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Lev Nussimbaum

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Lev Nussimbaum
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Lev Nussimbaum (Kiev, 1905 – Positano, 1942) was a writer and journalist, a Jew, born in Kiev, who spent his childhood in Baku before fleeing the Bolsheviks in 1920 at the age of 14. He created for himself a niche in the competitive European literary world by writing about topics that Westerners, in general, knew little about - the Caucasus,[1] Russian Empire,[2] Bolshevik Revolution[3] newly discovered oil,[4] and Islam.[5] He wrote under the name of Essad Bey in German.

Historians and literary critics, who knew these subjects well, discredited Essad Bey as a reliable source.[6] Today, historians disregard books published under his name and rarely quote him, though the topics Essad Bey chose to write about are still critically relevant. Furthermore, the fact that Essad Bey was so prolific calls into question the authorship of these books[7] and whether Essad Bey was primarily operating as a broker and doctoring manuscripts and marketing them under his name, which by then had become famous. In 1934, his agent Werner Schendell warned him to slow down and take a year off between books so that he would not appear to be so prolific.[8] That year no books appeared in German - only two novellas in Polish.[9]

Ali and Nino: Was Nussimbaum the Core Author?

A celebrated 1937 novel "Ali and Nino: A Love Story," which some people attribute to him, has become a classic of Azerbaijani literature, but recent careful analysis of the diaries and political essays, short stories and novels of Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli point to Chamanzaminli as the core author of this important work. [10] However, Essad Bey's fingerprints[11] are evident in the novel, especially in folkloric and legendary passages in the text, many examples of which contain significant errors and can be traced to the same mistakes in Essad Bey's earlier works. His knowledge of the Caucasus was quite limited as he had left the region when he was only 14 years old.

Life

Lev Nussimbaum was born in October 1905, according to himself in a train,[12] though documents in the Kiev State Archives and the Kiev Synagogue state that he was born in Kiev. His father, Abraam Leybusovich Nussimbaum, was a citizen of Tiflis, Georgia, born in 1875, later migrated to Baku and invested in oil.[13] His mother Basya Davidovna Nussimbaum, according to her marriage certificate,[14] was a Jew from Belarus. She committed suicide on February 16, 1911 in Baku when Nussimbaum was five years old.[15] Apparently, she had embraced left-wing politics[16] and was possibly involved in the underground Communist movement. Nussimbaum's father then hired Alice Schulte, a woman of German ethnicity to be his son's nanny.[17]

Memorial table on Berlin's house of Lev Nussimbaum

In 1918, Lev and his father fled Baku because of the massacres that were taking place in the streets. According to Essad Bey's first book which historians do not consider to be very reliable, the two travelled through Turkestan and Persia. However, of this adventurous journey there is no record except in Nussimbaum's own writings.[18] Nussimbaum and his father returned to Baku but when the Bolsheviks took Baku in the spring of 1920, they fled to Georgia where they stayed until the Bolsheviks took Tiflis and Batumi. Then they managed to board a ship to Constantinople to where thousands of refugees had fled. Later, Nussimbaum eventually settled in Berlin (1921–1933),[16] where he enrolled simultaneously in high school and in Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. He did not graduate from either of them but went around telling people that he had a Cand. Phil.[19]

Nussimbaum's experiences as a youth were formative, enchanting experiences. Later in Berlin, he obtained a certificate "proving" that he had converted to Islam in August 1922.[20] In 1926, he began writing under the pen name of Essad Bey for the prestigious literary journal Die literarische Welt (The Literary World). At least 120 articles were published under his name.[21] By the early 1930s, Essad Bey had become a popular author throughout Western Europe, writing mainly about contemporary historical and political issues.[16]

His political stance was on the monarchist[22] far right. In 1931, he joined the German-Russian League Against Bolshevism, the members of which, Daniel Lazare remarks, "for the most part either were Nazis or soon would be". He also joined the Social Monarchist Party, which advocated restoration of Germany's Hohenzollern dynasty. He also had connections to the pre-fascistic Young Russian movement, headed by Alexander Kazembek.[16]

In 1932, Essad Bey married Erika Loewendahl—daughter of shoe magnate Walter Loewendahl. The marriage failed, ending in scandal.[23] Erika ran off with Nussimbaum's colleague Rene Fülöp-Miller. Erika's parents, who were wealthy, succeeded in getting the marriage to Lev Nussimbaum Essad Bey annulled in 1937.[24]

In 1938, when the Germans occupied Austria, Nussimbaum fled to Italy and settled in the seacoast town of Positano. He died there of a rare blood disorder known to afflict Ashkanazi Jews, which causes gangrene of the extremities. Most likely its was Buerger's disease,[25] not Raynaud's Disease as some claim.

Works

Despite Nussimbaum's being an ethnic Jew, his monarchist and anti-Socialist politics were such that, before his origins were discovered, the Nazi propaganda ministry included his works on their list of "excellent books for German minds".[16] Among the works credited to him are early biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Czar Nicholas II, Mohammed, the Prophet and Reza Shah of Iran. All these "biographies" were allegedly written between 1932 and 1936. At one point, Nussimbaum was requested to write an official biography of Benito Mussolini.[citation needed]. Essad Bey's works, many of which he claimed were biographies, are mostly discredited by historians and literary critics and rarely referenced today.[26]

Bibliography

Under penname of Essad Bey

  • Blood and Oil in the Orient (1929; reissued by Aran Press in English, 1997; reissued by Maurer in German, 2008, ISBN 978-3-929345-36-0)
  • Twelve Secrets of the Caucasus (1930; reissued by Maurer in German, 2008, ISBN 978-3-929345-37-7)
  • Stalin: The Career of a Fanatic (1931)
  • The Caucasus" (1932), only in German, "Der Kaukasus" (not translated into English).
  • Mohammed, the Prophet (1932)
  • White Russia: People Without a Homeland (1932) (not translated into English).
  • OGPU: The Plot Against the World (1932)
  • Liquid Gold" (1933), (not translated into English)
  • Russia at the Crossroads" (1933), (not translated into English).
  • Love and Oil" (1934), novella, only in Polish (not translated into English).
  • Manuela" (1934), novella, only in Polish (not translated into English).
  • Nicholas II: The Prisoner in Purple (1935)
  • Lenin" 1935, Italian only
  • Reza Shah," 1936
  • Allah is Great: The Decline and Rise of the Islamic World (1936) (with Wolfgang von Weisl) about the ascendancy of Saudi Arabian king Ibn Saud (1936) (not translated into English).
  • End of Bolshevism" (1936), which appeared only in Italian as Giustizia Rossa (Red Justice) (not translated into English).

Under penname of Kurban Said

Essad Bey's role is highly disputed in "Ali and Nino" and "Girl from the Golden Horn". Evidence points to the fact that manuscripts were passed to him and he doctored and polished. See Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2-4 (2011), 364 pages. In English or in Azeri.

  • Ali and Nino: A Love Story (1937, reissued by Anchor, 2000, ISBN 0-385-72040-8).
  • Girl from the Golden Horn (1938, reissued by Overlook Press, 2001, ISBN 1-58567-173-8)
  • The Man Who Knew Nothing About Love (Unpublished, but advertised in Annemarie Selinko's novel I Was an Ugly Girl, Vienna: Kirschner, 1937).[27]

References

  1. ^ Blood and Oil in the Orient (1929), Twelve Secrets of the Caucasus (1930), and The Caucasus (1931)
  2. ^ OGPU (1932), Nicholas II (1935)
  3. ^ Stalin (1931), OGPU (1932), Russia at the Crossroads (1933), Lenin (1935), End of Bolshevism (1936)
  4. ^ Blood and Oil in the Orient (1929), Liquid Oil (1933), Love and Oil (1934), God is Great (about Ibn Saud, 1936)
  5. ^ Mohammed (1932), God is Great (about resurgence of Islam and Ibn Saud, 1936)
  6. ^ <"Fact or Fiction? What Essad Bey's Contemporaries Said," in Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2-4, pp. 166-177.
  7. ^ "Was Essad Bey Too Prolific? Did he really write 16 books in 8 years?" Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2-4, pp. 162-163.
  8. ^ Literary agent Werner Schendell (1891-1961) cautioned Essad Bey to slow down, not to appear too prolific in correspondence, dated May 8, 1934. Dr. Gerhard Hopp, "Mohammed Essad Bey: Nur Orient Für Europäer?" in Asien Afrika Lateinamerika, Vol. 25:1 (1997), p. 86, Endnote 120.
  9. ^ "Love and Oil" and "Manuela"
  10. ^ 101 Reasons why Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli is the Core Author of "Ali and Nino," Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2-4, pp. 262-333.
  11. ^ Cut and Paste' Author: Essad Bey's Fingerprints in 'Ali and Nino,'" Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2-4, pp. 230-251.
  12. ^ Essad Bey claimed he was born on a train in an autobiographical essay published in Die literarisch Welt after German police traced his birth to Kiev; however, he had already written two books where his publishers claimed he had been born in Baku. Thus, the non-descript location of his birth - on a train - which is highly unlikely.
  13. ^ The A.L. Nussimbaum & Binagadi Petroleum Pipeline Co. was sold to the Nobel Brothers Petroleum Company in 1914 for 131,500 rubles. Azerbaijan Republic State History Archives,Fund 392, List 1, Case 199, Page 1.
  14. ^ Marriage Certificate (October 26, 1904), Georgian Central State Historical Archives, No. 675, p. 10.
  15. ^ Azerbaijan Republic State History Archives, Fund 1044, List 1, Case 571, page 4.
  16. ^ a b c d e Lazare, Daniel. "Jews Without Borders". The Nation. Retrieved March 28, 2005.
  17. ^ Alice Schulte: "Biographie Essad-Bey," unpublished "biography," Rascher Archives at the Central Library, Zurich, Switzerland.
  18. ^ Essad Bey, "Blood and Oil in the Orient" (1929)
  19. ^ Gerhard Höpp, "Mohammed Essad Bey: Nur Orient Fur Europaäer?" (Orient for the Europeans) in Asien Afrika Lateinamerika 25:1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), p. 78.
  20. ^ Dr. Gerhard Hopp, "Mohammed Essad Bey: Nur Orient Für Europäer?" in Asien Afrika Lateinamerika, Vol. 25:1 (1997), p. 77.
  21. ^ Index for "Die literarische Welt 1925-1933, Vol. 1" (Nendeln: Kraus-Thomason Organization Ltd, 1976).
  22. ^ Essad Bey boasted that he was a Monarchist in "The Story of My Life" (Die Gelchichte Meines Lebens) in Die literarische Welt, Berlin, Vol. 7:5 (January 30, 1931, pp. 3-4. This contradicts the main theme in the novel Ali and Nino which expresses deep resentment for the Russian Czar Nicholas II. Essad Bey also wrote a sympathetic "biography" about Nicholas II (1935).
  23. ^ Essad Bey had Erika arrested when she arrived by ship in New York. He notified authorities that she planned an assassination in the United States. It was a totally false allegation - totally imaginary, but gave Erika serious legal problems. “Gerichtssaal: Scheidungsprozess Gegen Den Schriftsteller Essad Bey / Courtroom: Divorce Proceedings Against the Writer Essad Bey.” Neues Wiener Journal 15, (1937), p. 33.
  24. ^ "Los Angeles Times," November 19, 1937, p. A12.
  25. ^ "The Lives of Two Writers - Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli and Lev Nussimbaum." See Cause of death, Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2-4, p. 39, citing Dr. Wilifried Fuhrman, Essadbey.de
  26. ^ "Fact or Fiction? What Essad Bey's Contemporaries Said," in Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2-4, pp. 166-177.
  27. ^ Best described, according to Dr. Wilifried Fuhrman (ESSADBEY.de) as "the wild fantasies of an Orientalist, a mixture of malice and slander as well as pathological hubris and arrogance," quoted in Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2-4,p. 345.

Sources

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