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The German AICA mourns the death of longtime member Kurt Leonhard.
The critic, poet and translator passed away on 10 October at the age of 95 in his adopted home of Esslingen. In the end, Kurt Leonhard withdrew completely – exactly as he described in the last twelve lines of his 1951 poem “Absage” (“Refusal”): “...keine Hast mehr / kein Hort mehr / keine List mehr / keine Last mehr / keine Lust mehr / kein Feind mehr / kein Freund mehr / kein Gast mehr / kein Wirt mehr / kein Wert mehr / kein Wort mehr / AMEN.” (“…no more haste / no more hoard / no more cunning / no more burden / no more desire / no more enemy / no more friend / no more guest / no more host / no more worth / no more word / AMEN.”)
In 1997 he left AICA his wonderfully handwritten aphorisms on the topic “Ist Kunst mehr als ‘Kunst’?” (“Is Art More than ‘Art’?”), composed in 1994. I printed a facsimile of these “thought experiments” as he called them, in an appendix to Heinrich Hahne’s essay “Sprache und Kunstkritik” (“Language and Art Criticism”), (volume 5 of “Schriften zur Kunstkritik” (“Essays on Art Criticism”), Cologne 1997, pp. 33-40).
Born in Berlin on 5 February 1910, he studied art history and philosophy there, but discontinued his studies in 1936 because his doctoral thesis on Marées, Hildebrand and Fiedler was “politically undesirable” (Leonhard). He worked in Berlin as an art dealer and editor for a publishing company before having to go to war in 1941. In 1946 he returned to Germany from an American POW camp in Italy, making his home in Esslingen am Neckar, where he became co-founder and the first managing director of the adult education center.
Leonhard began writing about modern art in 1947. He described his texts as “engaged in the mediation of modern and contemporary art.” In 1947 the collected essays appeared as the book “Die heilige Fläche” (“The Holy Surface”), considered today as much a cult favorite as his 1955 “Augenschein und Inbegriff” (“Appearance and Epitome”). His lyric poetry is, without a doubt, motivated by Dada. For me, many of his poems belong in the fixed inventory of 20th century poetic arts. Axel Marquardt included four examples from Leonhard’s lyric production in his 1992 anthology “100 Jahre Lyrik – Deutsche Gedichte aus zehn Jahrzehnten” (“100 Years of Lyric Poetry – Ten Decades of German Poems”), and rightly so. Leonhard’s verses stand for the “rift in consciousness” (Marquardt) which separates the inhuman 20th century from all of its predecessors. His position as representative of a “critical modernity,” which as such would be unthinkable without Nietzsche, is also clear when one looks at the authors Leonhard dealt with as translator: Paul Valéry, Henri Michaux, E.M. Cioran, Romain Rolland.
The fact that his family used one of his own poems to bid Leonhard farewell in his obituary illustrates the full respect afforded his poetry in the private sphere as well. The verses should also be read here: “Ich liege / Völlig entspannt / Will nichts / Weiß nichts / Denke nichts. / Ich bin alles / Alles ist nichts.” (“I lie / Completely relaxed / Want nothing / Know nothing / Think nothing. / I am all / All is nothing.”)
Cologne, October 2005
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