peter Illing and Fritz Wendhausen would illustrate the presentation. Previously in RLU/Box6/File5.
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It is not clear which audience this script was written for or who wrote it, but its position in the original filing system suggests it was written or filed for use on post-war BBC German Service. Previously in RLU/Box11/File9.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by G[erd] Puritz. Recorded 7 January 1960. Previously in RLU/Box15/File13.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by A. Gaum. Recorded 6 October 1960. Previously in RLU/Box12/File33.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by W. Hertner. Broadcast 12 February 1961. Previously in RLU/Box15/File3.
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Script for German Features by Robert Lucas. Produced by H Wiedermann. Broadcast 19 November 1961. Handwritten annotation on the title page congratulating RL on a 'fresh' treatment of the subject. Previously in RLU/Box12/File35.
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Scripts of talks and book reviews written by Robert Lucas for Österreichischer Rundfunk, Deutschlandfunk and for Swiss radio.
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Talk on the BBC's external services. Annotated in pen. Recorded 7 November 1972. Previously in RLU/Box6/File8.
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Talk for unnamed Swiss radio on the Open University. Two copies, one with an attached letter dated 3 March 1981 from Hedy Brown, an Open University lecturer who is quoted in the talk. Was stored in a folder labelled 'Swiss radio talks'. Previously in RLU/Box8/File1.
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Talk for unnamed Swiss radio on the UK as a holiday resort. Despite the title, the talk actually covers Wales and Scotland as well. Was stored in a folder labelled 'Swiss radio talks'. Previously in RLU/Box8/File1.
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Talk for unnamed Swiss radio on the UFO debate in the House of Lords in 1979. 2 copies, annotated II and III. Was stored in a folder labelled 'Swiss radio talks'. Previously in RLU/Box8/File1.
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Talk on the role that epidemics have played in world history. 6 successive drafts, some with the alternative title Bakterien and Weltgeschichte. Previously in RLU/Box7/File9.
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Scripts of a mini-series about agriculture, farming policy and the world economy. Individual programme titles as follows: 1) ‘Brot, Macht und Profit’, 3 parts, 2 copies of each and 2) ‘Gib uns heute unser tägliches Brot’, 2 parts, 2 copies of part 1, of which one is draft with annotations. Previously in RLU/Box8/File5.
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Reviews sent to Deutschlandfunk. Some, if not all, were translated into English and broadcast on Deutschlandfunk's English-language service. Reviews include: Von Helden und Spionen, book review of H.D. Leuner's When Compassion was a Crime and David Kahn's Hitler's Spies (February 1979); Wohnbau in der Bundesrepublik, book review of Graham Hallett's Housing and Land Policies in West Germany and Britain (Feburary 1979); Max Ernst im Goethe-Institut, review of an exhibition of Ernst's graphic work at London's Goethe Institut (March 1979); Bertolt Brecht, book review of a translation by John Nowell of Klaus Völker's Brecht: A Biography and Bertold Brecht's Diaries 1920-1922 edited by Herta Ramthun (March-May 1979); Zwei Neue Romane, book review of H.H. Kirst's Twilight of the Generals and Maria Fagyas's Court of Honour (April-June 1979); Attentate auf Hitler, book review of Peter Hoffmann's Hitler's Personal Security and Herbert Molloy Mason's To Kill Hitler (July-September 1979); Hitlers letzte Tage, book review of James O'Donnell's The Berlin Bunker and Hugh Thomas's The Murder of Rudolf Hess (August-September 1979); Eine neue Hesse-Biographie, book review of Ralph Freedman's Hermann Hesse. Pilgrim of Crisis (August-November 1979); Filme im Goethe-Institut, review of films shown at London's Goethe Institut (September-October 1979); Zur Piscator-Ausstellung des Goethe-Instituts, review of Piscator exhibition at London's Goethe Institut (October-November 1979); Deutsche Romantik und englische Kunst, book review of William Vaughan's German Romanticism and English Art (October-December 1979); Der Mann, der 'Im Westen nichts Neues' schrieb, book review of Christine R. Barker and R.W. Last's Erich Maria Remarque (December 1979-February 1980); Die Blockade von Berlin, book review of Mark Arnold-Forster's The Siege of Berlin (January-February 1980); Prophets without Honour, book review of Frederic V. Grunfeld's Prophets With Honour. A Background to Freud, Kafka, Einstein and Their World (February-April 1980); Canaris, Verschwörer und Spione, book review of Heinz Höhne's Canaris and Jozef Garlinski's Intercept (March 1980); Wagner Biographien und kein Ende, review of 4 books on Richard Wagner (March 1980); Zwei Romane, book review of Peter Handke's The Left-Handed Woman and Jurek Becker's Sleepless Days (June 1980); Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in England, book review of Matthew Barry Sullivan's Thresholds of Peace. German Prisoners and the People of Britain 1944-1946 and Miriam Kochan's Prisoners of England (June 1980); Wien - damals und heute, book review of Carl E. Schorske's Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, Frederic Morton's A Nervous Splendor. Vienna 1888-1889 and Alan Best and Hans Wolfschütz's Modern Austrian Writing (August 1980); The Man Who Was B. Traven, review of book by Will Wyatt (undated, ?1980); Modern German Drama, review of book by Christopher Innes (January 1981); Aus dem Dritten Reich, book review of Berthold Hinz's Art in the Third Reich and James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes's Hitler's Mein Kampf in Britain and America. A Publishing History 1930-1939 (February 1981); Deutschland und England vor dem ersten Weltkrieg, book review of Paul Kennedy's The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism 1860-1914 (undated, ?1981); Deutsche Literatur und Gesellschaft, book review of Ronald Taylor's Literature and Society in Germany 1918-1945 (undated, ?1981); Der neue deutsche Film, book review of John Sandford's The Mass Media of the German-speaking World Today, English-language and German-language versions (June 1981); Das Treffen in Telgte, book review of Günter Grass's The Meeting at Telgte and John Banville's Kepler (undated, ?1981); Against Two Evils, review of book by Johnnie von Herwarth (undated, ?1981); Elias Canetti - Nobelpreisträger, review of EC's work (November 1981); Heimatmuseum, review of book by Siegfried Lenz (November 1981); New Dictionaries, book review of the Oxford-Duden Pictorial German-English Dictionary and Collins German Dictionary (January 1982); Die Interbau stellt sich vor, review of an exhibition at the Polytechnic of Central London, a preview of of the Internationale Bauausstellung held in Berlin in 1984 (February 1982); Das Goethe-Institut unter neuer Leitung, review of the activities of London's Goethe Institut under new management (March 1982); Die Welt Franz Kafkas, book review of Ronald Hayman's K. A Biography of Kafka (April 1982); Of Fellow Travellers and Communists, book review of Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims. Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba and Joel Agee's Twelve Years. An American Boyhood in Germany (July 1982); Eine Engländerin am deutschen Kaiserhof, book review of Andrew Sinclair's The Other Victoria. The Princess Royal and the Great Game of Europe, English-language and German-language versions (August-December 1982); George Grosz, der Mann der kehrtmachte, book review of A Small Yes and a Big No, the autobiography of George Grosz (November 1982); Vier deutsche Kanzler, book review of Marion Dönhoff's Foe into Friend. The Makers of the New Germany from Konrad Adenauer to Helmut Schmidt (January 1983); Die Tragödie des deutschen Liberalismus, book review of James J. Sheehan's German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century and V.R. Berghahn's Modern Germany. Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century (January 1983); Let Truth Be Told, review of book subtitled 50 Years of BBC External Services by Gerard Mansell, with attached letter from RL to Jack [no surname given] (May 1983); Mozart und Haydn, book review of Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Mozart and Karl Geiringer's Haydn. A Creative Life in Music (June 1983); Die BDR unter der Lupe, book review of Party Government and Political Culture in Western Germany, edited by Herbert Dörling and Gordon Smith (July 1983); Hitler und die Bayern, book review of Ian Kershaw's Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, with attached letter to Jack [no surname given] (August [dated 1984, but probably 1983, as RL died in January 1984]); Der Nürnberger Prozess, book review of Robert E. Conot's Justice at Nuremberg and Ann Tusa and John Tusa's The Nuremberg Trial, 2 English-language versions and 1 German-language version (December 1983-January 1984); untitled book review of Party Government and Political Culture in West Germany, edited by Herbert Döring and Gordon Smith (undated, ?1983). Previously in RLU/Box8/File4.
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Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Contains newspaper cuttings and Robert Ehrenzweig's (later Lucas's) typescipts of articles he wrote for papers through the course of his life. There is one file of articles written before he emigrated to the UK: these are mainly for the Austrian newspaper Die Arbeiterzeitung (1929-1934). Most of the other files contain records of articles for the German newspapers Die Zeit (1959-1980) and Die Welt (1979-1983) and the Swiss magazine Sie und Er (1951-1968).
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Cuttings with articles by Robert Ehrenzweig (Lucas) mainly from the Arbeiterzeitung, published by the Social Democratic Party of Austria (March 1928-June 1931), but also from Bunte Woche and the Volkswacht. There is also one edition of the Österreichische Arbeiter-Turn-und Sport-Zeitung (No. 7, July 1931), which is mainly concerned with the Second International Workers' Olympiad held in Vienna in July 1931. Previously in RLU/Box8/File6.
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Cuttings with articles by Robert Lucas mainly from the Evening Standard, but there is also one from Union Jack. Previously in RLU/Box12/File24.
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Cuttings with articles by Robert Lucas from miscellaneous newspapers, mainly German language, including the Arbeiterzeitung (July-December 1959), Der Bund (1949), Blick in die Welt (1949), Englische Rundschau (1961) and Der Allgauer (1964). Also a cutting from The Times about the moon landings and the French-language newspaper, Actualités (1966). Previously in RLU/Box14/File2.
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Cuttings with articles by Robert Lucas from the Swiss magazine Sie und Er. Previously in RLU/Box14/File2.
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Typescripts of drafts of articles published in Die Zeit. Draft title are as follows:
-Kapitalismus - jenseits von Gut un Böse, sent 3 September 1973 [published 12 October 1973];
-Zwischen Pioniergeistern und Poltergeistern, [published as Alles nur Poltergeister? Beweisbarer Aberglaube zu Arthur Koestlers neuestem Buch: Wurzeln des Zufalls, 19 May 1972];
-Der intellektuelle Verrat am Geist [published as Hochverrat am europäischen Geist: Die Verlockungen des Faschismus, 17 September 1971];
-Successive drafts entitled Jenny ist ein Groupie geworden and Jenny wurde ein Groupie and untitled [published as So wurde Jenny ein Groupie. Aufstieg in die intime Nähe des Idols – Im Hofstaat der Stars, 16 January 1970];
-Mass für Mass [published with subtitle Ein Pfund zu 100 Pence In England hat das Abenteuer der Dezimalisierung begonnen] 4 copies, 2 drafts [published 14 Juni 1968];
-[untitled] [published as Unter der 'Times' von gestern. Was ist aus den berühmten britischen Klubs geworden?], 3 copies [published 7 April 1967];
-[untitled] [published as Treibhaus für englische Stammbäume Ein Wappen gefällig? - Jedes 'Ur' erhöht die Unkosten – Im College of Arms], 3 copies [published 5 May 1967];
-[untitled] [published as Der Versuch, ein Wahrzeichen zu veräußern: Ich kaufe London Bridge], 3 copies [published 5 January 1968];
-[untitled] [published as Londoner Kehrseiten-Querschnitt Weltpremiere des Gesäß-Films No. 4 von Yoko Ono], 3 copies [published 11 August 1967];
-Alarmierende Ungewissheit über die Arche Noah [published as Hatte die Arche Noah 300, 333 oder 400 Ställe? Ein Blick in die faksimilierte erste Ausgabe der Encyclopaedia Britannica], 3 copies [published 12 April 1968];
-[untitled] [published as Geiz plagt ihn nicht. N. Gulbenkian: Porträt eines Multimillionärs], 3 copies [published 17 September 1965];
-Porträt einer Rebellin [published with subtitle: Achtmal im Gefängnis, zur Zeit in Freiheit: Pat Arrowsmith], 3 copies [published 4 July 1969];
-Madame Tussaud gibt sich die Ehre [published with subtitle Bankett mit Wachsfiguren], 3 copies [published 27. Februar 1970];
-Die Gesellschaft der anonymen Spieler [published with subtitle Gleichzeitig Patient und Arzt – Ein Versuch ohne Illusionen], 3 copies [published 9 September 1966];
-Links, wo das Herz ist - und der Teufel [variation published as Die Mehrheit der Rechtshänder hat gegen 'die andern' viele Vorurteile: Links, Linker, Linkisch. Über eine noch heute unterdrückte Minorität], 3 copies [published 31 October 1969];
-[untitled] [published as Der große Zertrümmerer der Tabus zahlt natürlich keine Steuern. Und seine alkoholische Phase liegt hinter ihm. Der Feind ist die Familie Begegnung mit dem krassen Außenseiter David Cooper], 3 copies [published 23 July 1971];
-Es sind freundliche Geister, Mrs. Roberts [published with subtitle Wie Kanonikus Pearce-Higgins dem Spuk in einem Londoner Haus das Ende bereitete], 3 copies [published 20 December 1968].
Previously in RLU/Box15/File1.
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Duplicates of many of the articles in RLY 4/5.
-[untitled] [published as Londoner Kehrseiten-Querschnitt Weltpremiere des Gesäß-Films No. 4 von Yoko Ono, 11 August 1967];
-[untitled] [published as Treibhaus für englische Stammbäume Ein Wappen gefällig? - Jedes 'Ur' erhöht die Unkosten – Im College of Arms, 5 May 1967];
-Madame Tussaud gibt sich die Ehre [published with subtitle Bankett mit Wachsfiguren, 27. Februar 1970];
-[untitled] [published as Unter der 'Times' von gestern. Was ist aus den berühmten britischen Klubs geworden, 7 April 1967];
-[untitled] [published as Geiz plagt ihn nicht. N. Gulbenkian: Porträt eines Multimillionärs, 17 September 1965];
-[untitled, but with attached note reading 'Der Prophet der tollen Revolution'] [published as Der große Zertrümmerer der Tabus zahlt natürlich keine Steuern. Und seine alkoholische Phase liegt hinter ihm. Der Feind ist die Familie Begegnung mit dem krassen Außenseiter David Cooper, 23 July 1971];
-Porträt einer Rebellin [published with subtitle: Achtmal im Gefängnis, zur Zeit in Freiheit: Pat Arrowsmith, 4 July 1969];
-[untitled] [published as So wurde Jenny ein Groupie. Aufstieg in die intime Nähe des Idols – Im Hofstaat der Stars, 16 January 1970];
-Es sind freundliche Geister, Mrs. Roberts [published with subtitle Wie Kanonikus Pearce-Higgins dem Spuk in einem Londoner Haus das Ende bereitete, 20 December 1968;
-Die Gesellschaft der anonymen Spieler [published with subtitle Gleichzeitig Patient und Arzt – Ein Versuch ohne Illusionen, published 9 September 1966];
-Links, wo das Herz ist - und der Teufel [variation published as Die Mehrheit der Rechtshänder hat gegen 'die andern' viele Vorurteile: Links, Linker, Linkisch. Über eine noch heute unterdrückte Minorität, 31 October 1969];
-Mass für Mass [published with subtitle Ein Pfund zu 100 Pence In England hat das Abenteuer der Dezimalisierung begonnen, 14 Juni 1968];
-Alarmierende Ungewissheit über die Arche Noah [published as Hatte die Arche Noah 300, 333 oder 400 Ställe? Ein Blick in die faksimilierte erste Ausgabe der Encyclopaedia Britannica, 12 April 1968]
Previously in RLU/Box14/File3.
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Cuttings of articles by Robert Lucas from Die Zeit. Draft typescripts of some of the articles are in RLU 4/5 and RLU 4/6. Previously in RLU/Box14/File5.
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Cuttings with articles by Robert Lucas from Die Welt. Previously in RLU/Box7/File11.
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Cuttings with articles by Robert Lucas from Die Welt. Previously in RLU/Box8/File2.
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See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Previously in RLU/Box10/File1.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Previously in RLU/Box10/File2.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Previously in RLU/Box10/File3.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Previously in RLU/Box10/File4.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Previously in RLU/Box11/File1.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Previously in RLU/Box11/File2.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
This series includes German-language short stories, drama pieces, verse and other writing by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas), most of which were written during his youth and early adulthood in Austria. There is also a folder of travel notes in English which he wrote as an older adult.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
5 notebooks handwritten by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) in Sütterlin containing lengthy prose, poetry and dramatic writing. Notebooks entitled as follows: 1) Friedrich v. Ammerling. Drama in 3. Akten (August 1916); 2) Blanca. Drama in 2 Akten, marked No. 2 with a sticker (November 1917); 3) Erzählungen III, subtitled Übersetzungen aus Ovid (Fragmente), Märchen von Tranne[? illegible], Ein Traum aus alter Zeit, and Erinnerung (Fragmente), marked No. 13 with a sticker (1918-1920); 4) Der Menschheit Spiegel. Erzählungen, subtitled Der Blinde, Szene Alptraum, marked No. 14 with a sticker (1918-192?3); 5) Der Vormund, Moderne Dichtung, marked No. 16 with a sticker (1919). There is also the cover of a notebook entitled ‘Der Zauberring. Märchen, marked No. 15 with a sticker, but containing no internal pages (1919). Previously in RLU/Box9/File1.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
3 notebooks handwritten by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas), mainly in Sütterlin but some loose inserts in Latin-based scripts. No formal titles but contents as follows: 1) a [single?] lengthy prose piece entitled ‘Der Selbstmord’(?) (‘Suicide’), containing an insert with a foreword written at a later (1922-1923); 2) lengthy dramatic piece containing verse on the theme of a group of teachers on a day off [characters possibly based RL's own teachers], including a photograph of 2 men standing in on grass with boys nearby [not identified but possibly RL's own teachers] (undated, c. 1920); 3) play script [title not legible] (1920). Previously in RLU/Box9/File2.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
4 notebooks, handwritten by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas), some in Sütterlin but majority in Latin script. Entitled as follows 1) Traum (Dream), dedicated to RL's mother, with verse and dialogues (July-September 1921); 2) Gedichte (Poems) (1922) 3) untitled, contains poems, prose and dialogues (May 1922-April 1923); 4) untitled, contains poems, prose and play scripts (April 1923-July 1926). Previously in RLU/Box9/File3.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
6 notebooks, handwritten by Robert Ehrenzweig (later Lucas) in a mixture of Sütterlin and Latin. Entitled as follows: 1) Allerlei (Miscellaneous), with loose inserts, contains verse, puzzles and dialogues (1915-1920); 2) untitled, contains poems (1920-1922); 3) untitled, with loose inserts, contains notes on British and French history (undated); 4) untitled, contains drama with verse (1921); 5) Fremdes, with loose inserts, contains prose, jokes and picture puzzles; 6) Empfehlungen (Recommendations), contains a list of contacts and addresses in the UK and Vienna with brief notes on each of them (1934). Mentions Jura [Soyfer?] and Harry Peter Smolka. Previously in RLU/Box9/File4.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Short stories, poems, a play script and additional notes. Written by Robert Lucas, though some are marked with RL's former name, Robert Ehrenzweig, or his pseudonym, Neon. None are dated, but the use of these different names suggest that the scripts have a wide date range: RL used Neon as a pseudonym for some of the articles he wrote for the Arbeiterzeitung in the late 1920s and 1930s, whereas some of the scripts were probably written in the period after he had settled in the UK in the 1940s at the earliest and possibly in the 1950s or 1960s). Some of the material was published but it is not clear how much of it. The short stories include Wiedersehen in London (undated); Adieu, Maria!; Doktor Merth jagt einem Wunder nach. Von Thomas Classen [not clear whether Thomas Classen or RL is author]; Mahnung; Die Diktatur der Termine; Das Mädchen, das Fläumchen Frantiska nannte; Aus der Gesellschaft (part typed, part handwritten); Unvollendetes Erlebnis; Kinder laufen über die Strasse; Frühlung; Aus der Gesellschaft (partial overlap with first version) and Der Untergang. Poems include Landregen; Erfüllung; Für Gretl S; Erfüllung; Schloss Malcesine; Paternoster. The play script is headed Die verlorene Generation. All scripts were in a folder marked Very old scripts. Previously in RLU/Box14/File4.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
3 notebooks, handwritten by Robert Lucas: 1) untitled, mainly Spanish holiday diary (October 1978); 2) Italian holiday diary (May 1960); 3) untitled, mainly German holiday notes/diary (September 1983). In addition there is one address book (undated, c. 1972) and 1NUJ press card (undated). Previously in RLU/Box9/File5.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Reviews, correspondence and (draft) scripts of Robert Lucas's plays: an adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace (1942-1943); Man Bites Dog (1947) and Die Mohocks kommen / The Mohocks are coming (1976-1983).
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Marked Curtis Brown Ltd, Henrietta Street, London. With an introductory note by RL. [RL's adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. Napoleon was played by Peter Illing]. Previously in RLU/Box1/File3.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Marked Curtis Brown Ltd, Henrietta Street, London. With an introductory note by RL. [RL's adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. Napoleon was played by Peter Illing.] Previously in RLU/Box1/File4
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Newspaper cuttings with reviews of Robert Lucas's adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. Previously in RLU/Box1/File5.
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Two copies. Marked as licensed by the Lord Chamberlain, St James's Palace. With some red ink annotations. Previously in RLU/Box1/File1.
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8 bound typescript copies, some with handwritten annotations and corrections. Previously in RLU/Box2/Files1-3 and RLU/Box 3/Files1-2.
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Bound typescript. [This is probably the version sent to Geoffrey Skelton in April 1983, as it fits his comments that page III/21 is missing (see RLU 7/9).
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Bound typescript. With red ink corrections and annotations. [Loose insert states that this is an early version of the script.]
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Bound typescript. [Probably one of the earliest of the 8 versions of the script.]
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Bound typescript. Loose insert states that this is the last of the 8 versions of the script. [See also RLU 7/5/6.]
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Bound typescript. [Probably one of the later of the 8 versions of the script.]
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Bound typescript. Loose insert states that this is the last version of the script. [See also RLU 7/5/4.]
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Bound typescript. With some underlining in red ink. [This is probably one of the later of the 8 versions of the script.]
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Bound typescript. Loose insert states: Back from Frankfurt. Final version.
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Marked III/5a-III7b. With red ink underlinings. Previously in RLU/Box12/File7.
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Bound typescript. With some red ink underlinings. After John Gay's 1712 play, The Mohocks. Previously in RLU/Box3/File3.
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Loose leaf typescript. With some ink annotations. After John Gay's 1712 play, The Mohocks. Previously in RLU/Box3/File4.
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Correspondents include Geoffrey Skelton, Martin Esslin (at the BBC), the Verlag der Autoren, S. Fischer Verlag and numerous other publishers in Germany and theatres in Germany and the UK. Also contains correspondence with John Wells (translator of the lyrics into English) concerning their contract and discussing issues relating to the translation of the lyrics. Previously in RLU/Box3/File5.
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Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Contains 3 loose-leaf typescripts entitled 'Der leere Himmel', which appears to be an unpublished novel in German set in early twentieth-century Imperial Russia. Although they were not stored together in the original filing system, the subject matter of the typed historical notes and transcriptions in RLU 8/4 suggests that they relate to this writing project and may have been gathered as part of Robert Lucas's background research for the novel.
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See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Loose leaf typescript of 272 leaves entitled Der Leere Himmel (The Empty Sky/Heaven), a piece of literary prose (an unpublished novel?) centred around a young Russian aristocratic woman and her family and her involvement in revolutionary circles in St Petersburg in the early 1900s. There are also some additional bundles of typescripts (not labelled but possibly early drafts of some sections of the main typescript), a register of street names in St Petersburg and notes on the canonisation of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, an incident which features in RL's story. The file also includes a letter from Kate [no surname] of Wood Green, concerning RL’s forthcoming knighthood and the research notes she had made on the canonisation of Saint Seraphim base on reports in the Russian newspaper, Moscow Vedomosti, from 1903.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Loose leaf typescript of 272 leaves (plus additional copies of pages 1 and 99) entitled Der Leere Himmel (The Empty Sky/Heaven), a piece of literary prose (an unpublished novel?) centred around a young Russian aristocratic woman and her family and her involvement in revolutionary circles in St Petersburg in the early 1900s. Previously in RLU/Box13/File2.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Loose leaf typescript of 272 leaves (plus additional copies of pages 1 and 99) entitled Der Leere Himmel (The Empty Sky/Heaven), a piece of literary prose (an unpublished novel?) centred around a young Russian aristocratic woman and her family and her involvement in revolutionary circles in St Petersburg in the early 1900s. Was in a folder marked: 2nd copy (corrected). Previously in RLU/Box13/File3.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Typed transcriptions of large extracts / quotations of historical, biographical and autobiographical writing by various writers on theme of late 19th/early 20th century Russian history, especially that relating to the Imperial Court under Nicholas II. With some handwritten amendments. Previously in RLU/Box20/File5. [Although the original order of the collection did not suggest that this file was connected to the other material in this series, the content suggests it represents RL's background research carried out in preparation for the writing of Der Leere Himmel. For example, it includes a transcription of an extract from The Story of My Life, published by Chapman and Hall Ltd in 1905, written by Father George Gapon, a character in Der Leere Himmel. It also contains extracts from Graf Witte's memoir published by Ullstein in 1923, which mentions [Alexei] Lopuchin and St Seraphim of Sarow, who both feature in RL's text Der Leere Himmel.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Correspondence concerning the publication of Robert Lucas's biography of Frieda von Richthofen, mainly with publishers Kindler Verlag, Secker and Warburg and Viking Press, but also with Laurence Pollinger [literary executors to the D.H. Lawrence estate] and the translator of the biography, Geoffrey Skelton. There are also four files of publicity material and reviews (1972-1977) and one file of financial records (mainly royalty statements) relating to the publication.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Originally first part of folder marked 'Frieda 1'. This folder contains Robert Lucas's earliest correspondence concerning his biography of the German writer and translator Frieda von Richthofen [Frieda Lawrence], best known for her marriage to the British novelist D. H. Lawrence. Includes correspondence with FvR's son [Charles] Montague Weekley, Laurence Pollinger Ltd (literary executors to the Lawrence Estate), Bolko von Richthofen, Else Jaffe-Richthofen, and Rowohlt and Kindler publishers. Previously in RLU/Box16/File1.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
USA newspaper cuttings (and copies thereof) of reviews of Robert Lucas's biography of Frieda von Richthofen (lFrieda Lawrence), some with attached correspondence from the Viking Press and readers. Previously in RLU/Box17/File6.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Mainly UK newspaper cuttings of reviews of Robert Lucas's biography of Frieda von Richthofen (Frieda Lawrence), translated from the German by Geoffrey Skelton and published by Secker and Warburg. Also press reviews from Belgian, Irish and Italian newspapers, a draft typescript of a review in The Times, and a typescript for a BBC Radio review. Previously in RLU/Box17/File7.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Originally second part of folder marked 'Frieda 1'. This folder contains correspondence concerning Robert Lucas's biography of the German writer and translator Frieda von Richthofen [Frieda Lawrence], best known for her marriage to the British novelist D. H. Lawrence. Much of the correspondence concerns the publication and translation of the biography from German into English by Geoffrey Skelton. Includes correspondence with Angelo Ravagli, Kindler Verlag, Laurence Pollinger Ltd (literary executors to the Lawrence Estate), Viking Press, translator Geoffrey Skelton, Marianne Eckardt and Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. Previously in RLU/Box16/File2.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Originally third and final part of folder marked 'Frieda 1'. This folder contains correspondence concerning Robert Lucas's biography of the German writer and translator Frieda von Richthofen [Frieda Lawrence], best known for her marriage to the British novelist D. H. Lawrence. Much of the correspondence concerns the publication and translation of the biography from German into English by Geoffrey Skelton. Includes correspondence with Kindler Verlag, translator Geoffrey Skelton, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, Marianne Eckardt and Laurence Pollinger Ltd (literary executors to the Lawrence Estate). Previously in RLU/Box16/File3.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Originally first part of folder marked 'Frieda 2'. This folder contains Robert Lucas's earliest correspondence concerning his biography of the German writer and translator Frieda von Richthofen [Frieda Lawrence], best known for her marriage to the British novelist D. H. Lawrence. Much of the correspondence concerns the publication and translation of the biography from German into English by Geoffrey Skelton. Includes correspondence with translator Geoffrey Skelton, Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, Laurence Pollinger Ltd (literary executors to the Lawrence Estate), Kindler Verlag, Viking Press and Marianne von Eckardt. It also contains an envelope with a newspaper clipping and 4 photographs of FvR sent to RL by FvR's 3rd husband, Angelo Ravagli (1949-1956). Previously in RLU/Box16/File4.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Originally second part of folder marked 'Frieda 2'. This folder contains Robert Lucas's earliest correspondence concerning his biography of the German writer and translator Frieda von Richthofen [Frieda Lawrence], best known for her marriage to the British novelist D. H. Lawrence. Much of the correspondence concerns negotiations over publication rights. Includes correspondence with Viking Press, Laurence Pollinger Ltd (literary executors to the Lawrence Estate), [Charles Montague] Weekley, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag and Kindler Verlag. Previously in RLU/Box17/File1.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Robert Lucas (RL) was born Robert Ehrenzweig in Vienna on 8 May 1904 to Sigmund Ehrenzweig and Emma Ehrenzweig (née Robinsohn). Sigmund Ehrenzweig was a coal merchant who was born in 1864 in Bzenec in the Czech Republic (then Bisenz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died in Vienna in 1935. Emma Ehrenzweig was born in 1877 in Jazowsko (now in Poland, but then also in Austro-Hungary) and died in London in 1960. His parents were married in 1900 and had two sons: RL and his brother Oskar, born in October 1906, who later became a textile designer.
RL attended Realgymnasium in Vienna from 1914-1918, and went on to study chemistry at Vienna’s Technische Hochschule in 1922 and chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna between 1923 and 1927, gaining his doctorate in 1927. From 1928 he worked at as industrial chemist and publicity manager at the Racine-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1928, and from 1928 to 1930 as a chemist for its sister company, Rudolf Bauer and Co. in Vienna and Brünn. Whilst in Berlin RL began to develop a parallel career as a writer and journalist, gaining experience behind the scenes of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, the Neues Schauspielhaus, and meeting writers Ernst Toller and Leo Lania. After his return to Vienna he became involved in a variety of journalistic and creative writing projects, some in association with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (then the SDAPDÖ), which RL joined in 1929. In 1930 he began working for the SDAPDÖ’s Vorwärts Verlag as editor of Das kleine Blatt and a writer for Die Arbeiterzeitung, and in 1932-1933 he also published and was chief editor of the journal Politische Bühne. From 1928 until he left for the UK in 1934, he was a leading member and writer of the Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe and the political cabaret group, the Politische Kabarett, both closely associated with the left wing of the SDAPDÖ. He also wrote a two-act play Das Jahr Achtundvierzig, which was performed at Vienna’s Grosser Konzerthaussaal in 1928 and a three-act play written jointly with Ernst Fischer, Die neue Büchse der Pandora (Vienna, 1931). He wrote the screenplay for the KIBA film Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim directed by Frank Ward Rossak, commissioned by the SDAPDÖ to be shown as part of the 1930 parliamentary election campaign. Jointly with Johann Hirsch he edited Ein Volk klagt an, an anthology of 50 letters by readers of Das Kleine Blatt on their WWI experiences, which was published by Hess Verlag in 1931 and later banned by the Nazis. Also in 1931 he wrote the festival play Das große Festspiel (The Great Pageant), a mass play for 4000 participants, which was directed by Stefan Hock and performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1931 International Workers' Olympiad at the Vienna Stadium, where it was seen by 260,000 spectators in four performances.
After the Austrian Civil War of February 1934 Das kleine Blatt was brought into line with the politics of the Austrofascist regime and RL was dismissed from his editing post. Being both socialist and Jewish, he was considered politically suspect and in April 1934 he left Austria for London, where he was appointed Assistant to the London Editor of the Viennese liberal daily, the Neue Freie Presse in November of that year. He remained with the paper, and had an office in its London headquarters in The Times building in Printing House Square, until the newspaper was nazified in 1938. He also contributed to the English press and for a time was diplomatic correspondent of The Times. It was in his office in The Times building that Alfred Barker of the BBC contacted him on 27 September 1938 in the middle of the Munich crisis and invited him to translate the Prime Minister’s speech, as it had been decided to broadcast a German version of the speech to Europe. Thus began the German Service of the BBC, an organisation with which RL was to spend the rest of his career, initially as translator but from 1940 until his retirement in 1967 as a scriptwriter (later chief scriptwriter and editor).
RL’s work for the BBC included writing features and sketches and he was eventually promoted to editor and chief scriptwriter. Of the many scripts he wrote during the war, his anti-Nazi satire of letters from Private Hirnschal to his wife in Germany were his best-known. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Hirnschal featured a common soldier who is forced to endure the vicissitudes of war and suffer from the mismanagement of his superiors. This was an update of a Schweyk-like figure RL originally conceived in the pre-war period and featured in the political cabaret scripts written at the time. The work enjoyed additional popularity in the immediate post-war period when it appeared in book form under the title Teure Amalia, vielgeliebtes Weib in Switzerland and Austria in 1946 and Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1948. Several German language editions have appeared since this post-war period and the letters remain in print (in 2016) under the title Die BBC gegen Hitler. Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal an seine Frau in Zwieselsdorf. After the war RL focused on a new aspect of German life with his anti-Stalinist satirical feature series Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser, written for the German East Zone Programme, which he continued to script as a freelance contributor even after his formal retirement in May 1967.
In addition to his employment with the BBC, RL continued to pursue a range of other journalistic, literary and theatrical projects after settling in the UK. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace was directed by Julius Gellner and performed at the Phoenix Theatre in London and in Blackpool and Manchester in 1943. After the war he wrote and translated an adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s Cards with Uncle Tom in 1958 and a play The Mohocks are coming (1976). He wrote features for radio stations in the Switzerland, Austria and West Germany, and for the left-liberal German weekly Die Zeit from 1959 to 1974, and for the Swiss magazine Sie und Er from 1951 to 1968. In 1969 he began work on his first biography, Frieda Lawrence, on the life of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, which was published in Germany in 1972 and translated and published in the UK, the US and Japan. After his retirement from the BBC he wrote book reviews for the German daily Die Welt, the last of which appeared in the week after his death in January 1984.
RL married Ida Klamka (born in 1909) in her home town of Bruck an der Leitha in Austria in May 1935, after which Ida (then Ehrenzweig) joined RL in London. After Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 RL helped his brother Oskar Ehrenzweig, his widowed mother Emma and his parents-in-law Aron and Karoline Klamka to obtain UK visas from Austria. He later also organised the move of his sister-in-law Ilona Geschmay and her family to the UK from the Sudetenland. Robert and Ida gained British citizenship in 1946 and changed their name by deed poll from Ehrenzweig to Lucas in 1947. They had two sons: John, born in 1942 and David, born in 1947. RL was a member of the International PEN-Club and the Foreign Press Association. He was well established in British society and received the MBE in 1966. In 1981, three years before his death, with the award of the Goldene Medaille für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich he achieved recognition in his native country.
Originally third and final part of folder marked 'Frieda 2'. This folder contains Robert Lucas's earliest correspondence concerning his biography of the German writer and translator Frieda von Richthofen [Frieda Lawrence], best known for her marriage to the British novelist D. H. Lawrence. Much of the correspondence concerns negotiations over publication rights. Includes correspondence with Marianne von Eckardt, Laurence Pollinger Ltd (literary executors to the Lawrence Estate), Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, Viking Press and Kindler publishers and Keep Films Ltd. Also contains a list of useful addresses at the front of the file (1971) and 2 newspaper cuttings (1976 and 1982). Previously in RLU/Box17/File2.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Publicity material in the German, Austrian and Swiss press and German-language radio transcript reviews concerning Robert Lucas’s biography of Frieda von Richthofen (Frieda Lawrence), published by Kindler Verlag. Previously in RLU/Box17/File3.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Newspaper cuttings from the German, Austrian and Swiss press with reviews of Robert Lucas’s biography of Frieda von Richthofen (Frieda Lawrence), published by Kindler Verlag. Previously in RLU/Box17/File4.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.
Mainly royalty statements from Kindler Verlag, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd and the Viking Press relating to Robert Lucas’s biography of Frieda von Richthofen (Frieda Lawrence). Previously in RLU/Box17/File5.
Open. At least 48 hours' notice is required for research visits.
See conditions outlined at fonds level.