Successful Emigration. Henry Kreisel's Career in Canada (PDF)

Essay from the year 2022 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1, University of Vienna, language: English, abstract: Henry Kreisel had an eventful life. A native of Vienna, he left Austria in 1938 and was soon imprisoned as an enemy alien in England and taken to an internment camp in Canada. With his later career as a professor and author, he achieved something that many Jewish refugees were denied: a successful emigration. This paper talks about his life, influence and the works he published.

Henry Kreisel is born in Vienna on June 5, 1922, to a middle-class Jewish family. He lives a sheltered childhood and youth in the Leopoldstadt, the second Vienna district. With his parents and his brother, who is two years younger, he enjoys trips to the Danube and the Prater. He becomes interested in literature at an early age and starts writing poems and stories. As a high school student, he regularly attends the Burgtheater and the State Opera House with a friend. But in May 1938, an anti-Semitic incident at school leads him to stay away from classes for fear of increasing discrimination. With the support of a relative, he is able to emigrate to England as early as July 1938; his brother follows in January 1939, and his parents join him in August 1939 after their release from the Dachau and Ravensbrück concentration camps.