About the Author

Kurt Tucholsky was a brilliant satirist, poet, storyteller, lyricist, pacifist, and democrat; a fighter, ladies' man, reporter, and early warner against the Nazis who hated and loathed him and drove him out of Germany after his books were burned in 1933. The New York Times hailed him as "one of the most brilliant writers of republican Germany. He was a poet as well as a critic and was so versatile that he used five or six pen names. As Peter Panter, he was an outstanding essayist who at one time wrote topical sketches in the Vossische Zeitung, which ceased to appear under the Nazi regime; as Theobald Tiger, he wrote satirical poems that were frequently interpreted by popular actors in vaudeville and cabartes, and as Ignatz Wrobel, he contributed regularly to the Weltb�hne, an independent weekly that was one of the first publications prohibited by the Hitler government." Tucholsky, who occupied the center stage in the tumultuous political and cultural world of 1920s Berlin, still emerges as an astonishingly contemporary figure. Cindy Opitz is a translator and art historian who has translated numerous works by Kurt Tucholsky, including Berlin! Berlin! Dispatches From the Weimar Republic, and other authors. She is the collections manager at the Museum of Natural History in Iowa City. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Reviews

In Rheinsberg, Tucholsky delivers the newness and intensity of young love, sweet, sometimes strident, with repartee juxtaposed against the sylvan landscape of rural Germany. Poignant, biting, tender: a reminder of what love promises...and can be. Victoria Zackheim, playwright, novelist, anthologist Rheinsberg is at once a delightful and a deeply disquieting story. The lovers, Claire and Wolfie-a silly but harmless pair-escape the confines of Berlin for a romantic romp in the countryside. As their brief interlude nears its end, already consigned to memory, there comes with it an end to innocence, to frivolity. It was 1912; Kurt Tucholsky's prescience was uncanny: the holiday is over and soon we will go to war. --Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Hester Among the Ruins and The Scenic Route Once known as Weimar Germany's greatest political satirist and one of that fabled era's most celebrated literary figures, Kurt Tucholsky is today virtually unknown in the Anglo-American world. Thanks to the efforts of translator Cindy Opitz and Berlinica Publishing, readers now have the chance to discover one of Tucholsky's early pieces of short fiction that exhibits the intense wit, charm, and rhetorical verve for which he earned his reputation. -- Noah Isenberg, author of between redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism A wonderful and charming love story, finally rediscovered and brought to America -Claudia Dreifus, Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University, New York Teachers and students of history and literature will welcome this small collection of texts by Kurt Tucholsky, an early 20th century master of literary and political criticism, whose incisive and elegant voice will now be more widely available in English. Atina Grossmann, Professor of History at Cooper Union and author of Jews, Germans and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany Rheinsberg-a short story of two unconventional lovers in the last carefree days of Germany before 1914. The first major work by the anti-Nazi journalist and poet Kurt Tucholsky finally appears in a new translation for English speakers. Ian King, Professor of German in Sheffield and London, UK, Chair of the Kurt Tucholsky Society and co-editor of Tucholsky's Complete Works.