Identified individuals are represented by a biographical sketch, a list of connections to other signatures, and, in most cases, an artifact from the Ransom Centers collections. Help us identify more signatures by submitting your suggested identification.
X
X
X
X
Location on door: back, panel 5
JOHN HERRMANN
The Michigan-born novelist and short story writer John Herrmann (1900-1959) wrote in a spare, colloquial style that recalls the early work of Ernest Hemingway. Herrmann studied art in Munich and then met his first wife, writer Josephine Herbst, in the literary circles of 1920s expatriate Paris. The couple returned to the United States in the fall of 1924, and in 1926 Herrmann's first novel, What Happens, was published in Paris by Robert McAlmon's Contact Editions. The novel, which details the jazz age experiences of a Midwestern jewelry salesman, was deemed obscene by American customs officials and was banned for import into the country, despite testimonials from fellow writers and a legal defense by famed attorney Morris L. Ernst. Throughout his career, Herrmann contributed numerous pieces to Scribner's, including "The Big Short Trip," which won the magazine's Short Novel Contest in 1932.
- View slide show
- View metadata
X
Creator: Herrmann, John, 1900-1959
Title: "In Munich When the Mark Was Falling"
Description: Typescript with handwritten corrections
Item Date: Undated
Material Type: Manuscript
ADA Caption: Typescript of "In Munich When the Mark Was Falling"
Curatorial Department: Manuscripts Collection
Collection Name: John Herrmann Collection
Stack Location: Works: G-Z
Copyright Notices: Some of the documents shown here are subject to U. S. copyright law. It is the user's sole responsibility to contact the copyright holder and secure any necessary copyright permission to publish documents, texts, and images from any holders of rights in these materials. As the owner of the physical object (not the underlying copyright), the Ransom Center requires that you also contact us if you wish to reproduce an image shown here in a print publication or electronically.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright ownership and to obtain permission for reproduction. If you believe you are the copyright owner of an item on this site, and we have not requested your permission, please contact us.
X
An annotated typescript of John Herrmann's "In Munich When the Mark Was Falling," undated
Herrmann's short story depicts the expatriate scene in Germany circa 1921. Its narrator haltingly tells of an incident involving "some young American writer, you would know him if I said his name." Rather than titillate, the story's allusions to prostitution and venereal disease offer a critique of the sometimes careless attitudes of American expatriates in the face of post-war German poverty.