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Kathrine Taylor

Kathrine Kressmann Taylor (1903 – 1996) is an American author, known mostly for her Address Unknown (1938), a novel written as a series of letters between a Jewish art dealer, living in San Francisco, and his business partner, who had returned to Germany in 1932 and adopted gradually the Nazism ideology. The novel is credited with exposing, early on, the dangers of Nazism to the American public.

Life

Kathrine Taylor was born Kathrine Kressmann in Portland, Oregon. After graduating from the University of Oregon in 1924, she moved to San Francisco and worked as an advertising copywriter. In 1928, Kathrine married Elliott Taylor, who owned an advertising agency. In 1938, the couple moved to New York, where Story magazine published Address Unknown. The editor Whit Burnett and Elliot deemed the story "too strong to appear under the name of a woman", and assigned Kathrine the masculine pseudonym of Kressmann Taylor, which she used professionally for the rest of her life. Reader's Digest soon reprinted the novel, and Simon & Schuster published it as a book in 1939 and sold 50,000 copies. Foreign publications followed quickly, including a Dutch translation, later confiscated by Nazis, and a German one, published in Moscow. In Germany itself, the book was banned.

The indictment of Nazism was also the theme of the next book by K. Taylor, Until That Day, published in 1942.

In 1944, Columbia Pictures turned Address Unknown into a movie. The film director was William C. Menzies (Gone with the Wind), and Paul Lukas starred as Martin. The screenplay, written by Herbert Dalmas, was credited also to Kressmann Taylor. In Russian, there was another screenplay by David Greener, but it was never filmed. The story "Address Unknown" was also selected for inclusion by Readers' Digest and received wide circulation and attention in result.

From 1947, Kathrine started teaching humanities, journalism and creative writing at Gettysburg College, in Pennsylvania, living as a widow from 1953, when Elliot Taylor died. Retiring in 1966, she moved to Florence, Italy and wrote Diary of Florence in Flood, inspired by the great flood of the Arno river in November of that year. In 1967, Kathrine married the American sculptor John Rood. Thereafter, they lived half a year in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and half in Val de Pesa, near Florence. Mrs. Rood continued this style of living also after her husband’s death in 1974.

In 1995, when Kathrine was 91, Story Press reissued Address Unknown to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps. The novel was subsequently translated into 20 languages, and the French version sold 600,000 copies. The book finally appeared in Germany in 2001, and was reissued in Britain in 2002. In Israel, the Hebrew edition was a best-seller and was adapted for the stage. It has already given over 100 performances and the stage show was filmed for TV and broadcast on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Rediscovered after Address Unknown was reissued, K. Taylor spent a happy year signing copies and giving interviews until her death in July 1996 at age 93.

Works

Address Unknown (1938)

(The title is actually a mistranslation of the term "Adressat unbekannt," which is marked on the last envelope. The correct translation of "Adressat" is "addressee," not "address"; which is much more in keeping with the plot of the story.) It is the story of two German friends and business partners, art dealers in San Francisco. Martin, a gentile, returns with his family to Germany, exhilarated by the advances in the old country since the humiliation of the Great War. The Jewish partner, Max, remains in the States to keep the business going. The story is told entirely in letters between them, from 1932 to 1934, the technique used in 84 Charing Cross Road.

Martin writes about the wonderful Third Reich and this fellow Hitler. At first Max is covetous: "How I envy you! ... You go to a democratic Germany, a land with a deep culture and the beginnings of a fine political freedom."

But Max soon doubts his friend’s enthusiasm, having heard from eyewitnesses who got out of Berlin that Jews were being beaten and their businesses boycotted. Martin responds, telling Max that, while they may be good friends, everybody knows that Jews have been the universal scapegoats, and "a few must suffer for the millions to be saved."

"This Jew trouble is only an incident," Martin says. "Something bigger is happening." Nonetheless, he asks Max to stop writing to him. If a letter were intercepted, he (Martin) would lose his official position and he and his family would be endangered.

Max writes anyhow when his own sister, an actress in Berlin, goes missing. He becomes frantic to learn her fate. Martin responds on bank stationery (less likely to be inspected) and tells Max his sister is dead. He admits that he turned Griselle away when she came to him, her brother’s dearest friend, for sanctuary.

There is a gap of about a month. After that, Max starts writing letters to Martin at home, carrying only what looks like business and remarks about the weather, but written as though they have a hidden encoded meaning, with strange references to exact dimensions of pictures and so on. The letters refer to "our grandmother" and imply that Martin is also Jewish. The letters from Munich to San Francisco get shorter and more panicky, begging Max to stop: "My God, Max, do you know what you do? ... These letters you have sent ... are not delivered, but they bring me in and ... demand I give them the code ... I beg you, Max, no more, no more! Stop while I can be saved."

But Max continues: "Prepare these for distribution by March 24th: Rubens 12 by 77, blue; Giotto 1 by 317, green and white; Poussin 20 by 90, red and white."

At last a letter is returned to Max, stamped: Adressat unbekannt. Addressee Unknown.

The book’s "Afterword," lovingly written by Mrs. Taylor’s son, says that the idea for her story came from a small news article: American students in Germany wrote home with the truth about the Nazi atrocities, a truth most Americans, including Charles Lindbergh, would not accept. Fraternity brothers thought it would be funny to send them letters making fun of Hitler, and they wrote back, "Stop it. We’re in danger. These people don’t fool around. You could murder [someone] by writing letters to him." Thus emerged the idea of "letter as weapon" or "murder by mail."

Address Unknown was performed as a stage play in France, 2001, in Israel from 2002 (still running) and at the Promenade Theater, New York, 2004. It has also been performed in Germany, Italy, Turkey,Argentina, South Africa and in various cities of the USA.

Address Unknown (Cimzett Ismeretlen) premieres on the stage of Spinoza Haz in Budapest, Hungary on September 6, 2008.

Until that day (1942)

Day of No Return is the title of the recent reprints of this book.

The novel recounts the story of Karl Hoffmann, a young German Christian, son of a Lutheran pastor. He starts his theology studies in Berlin in late twenties. Germany is still depressed by the war defeat, and this is the soil on which the Nazism influence grows up. Hitler comes to the power and starts persecutions against the Church, which refuses to preach the Nazi doctrine. Karl’s father resists the authorities, and this becomes the cause of his death. Karl, in his turn, continues his father’s struggle and stands against the Nazi takeover of the church. He decides now to become a pastor himself, but his ordination is denied. His life is in danger, and he owes his survival only to his escape to the United States.

The novel shows very brightly the slow turn of both the German elite and ordinary people to reconciliation with the new power and then to its adoption. It describes vividly how people are compromising, day after day, one after another; how the secret police gradually infiltrates to all society levels. The climate of terror which is imposed on obstinate ones and deportations to the concentration camps are described, too.

The novel is based on the life of a real person, Leopold Bernhard. Kathrine Taylor met him through the mediation of FBI, which had investigated the young German after his defection to the United States.

Bibliography

English

In the list below, the author is Kathrine Kressmann Taylor.

Address Unknown. HarperCollins, 2002 ISBN 0-7322-7616-0
Address Unknown. Washington Square Press, 2001. ISBN 0-7434-1271-0
Address Unknown. Story Press, 1995. ISBN 1-884910-17-3
Diary of Florence in Flood. Simon & Schuster, 1967
Florence: Ordeal by Water. H.Hamilton, London, 1967 ISBN 0-241-91438-8
Day of No Return. Xlibris, 2003 ISBN 1-4134-1181-9;
Until That Day. Duell, Sloan & Pierce, 1945
Until That Day. Simon & Schuster, 1942

German

Kressmann Taylor. Adressat unbekannt. Roman. Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 2000 ISBN 3-455-07674-2
Kressmann Taylor. Bis zu jenem Tag. Roman. Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 2003 ISBN 3-455-07675-0

French

Kressmann Taylor. Inconnu à cette adresse. Éditions Autrement, 1999
Kressmann Taylor. Ainsi mentent les hommes. Recits.
Kressmann Taylor. Jour sans retour. Éditions Autrement, 2001

Hebrew

Kressman Taylor. Ma'an Lo Yadua. Zmora Bitan Publishers, Israel 2001,translated by Asher Tarmon. In 2002 the Hebrew text was adapted for the stage by Avi Malka. The Kibbutz Theatre Company produced the play and actors Zvi Shwartzberg and Rafi Kalmar appeared in the roles of Max and Martin respectively. By the summer of 2007, the play had been performed in Israel 150 times and it was filmed by Israel Public TV Channel 1 for screening on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2004.