HEINRICH (SHOLEM-TSVI) TSIMERMAN

HEINRICH (SHOLEM-TSVI) TSIMERMAN (1882-1940)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland.  He graduated from a German high school in Lodz and studied literature and the direction of plays at Warsaw University.  For many years he contributed work, primarily in the field of theater, to Neue Lodzer Zeitung (New Lodz newspaper) and later, with the founding of Lodzher nakhrikhtn (Lodz reports) in 1907, he switched to Yiddish and became a member of the editorial board.  Later still, until 1913 he placed work in Lodzher tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper).  He published poetry, one-act plays, and translations from German in Romantsaytung (Fiction newspaper) and Teater velt (Theater world), among others, in Warsaw-Lodz.  In book form: Di teater fun der yidisher literatur (The theater of Yiddish literature) (Warsaw, 1907), 48 pp. (among the very first books in Yiddish in this field); A kholem (A dream), a one-act play (Warsaw, 1908), 16 pp.; Der friling (The spring), a one-act play (Warsaw, 1910), 24 pp.; and he authored plays in German that were successfully staged by Rose Shoshana.  After WWI he occupied himself primarily giving lectures (on Freud, Dostoevsky, and the like).  In 1930 he settled in Danzig, and, until the invasion of the German fascists into Poland, he edited a German-language newspaper.  He was murdered by the Nazis in the first weeks of 1940.

Sources: Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), p. 276; information from Rose Shoshana in New York.

Khayim Leyb Fuks