Ossip Kalenter (actually Johannes Burkhardt, 1900-1976) first emerged as a poet and feuilletonist during the early 1920s. The list of Weimar Republic newspapers printing his work expanded rapidly and eventually included the Berliner Tageblatt, the Frankfurter Zeitung, and many others. As a committed antifascist, he went into exile in Prague, where he became the editor of the Prager Tagblatt. During the German invasion of 1939, Kalenter fled to Switzerland. In 1945, he first became the secretary of the Schutzverband deutscher Schrifsteller im Ausland (Association to Protect German Writers Abroad) and eventually the president of the German P.E.N. section.
In this position, Kalenter, similar to Seelig, actively supported the
needs of exiled writers scattered across many countries. Kalenter’s
estate comprises the complete files of those activities (very important
documents in terms of the history of German literature abroad), as well
as his correspondence with various personalities, such as Wilhelm
Sternfeld, Oskar Maria Graf, Hermann Broch, Alfred Kerr, Claire Goll,
Paul Celan, Ferdinand Hardekopf, Hans Purrmann and many others.
Kalenter’s actual manuscripts, his journals and documents for a volume
of Rilke letters are all part of the holdings.
The collection is transfered to the SLA and is indexed in its data system.