Graf, Oskar Maria (Berg, Bavaria, 1894-1967, New York), was the ninth child of a baker and a farmer's daughter. After his father's death he suffered intolerably bad treatment from a brother, escaping at the age of 17 to a life of poverty in Munich. Drafted into the army but objecting to war service, he went on hunger strike and feigned insanity, was imprisoned, and was discharged in 1916. In Munich he associated with anarchist and Bohemian circles and, though not an activist, became involved in the communist revolt culminating in the Räterepublik (see Bayern). Resolved to break out of poverty, he turned to writing expressionist poetry, stories, and fairy-tales, as well as the first part of his autobiography, Frühzeit. Jugenderlebnisse (1922), covering the period up to 1917. His first real financial success was the peasant novel Heimsuchung (1925), a commissioned work, and with the next part of his autobiography, Wir sind Gefangene. Ein Bekenntnis aus diesem Jahrzehnt (1927), taking his story up to the fall of the Räterepublik, he established himself as a serious writer and critical commentator on his time. The work, now judged the outstanding autobiography of the 1920s, was one of those singled out on 10 March 1933 for the public burning of books. His fiction, by contrast, was approved of by the National Socialists, who erroneously assumed he would become a supporter of their brand of Heimatliteratur. Graf, a passionate opponent of Hitler and at the time in voluntary exile in Vienna, promptly responded by denouncing the regime in an article published in the Viennese Arbeiter-Zeitung (12. 3. 1933) containing words made famous by the world press, ‘Burn me!’ (Verbrennt mich!). Until 1938 when he emigrated to the USA, he lived mainly in Czechoslovakia (Brno), also visiting Russia and in 1934 attending the International Congress of Socialist Writers in Moscow (Reise in die Sowjetunion 1934, 1974). During the war he was president of the German-American Writers Association, whose honorary president was Th. Mann. Still a convinced pacifist, Graf refused to join the US army, as a result of which he was not granted US citizenship until 1958, having been stateless since 1934.
Graf's preference for autobiographical works is an aspect of his realism. He aimed at a genuine representation of life; from this his art of creating milieu and characters, dialogues, humour, and irony proceeds. While still in Europe he began to write Das Leben meiner Mutter (1946; The Life of my Mother, 1940), a major work about a woman's patient toil and love, his own development, and an enclosed, often rough rural community. The scrutiny of mental attitudes is the special concern of novels like Bolwieser (1931; film by R. W. Faßbinder 1977, premièred 1983 in New York), set against the background of the Weimar Republic, and the satirical novel Anton Sittinger (1937), set during the National Socialist period, both works exposing the self-centred complacency and opportunism of petty middle-class characters. In his peasant novel Unruhe um einen Friedfertigen (1947) the lack of social and political awareness is viewed from a different perspective by demonstrating the demoralizing effects of poverty on a village community which turns to National Socialism. Th. Mann judged this novel his most powerful work. Others include Der harte Handel. Ein bayerischer Roman (1935), Der Abgrund. Ein Zeitroman (1936, in Russian transl. 1935; as Die gezählten Jahre, 1976), Kalender-Geschichten (1929), and its sequel Das Aderlassen (1947); Die Eroberung der Welt. Roman eines Untergangs (1949; as Die Erben des Untergangs. Roman einer Zukunft 1959) and Die Flucht ins Mittelmäßige. Ein New Yorker Roman (1959) are his last novels. Other aspects of his colourful individuality appear in his popular collection of erotic stories Das Bayrische Dekameron (1928; repeatedly reissued), displaying humour couched in dialect speech. Graf died before his planned return to Munich at the city's invitation and before his multifaceted work and personality, including his journalistic activities and correspondence, had been fully appreciated. During the 1970s ideological considerations prevailed in both Germanies, but from the 1980s notable contributions have promoted a documented evaluation of his literary standing. An manchen Tagen. Reden, Gedanken und Zeitbetrachtungen appeared in 1961; Gelächter von außen. Aus meinem Leben 1918-1933 in 1966;
The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
