One person who contributed to this was Esperanza López Mateos, the sister of Adolfo López Mateos, later the President of Mexico, who translated eight books by Traven into Spanish from 1941. 13 17 Mitteilung der Walther-Rathenau-Gesellschaft | Nr. 1 [14], In 1930 Torsvan received a foreigner's identification card as the North American engineer Traven Torsvan (in many sources, there also appears another first name of his: Berick or Berwick). . The English texts are usually longer; in both versions there are also fragments which are missing in the other language. Traven's solidarity with the proletariat would also be understandable, in opposition to his relationship with a great industrialist, which he, as an illegitimate son, was not supposed to have. This claim is mostly treated by Traven scholars as a diversion or a joke, although there are those who accept it. Investigating in official archives, Spota discovered that Torsvan had received a foreigner's identification card in Mexico in 1930 and a Mexican ID card in 1942; on both documents the date and place of birth was 5 March 1890 in Chicago. He was in many ways the opposite of his half-brother. [13] A man named Traves Torstvan flew from Mexico City to Paris on Air France on 8 September 1953 and returned to Mexico City from Paris on 28 September of the same year. The hero's rejection of his degrading living conditions frequently serves as motive and broad emphasis is placed upon the efforts of the oppressed to liberate themselves. These materials include train tickets and banknotes from different East-Central European countries, possibly keepsakes Ret Marut retained after his escape from Germany following the failed revolution in Bavaria in 1919. He acted as a writer and the alleged representative of B. Traven, on behalf of whom he negotiated the publication and filming of his books with publishers and film producers. Doubts about Aslan Norval remain and exacerbate the problems of the writer's identity and the true authorship of his books. [6], The writer with the pen name B. Traven appeared on the German literary scene in 1925, when the Berlin daily Vorwärts, the organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, published the first short story signed with this pseudonym on 28 February. According to Tapio Helen, the periodical used partly vulgar methods, often publishing obvious falsehoods, for example about the reward offered by Life magazine when it was already known that the reward was only a marketing trick. Dressing his novels in the costume of adventure or western literature, the writer seeks to appeal to the less educated, and first of all to the working class. - The New York Times. Asked by journalists if he was Traven, Croves always denied or answered evasively, repeating Traven's sentence from the 1920s that the work and not the man should count. Mass Market Paperback In subsequent years she acted as his representative in contacts with publishers and as the real owner of his copyright which she later transferred to his brothers.[14]. When the film became a box office and won three Academy Awards the public clamored for information about the author. Unlike much of adventure or Western fiction, Traven's books, however, are not only characterized by a detailed description of the social environment of their protagonists but also by the consistent presentation of the world from the perspective of the "oppressed and exploited". [13][14], Rolf Recknagel, an East German literary scholar from Leipzig, came to very similar conclusions as Erich Mühsam. The above hypotheses, identifying B. Traven with Hal Croves, Traven Torsvan, Ret Marut and possibly Otto Feige, are not the only ones concerning the writer's identity that have appeared since the mid-1920s. [13], B. Traven's works also enjoyed a soaring popularity in Mexico itself. [20] The passenger list from Liverpool states that Marut's original point of departure was Copenhagen, Denmark, and lists question marks under his country of residence and country of citizenship. It seems indisputable that Traven's hide-and-seek manners became progressively obsessive; although we have to consider that self-presentation is irrevocable. But from Traven's preserved notes, it does not appear that he also had to work in difficult conditions as a day labourer on cotton plantations and in oil fields. [19] In the opinion of Wyatt and Robinson, the version presented by Marut to the police was true – B. Traven was born as Otto Feige in Schwiebus (modern-day Świebodzin) and only later changed his name to Ret Marut, his stage name Marut being the anagram of traum (dream in German). He filed altogether three applications at that time, claiming that he had been born in San Francisco on 25 February 1882 to parents William Marut and Helena Marut née Ottarent. Download Ebook Macario B Traven Macario by B. Traven - Goodreads Macario is a 1960 Mexican supernatural drama film directed by Roberto Gavaldón and starring Ignacio López Tarso and Pina Pellicer. The circumstances of this journey are not clear either. Author:B Traven Publisher:Diogenes Verlag AG Series:Diogenes Taschenbücher Publication date:2016-02-01 Pages:326 Product dimensions:113mm (w) x 180mm (h) x 24mm (d) About Wordery Wordery is one of the UK's largest online booksellers. The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger and Crew Manifests of Airplanes Arriving at Houston, Texas; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004, via ancestry.com. Records of the Board of Trade and of successor and related bodies. There's a problem loading this menu right now. ), ( He allegedly utilized his experiences from these voyages later in the novel The Death Ship. Anyway, B. Traven's (Ret Marut's) life in Mexico was as mysterious as his fate in Europe. [9][25], However, as, Tapio Helen points out, there is an enormous contrast between the experiences and life of Marut, an actor and bohemian in Munich, and Traven's novels and short stories, characterized by their solid knowledge of Mexican and Indian cultures, seafaring themes, the problems of itinerant workers, political agitators and social activists of all descriptions, and pervaded with Americanisms. Marut got to know Erich Mühsam, one of the leaders of the anarchists in Munich. B. Traven, also called Berick Traven Torsvan, or Ret Marut, (born March 5, 1890?, Chicago?, Ill., U.S.—died March 27, 1969, Mexico City, Mex. A short biography of the writer and anarchist, B Traven, also known as Feige, Ret Marut, Torsvan, Croves... B. TRAVEN – AN ANTI-BIOGRAPHY "An author should have no other biography than his books. [12], Ret Marut was held in Brixton prison until 15 February 1924. Wyatt and Robinson did research in the Polish archives and confirmed the authenticity of these facts; both the date and place of birth, and the given names of Feige's parents, agreed with Marut's testimony. [16], Clemensstraße 84 in Munich – Ret Marut lived here from 1915 to 1919, From the left: Traven's stepdaughter, her husband, members of the German section of the B. Traven Society. ), General from the Jungle (Jungle Novels Book 6), ( For example, in 1947, she went to Europe to represent him in contacts with his publishers; finally, in 1948, her name (along with Josef Wieder from Zurich) appeared as the copyright holder of his books. The main character of the novel is again Gerard Gales, a sailor who, having lost his documents, virtually forfeits his identity, the right to normal life and home country and, consequently, is forced to work as a stoker's helper in extremely difficult conditions on board a "death ship" (meaning a coffin ship), which sails on suspicious voyages around the European and African coasts. [27] As early as 1926, Torsvan took part as a photographer in an archeological expedition to the state of Chiapas led by Enrique Juan Palacios; one of the few photographs which may depict B. Traven, wearing a pith helmet, was taken during that expedition. Spota published the results of his investigations in a long article in the newspaper Mañana on 7 August 1948. A solitary position in Traven's oeuvre is held by Land des Frühlings (Land of Springtime, 1928), a travel book about the Mexican state of Chiapas that doubles as a soapbox for the presentation of the leftist and anarchist views of its author. The action of the book is again set in Mexico, and its main characters are a group of American adventurers and gold seekers. In September 1907 he left the city and turned into Ret Marut, actor, born in San Francisco. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: A Novel, ( Furthermore, Guthke goes on to suggest that "Ret Marut" may be a partial anagram of "Moritz Rathenau". A CULT MASTERPIECE—THE ADVENTURE NOVEL THAT INSPIRED JOHN HUSTON'S CLASSIC FILM, BY THE ELUSIVE AUTHOR WHO WAS A MODEL FOR THE HERO OF ROBERTO BOLAÑO'S 2666. ; Class: BT26; Piece: 736; Item: 3. Traven's last novel, published in 1960, was Aslan Norval (so far not translated into English), the story of an American millionairess who is married to an aging businessman and at the same time in love with a young man; she intends to build a canal running across the United States as an alternative for the nuclear arms race and space exploration programs. In the late 1970s, two BBC journalists, Will Wyatt and Robert Robinson, decided to investigate this matter. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. See the article on Linn Gale in the archive of, The name Hal Croves had already appeared earlier, for the first time in 1944, on the envelope of a letter addressed to him by Esperanza López Mateos. When Croves died, he ordered that his wife, Rosa Elena Luján read his will. B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism. The novel is an accusation of the greed of capitalist employers and bureaucracy of officials who deport Gale from the countries where he is seeking refuge. From CrimethInc. ). The subject and the language of the novel, which were completely different from the writer's other works, resulted in its rejection for a long time by publishers who doubted Traven's authorship; the novel was accused of being "trivial" and "pornographic". Traven approved of the director and his screenplay (by letter, obviously), and sent his intimate friend Hal Croves to the location to be a technical advisor and translator for $150 a week. This reluctance to offer any biographical information was explained by B. Traven in words which were to become one of his best-known quotations: The creative person should have no other biography than his works.[7][11]. According to the theory, B. Traven was the illegitimate son of Emil Rathenau, founder of AEG and therefore the half-brother of the politician Walter Rathenau. Most leftist intellectuals, despite their negative attitude to European and American imperialism, did not know about or were not interested in persecution of natives in Africa, Asia or South America. Wieder, as an employee of the Büchergilde Gutenberg book club, had already been cooperating with the writer since 1933. The impassionate but illiterate Indians and the corrupt political officials collide in a riveting conclusion in this first volume of the critically acclaimed but overlooked work from the late pseudonymous writer who has come "... to be recognized as one of the narrative masters of the twentieth century." B. Traven was two or more persons (Hal Croves/Traven Torsvan and Ret Marut) who worked in collaboration, according to John Huston. Torsvan rented a wooden house north of Tampico in 1924 where he often stayed and worked until 1931. The rumour was not true. 12 However, Huston denied identifying Croves with Traven as early as 1948. B. Traven's novels and short stories became very popular as early as the interwar period and retained this popularity after the Second World War; they were also translated into many languages. In the book, two destitute American men in Mexico of the 1920s join an older American prospector in a search for gold. He was married to Rosa Elena Lujan. Most of B. Traven's books were published in German first, with their English editions appearing later; nevertheless, the author always claimed that the English versions were the original ones and that the German versions were only their translations. He was finally arrested and imprisoned as a foreigner without a residence permit in Brixton Prison, London, on 30 November 1923. [13], Hal Croves died in Mexico City on 26 March 1969. The expanded book edition was published in 1926 by the Berlin-based Buchmeister publishing house, which was owned by the left-leaning trade-unions-affiliated book sales club Büchergilde Gutenberg. Macario was made into a film by Mexican director Roberto Gavaldón in L’arte dell’inganno, Fandango libri (in Italian) ISBN ; Guthke, Karl S. : The Life Behind the Legends, ISBN. B. Traven submitted his works himself or through his representatives for publication from Mexico to Europe by post and gave a Mexican post office box as his return address. A third point Guthke mentions is that Ret Marut repeatedly indicated that he was not dependent on theater fees, and also the "Ziegelbrenner" could hardly have brought in very much. Apart from that, there are virtually no political programmes in Traven's books; his clearest manifesto may be the general anarchist demand "Tierra y Libertad" in the Jungle Novels. Such attempts ended without success also in the 1960s. Traven knew that values like credibility and authenticity were effective criteria in the literary matters he dealt with and that he needed to consider them. The Traven expert Karl S. Guthke analyzed the theory in the Schweizer Monat in 1991. In 1918, the Mexican section of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was also established; members of the IWW were known as "Wobblies". The British journalists discovered further that after his apprenticeship and National Service in the German army around 1904/1905 Otto Feige disappeared leaving no trace except for a photograph made by a studio in Magdeburg. Many journalists tried to get to Croves' home in Mexico City; but only very few were admitted to him by Rosa, who guarded the privacy of her already very aged, half blind and half deaf husband. Michael L. Baumann presented in Mr. Traven, I Presume? Macario is the story of a poor man who has been hungry all his life. ), Canasta de cuentos mexicanos (Spanish Edition), ( First published in 1935, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is Traven's most famous and enduring work, the dark, savagely ironic, and riveting story of three down-and-out Americans hunting for gold in Sonora. The writer’s real name, nationality, date and place of birth, as well as many other biographical details, remain disputed. [39] Traven is therefore not, as other theories suggest, son of a fisherman, a farmer or a theater impresario. “Readers who ignore the genius of B. Traven do so at their peril.” - The New York Times B Traven’s Jungle Novels comprises six books written during the 1930s that observe the poor conditions of the Mexican Indians living in the southern state of Chiapas, whose forced work under exploitative conditions and labor camps foment rebellion and start the beginnings of the Mexican Revolution. He claimed that he had been born in San Francisco in 1882, signed on a ship when he was ten and had been travelling around the world since then, but now wanted to settle down and get his life in order. However, according to Huston, Croves played a double game during the shooting of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Torsvan states his citizenship as Mexican and his date and place of birth as 2 May 1890 (3 May in the typewritten version of the document) in Chicago, Illinois. Select the department you want to search in. [36] Figueroa further stated that Traven's mother was an Irish actress, Helen Mareck,[37] which might explain Traven's early mastery of English, as well as his closeness to the theater. ), March to the Monteria (Jungle Novels Book 3), ( He remained silent until 1990. Assuming that B. Traven is identical with the revolutionary Ret Marut, there is a clear parallel between the fate of Gale and the life of the writer himself, devoid of his home country, who might have been forced to work in a boiler room of a steamer on a voyage from Europe to Mexico. Rolf Recknagel conducted research into it in 1976, and Karl Guthke in 1982. In June 1952, BT-Mitteilungen published Traven's "genuine" biography, in which it claimed that the writer had been born in the Midwestern United States to an immigrant family from Scandinavia, that he had never gone to school, had had to make his living from the age of seven and had come to Mexico as a ship boy on board a Dutch steamer when he was ten. Government is the first installment of B. Traven's legendary Jungle Novels, a series of six books detailing the oppression and subsequent uprising of the Mexican Revolution.The story follows Don Gabriel, a bureaucratic official in an isolated government outpost in a remote village. ), novelist noted as a writer of adventure stories and as a chronicler of rural life in Mexico. Soon, it published Traven's first novel, Die Baumwollpflücker (The Cotton Pickers), which appeared in installments in June and July of the same year. Form 30A, 1919-1924 (Ocean Arrivals). Gale soon was a founding member of one of the early Communist Parties of Mexico (PCM). This excitement was partly fuelled by Warner Bros. itself; American newspapers wrote at length about a mysterious author who took part incognito in the filming of the film based on his own book. [7][9], Apart from his twelve novels, B. Traven also authored many short stories, some of which remain unpublished. BT27. It has not been translated into English. Der politische Schriftsteller B. Traven (SWR Radio broadcast and its transcript)", "LINN GALE OFFERS TO INFORM ON REDS; Political Prisoner Is Said to Be Willing to Aid Government if Freed.REPUDIATES OLD BELIEFS American Civil Liberties Union Rejects Pleas of Radicals to Defend Him", B. Traven versteckt sich in Acapulco – STOCKPRESS.de STOCKPRESS.de, "Die Revolution findet im Roman statt. During the visit reporters tried to induce Croves to admit to being Traven, but in vain. - University Review, Creation of the Sun and the Moon is B.Traven's retelling of the beautiful Mexican legend of a young Indian hero who saves the world by rekindling the sun after it's been extinguished by evil spirits, from the reclusive author of The Treasure of Sierra Madre.This novella includes color illustrations. 11 The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England, via ancestry.com. [13], In October 1959, Hal Croves and Rosa Elena Luján visited Germany to take part in the premiere of the film The Death Ship based on Traven's novel. According to Rosa Elena Luján, the widow of Hal Croves, who is identified with B. Traven by many scholars (see below), her husband signed on a "death ship" after his release from prison and sailed to Norway, from there on board another "death ship" to Africa and, finally, on board a Dutch ship, reached Tampico on the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 1924. The Gales published the first Mexican issue of their periodical Gale's Journal (August 1917 – March 1921), sometimes subtitled The Journal of Revolutionary Communism in October 1918. "- University Review, The first novel from the elusive author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.Set in the 1920s in Mexico, B. 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