Public lifeורנר קראפט

Werner Kraft

Werner Kraft was a German-Israeli librarian, literary scholar, writer and poet who wrote in German and lived in Jerusalem from 1934.

1896 to 1991German-language poetry and essaysLiterary studies of GoetheWork as a librarian

Born: 4 May 1896, Brunswick
Died: 14 June 1991, Jerusalem
Occupation: librarian, writer, literary theorist, poet
Education: Leibnizschule

Werner Kraft was born in 1896 in Brunswick

Kraft was born in Brunswick, Germany, in 1896 to Jewish parents and grew up in Hanover. He attended the Leibniz School there from 1906 to 1914. In 1913 he met the thinker Theodor Lessing, who helped arrange his first publication.

In 1915 he began studying German and French philology and philosophy in Berlin, where he met Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem. From 1916 to 1919 he served as a medical soldier near Hanover. He then continued his studies in Hamburg and Freiburg and completed a doctorate in 1925.

He trained as a librarian from 1920 and worked at the German Library in Leipzig from 1922 to 1926. In 1928 he took a post at the library in Hanover now named for Leibniz. As a Jew he was dismissed in 1933.

After a period of wandering he reached Jerusalem in 1934 and worked there as a librarian and editor until 1955. He kept writing in German, publishing more than 30 books, including poetry, an autobiography and studies of Goethe, Karl Kraus and Kafka. He died in Jerusalem in 1991 and was buried at Kibbutz Tzora.