Joseph Breitbach

Breitbach, Joseph (Koblenz, 1903-80, Munich), (pseudonym J. S. Saleck, among others), grew up bilingually in the Rhineland and was recognized for promoting Franco-German relations. A businessman, essayist, and writer of fiction critical of middle-class attitudes and authority, he settled in Paris in 1929. He contributed to newspapers and periodicals, including Figaro and La Nouvelle Revue Française (a founder member, Jean Schlumberger, was among his friends), Maß und Wert, of which Th. Mann was co-editor (1937-40), and Die Zeit (1948-52). His first collection of stories, Rot gegen Rot (1929, French version Le Liftier amoureux, 1948), was followed in 1933 by the novel Die Wandlung der Susanne Dasseldorf (repr. 1981), after which he was banned from publishing in Germany. In 1940 the Gestapo raided his Paris home confiscating his extensive diaries and a novel, Clemens; a fragment appeared in 1963, the novel Bericht um Bruno, concerned with the problem of power, in 1962, another collection of stories, Die Rabenschlacht, in 1973, and Das blaue Bidet oder Das eigentliche Leben in 1978. His comedy Mademoiselle Schmidt (1929) was in its new versions of the 1960s, La jubilaire, Das Jubiläum, and Die Jubilarin, a stage success. Jean Schlumberger (1952) and Feuilletons zur Literatur und Politik (1978) are collections of essays.