DOVID KENIGSBERG

DOVID KENIGSBERG (December 27, 1891-1942?)

            He was a poet, born in Busk, Galicia.  He studied in the high schools of Brod (Brody) and Czernowitz.  Over the years 1911-1913, he worked as a bookkeeper in Lemberg.  During WWI he served in the Austrian military and was wounded at the front.  After the death of his only daughter, he withdrew from people and from the environment of Yiddish literature, and left for the village of Hanatshov (Ganachuv, Ganachevka), near Svirzh, where he and his wife took up farming on their own small plot of land.  After the Soviets occupied Lemberg in late 1939, Kenigsberg for a short time chaired the local Yiddish writers’ organization.  According to Mendl Zinger, he was murdered by the Soviets in 1942; B. Mark claims that he was confined in the Lemberg ghetto in 1942, which means perforce that he died there.  He debuted in print in 1910 with a poem in Yankev Zerubavel’s collection Yugend (Youth).  A number of his poems written at the time of WWI were included in Shmuel-Yankev Imber’s anthology Inter arma, a zamlung lirik (Inter Arma, a collection of lyrics) (Vienna, 1918).  He also published poems in: Avrom Reyzen’s Nayer zhurnal (New journal) (Paris-Warsaw, 1913-1914); Kritik (Criticism) (Vienna, 1920); Ringen (Links) (Warsaw, 1921); Varshever almanakh (Warsaw almanac) (1923); and the quarterly for literature, art, and culture that he edited, Tsushtayer (Contribution) (Lemberg, 1929-1931).  His work also appeared in Morris Basin’s Antologye, 500 yor yidishe poezye (Anthology, 500 years of Yiddish poetry) (New York, 1917); Naye yidishe dikhtung (Modern Yiddish poetry) (Iași, 1947); Binem Heler’s Dos lid iz geblibn, lider fun yidishe dikhter in poyln, umgekumene beys der hitlerisher okupatsye, antologye (The poem remains, poems by Jewish poets in Poland, murdered during the Hitler occupation, anthology) (Warsaw, 1951); and Hubert Witt, Der Fiedler vom Getto: Jiddische Dichtung aus Polen (The fiddler of the ghetto, Yiddish poetry from Poland) (Leipzig, 1966, 1978).  Kenigsberg was well versed in classical German literature, knowledgeable of Greek and Latin, and a translator from those and other languages into Yiddish, such as: Heinrich Heine, Bukh fun di lider (Book of poems [original: Buch der Lieder]); Adam Mickiewicz, Pan tadeush (Pan Tadeucz) (Lemberg, 1939), 354 pp.; Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Torkvato taso, drame in 5 aktn (Torquato Tasso, a drama in five acts) (Warsaw: Di tsayt, 1923), 145 pp.; and he worked hard at rendering Homer’s Iliad in a more Jewish vein.  His own works would include: Lider (Poetry) (Lemberg: Y. Shnayd, 1912) 32 pp.; Soneten (Sonnets) (Lemberg, 1913); Hundert soneten (One hundred sonnets) (Vienna: Der kval, 1921), 112 pp.  He wrote love poems and ethnic songs, and he celebrated picturesque Galician landscapes, but he especially cultivated the sonnet form.  He published the first booklet of sonnets in Yiddish poetry, and together with Fradl Shtok, he was the creator of the Yiddish sonnet.  As Zalmen Reyzen put it: “In the thorough mastery, in the absolute identity of his poetic experience, Kenigsberg…evinced no interest in overcoming…the Germanicisms which often disrupted the effect of his masterful poems.”  “Kenigsberg’s genre paintings,” wrote M. Naygreshl, “devised in a semi-realistic style, which excelled in their silent, epical calm, engraved themselves deeply in memory….  It is truly a shame that Kenigsberg set out with such persistence to focus on [the sonnet] form, which curbed his talent and clipped his wings.”

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), p. 205; Benyomen B[yalostotski], in Tsayt (New York) (May 1, 1921); Moyshe Nadir, Mayne hent hobn fargosn dos dozike blut (My hands have shed this blood) (Vilna: Kletskin, 1927), p. 84; Shmuel Niger, in Tog (New York) (December 28, 1931); Yoysef Volf, Kritishe minyaturn (Critical miniatures) (Warsaw-Cracow, 1940); “Yizker” (Remembrance), Yidishe shriftn (Lodz) (1946); M. Naygreshl, in Fun noentn over (New York) 1 (1955), pp. 305-12; Y. Papyernikov, Heymishe un noente, demonungen (Familiar and close at hand, remembrances) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1958), pp. 256-57; M. Zinger, Dovid kenigsberg (Dovid Kenigsberg) (Haifa, 1965); Meylekh Ravitsh, in Di goldene keyt (Tel Aviv) 75 (1972).

Berl Cohen