Alfred Kerr born Alfred Kempner, was an influential German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

-Jewish theatre critic and essayist, nicknamed the Kulturpapst ("Culture Pope

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

").

Kerr was born into a prosperous family in Breslau, Silesia

Province of Silesia

The Province of Silesia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1815 to 1919.-Geography:The territory comprised the bulk of the former Bohemian crown land of Silesia and the County of Kladsko, which King Frederick the Great had conquered from the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th...

, taking the surname Kerr in 1887, and making the change officially in 1909. He studied literature in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 with Erich Schmidt

Erich Schmidt

Erich Friedrich Schmidt was a German and American-naturalized archaeologist, born in Baden-Baden. He specialized in Ancient Near East Archaeology, and became professor emeritus at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.When he was young, he fought in the World War I, and was captured...

. He subsequently was a reviewer for numerous newspapers and magazines. With the publisher Paul Cassirer

Paul Cassirer

Paul Cassirer was a German art dealer and editor who played a significant role in the promotion of the work of artists of the Berlin Secession and of French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, in particular that of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne.- Starting out :Paul Cassirer started out as...

 he founded the artistic review Pan in 1910.

Kerr was noted for his treatment of drama criticism as another branch of literary criticism

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

. As his fame grew he engaged in polemics, with the critics Maximilian Harden

Maximilian Harden

Maximilian Harden was an influential German journalist and editor.- Biography :...

, Herbert Ihering and Karl Kraus in particular. In the 1920s he was hostile to Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

, and assailed him with accusations of plagiarism

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

. In 1933 Kerr and his family fled Germany for France via Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. They moved on to London in 1935. These years of exile were described, from a child's perspective, by Kerr's daughter in her books When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is a children's novel, by Judith Kerr, first published in 1971. It is a semi-autobiographical story of a young Jewish girl who is forced to flee her home in Germany in 1933 with her family to escape the Nazis, whom her father, a writer, had campaigned against...

and "The Other Way Round". His books were amongst those burnt in May 1933 by the Nazis

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 when they came to power; Kerr had attacked the Nazi Party publicly, and he had already gone into exile with his family. After visiting Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, and France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, he came to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1935 where he settled, in penury. He was a founder of the Freier Deutschen Kulturbund, and worked for the German PEN

International PEN

PEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....

 club. An old feud with Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...

 worked against him at the BBC.

Kerr took British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 citizenship in 1947. In 1948 he visited Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 at the start of a planned tour of several German cities but suffered a stroke, and then decided to end his own life (overdose of veronal procured for him by his wife). *http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/artikel/90/178545

The Alfred-Kerr-Preis für Literaturkritik was established in 1977. After the publication of Wo liegt Berlin in 1997 (a bestseller) his works are more widely read in Germany and an edition is in progress.

His son Michael Kerr was a prominent British jurist. His daughter Judith Kerr

Judith Kerr

Judith Kerr is a German-born British writer and illustrator who has created both enduring picture books such as the Mog series and The Tiger Who Came To Tea and acclaimed novels for older children such as the autobiographical When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit which give a child's-eye view of the...

 wrote a three-volume autobiography; the writer Matthew Kneale

Matthew Kneale

Matthew Kneale is a British writer, best known for his 2000 novel English Passengers, which won the prestigious Whitbread Book Award and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He went to school at Latymer Upper School and then studied Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, and afterwards...

 is her son with Nigel Kneale

Nigel Kneale

Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...

, the writer of Quatermass

Quatermass

Quatermass may best be known as the surname of the title character of a British science fiction franchise of several television serials and films, and a radio production...

 scripts.

Works

• Godwi. Ein Kapitel deutscher Romantik (1898). Dissertation on Clemens Brentano
  Clemens Brentano
  Clemens Brentano, or Klemens Brentano was a German poet and novelist.-Overview:He was born in Ehrenbreitstein, near Koblenz, Germany. His sister was Bettina von Arnim, Goethe's correspondent. His father's family was of Italian descent. He studied in Halle and Jena, afterwards residing at...
  
  .
• Das neue Drama (1905)
• Die Harfe (1917) poems
• Ich sage, was zu sagen ist: Theaterkritiken 1893-1919. Werke Band VII, 1.

Wo liegt Berlin 1895-1900 (1997)

• Warum fließt der Rhein nicht durch Berlin? Briefe eines europäischen Flaneurs. 1895 bis 1900
• New York und London, travel
• O Spanien!, travel
• Caprichos (1926) poems
• Buch der Freundschaft (1928) children's literature
• So liegt der Fall Theaterkritiken 1919 - 1933 und im Exil
• Der Dichter und die Meerschweinchen: Clemens Tecks letztes Experiment
• Diktatur des Hausknechts
• Walther Rathenau
  Walther Rathenau
  Walther Rathenau was a German Jewish industrialist, politician, writer, and statesman who served as Foreign Minister of Germany during the Weimar Republic...
  
  . Erinnerungen eines Freundes
• Gruss an Tiere (1955) with Gerhard F. Hering
• Theaterkritiken (1971) selected criticism
• Ich kam nach England (1979) diary
• Mit Schleuder und Harfe (1982)
• Wo liegt Berlin? Briefe aus der Reichshauptstadt (1997)
• Alfred Kerr, Lesebuch zu Leben und Werk (1999)
• Mein Berlin (2002)

Sucher und Selige. Literarische Ermittungen Werke Band IV, (2009)