It is in the First World War that a clear image of Kurt Offenburg emerges for us, and it was with pieces dealing with the First World War that he opened his final book. He had served in the German Army, on the Western Front:

Ten years after this war, Offenburg returned to Flanders and recorded his thoughts of a world and landscape that had not ceased to haunt him.11 It was the year he turned thirty and he already had some five books to his name.12 The First World War had brought him into contact with work by German worker poets. ‘The poet from the proletariat, who consciously speaks for his own class, is a phenomenon that had not previously existed’, Offenburg later wrote; ‘new, never before heard sounds and rhythmic turns were found for the heaving episodes of a chaotic, abysmal epoch’.13

In the European Spring of 1918, when it seemed that war and its bloodthirsty recklessness would not end, Offenburg was sitting in a small garrison on the Rhine, the shattering experience of weeks in a military hospital still in his bones. He did not elaborate on the military hospital experience, but mentioned that he was handed several manuscript pages of poetry that immediately intrigued.14 The poetry was by Gerrit Engelke (1890-1918), who was to die on the Western Front later that year, two weeks before his British contemporary, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918).15

Jakob Kneip (1881-1958),16 co-founder of a circle of worker poets known as the ‘Working People at Haus Nyland’,17 was the soldier who had handed Offenburg the manuscript pages. Others associated with this circle included Max Barthel (1893-1975), Karl Bröger (1886-1944), Heinrich Lersch (1889-1936) and Engelke, all of whom were subsequently represented in an anthology of worker poetry that Offenburg published in 1925, dedicated to Kneip and Lersch ‘in friendship’. Offenburg's introduction to the section on Engelke was an outburst — controlled yet indignant — that revealed his own core:

In 1928, when Offenburg returned to the landscape of the blood-baths, he came to the Gate of Menin, ‘the main attraction for hordes of tourists, who “do the trip” over the battlefields by car’. He stood there, reading names of former enemy soldiers who had been killed, and again revealed for us the determined passion that would drive him for the rest of his life:

Nearly two decades later, in December 1945 and on the birthday of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), ‘the grandfather of modern German journalism’,21 Offenburg devoted his evening ‘News Review’ broadcast on ABC radio to this ‘clear-sighted analyst and foe of Prussianism’ who ‘is as modern to-day as a century ago and more’. Offenburg, who had settled in Australia in the early 1930s, was naturalized in 1936. Without any condescension to Australian listeners who may not have heard of Heine, he began:

At the time of this broadcast, the Second World War had ended and Offenburg had turned forty-seven; he had experienced ‘two wars, two revolutions and two inflations’, enough ‘to melt down all illusions’.22 Earlier that year he experienced serious heart problems that would kill him five months later.23 Had he been remembering Heine as a beacon, perhaps also Heine's greatness as a lyrical writer?24 Had he been wondering about what he had made of his own life? Did he think back at all to his beginnings in the town of Offenburg, in the German state of Baden, where he had grown up as Kurt Dreifuss?

He was the eldest of five children, the son of Josef Dreifuss (1866-1915) and Rosa, née Halle (1873-1916). From September 1908 until July 1915, he studied at the Oberrealschule in Offenburg, then moved to Frankfurt am Main.25 We know of his First World War service, ‘a soldier of 1917’ who ‘now made his first acquaintance with Death, the ever-present companion for many a year to come’, and who realized that ‘all values had changed’.26 In May 1923, when he applied to study economics at the university, he stated that he had spent a year and a half in a business apprenticeship. He had married in April 1922.

‘Offenburg’ was his pen-name, used at least by 1921, when he a reviewed a volume by the poet Erich Mühsam (1878-1934).27 His articles in the 1920s ranged from studies of the writer Alfons Paquet (1881-1944) in the context of ‘our rationalistic-atomized oriented age’,28 to impressions — in verse — of New York,29 to James Joyce (1882-1944), ‘whose soul remains deeply embedded in a mediaeval Catholicism’.30 Correspondence with writers like Armin Wegner (1886-1978),31 or the publisher Bruno Dressler (1879-1952),32 allow us to glimpse additional layers.

His books reveal an openness to the world, observant and thoughtful. A poem, ‘Old Oak Tree’,33 evokes deep roots; but they are world roots, taking in world history. A decade later, some two years after he was naturalized, Offenburg described this experience in a way which suggested that he had turned himself into a world citizen:

Was this his journey both as writer and man? Speaking of Heine in December 1945, Offenburg told how ‘Heine, like any liberal leader of his time, lived in exile’. The contempt by German officialdom for Heine ‘was due more to his political writings than to the fact that he was a Jew’, added:

Because there is no detailed chronology of Offenburg's life that I know of, against which isolated pieces of information can be checked, he remains for us a mysterious figure, perhaps cheerful and urbane, sceptical and bold; these, at least, were qualities that Offenburg admired in Geoffrey Chaucer, this ‘English Boccaccio’, whose Cantebury Tales formed the basis of his earliest book. Will memoirs and letters from those who knew him eventually emerge? His own papers do not appear to have survived.

Offenburg travelled widely, ‘from the United States, to the Far East, studying political and economic conditions, writing for newspapers and periodicals’.36 One biographical note stated that, ‘as Special Correspondent for one of the leading European newspapers, he covered the first and second stages of Japan's conquest of Asia’.37 Had he been based in China for several years?38 Had he passed through Sydney in 1928, as Bean remembered? P.C. Murphy, who employed Offenburg at the ABC in 1936, recalled that, when Hitler came to power in Germany, ‘Offenburg was in Shanghai as the correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung and it was there he heard of the ransacking of his flat in Frankfurt and the burning of his library by the Nazis’.39

Offenburg paid his first longer visit here in 1930.40 A series of articles by him on ‘The Australian Experiment’ appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1931.41 Aside from writing and broadcasting (including work for the Macquarie Broadcasting Services), he had also lectured for the Sydney University Extension Board on Pacific and Far Eastern Affairs.42 In December 1938 he married Dulcie Irene Cooke (1897-1972), a teacher.43

The books he published during the Second World War reveal a mind able to focus, able to size up situations without the benefit of hindsight, yet still based on careful observation and reasoning. This was topical, urgent journalism. He warned as much as he could. In the preface to his book, Japan at our Gates: the Thermopylae of Australia is at Singapore (1942), he wrote:

And a few lines later:

Offenburg died too soon, in May 1946, at the age of forty-seven. Transcripts of his broadcasts of 1945 and 1946 reveal the directions that his thinking was heading, his wit and clarity intact:

A Kurt Offenburg Memorial Fund was established, on 30 September 1946,47 with Richard Boyer, chairman of the ABC, as its chairman. A General Committee of twenty-five included the Consuls-General of America, Argentina, Belgium, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and a string of prominent individuals like, for example, Emery Barcs, Charles Bean, Ian Clunies Ross, Walter Murdoch and Vance Palmer. An Executive Committee of six included both the ABC's Controller of Talks and the arranger of commentaries, and the University of Sydney's Challis Professor of International Law and Jurisprudence.

They had hoped ‘to arrange a regular series of lectures to assist the cause of international understanding for which the late Kurt Offenburg worked’. This aim was later modified and became a plan ‘to offer to a public library some of Offenburg's books as a nucleus of a special book section to be added to from time to time by purchases from the fund’.48

Two letters, both written on 8 December 1947, offer clues on what came next. The first, by Colin McCallum, Chief Librarian at the Public Library of Victoria, addressed to Irving Benson, Chairman of the Trustees of the Public Library of Victoria, described a visit from Paula Pentley:

The second letter, by Ian Clunies Ross, was addressed to Paula Pentley, the Memorial Fund's Honorary Secretary:

Almost a year later, on 26 November 1948, a meeting of the Kurt Offenburg Memorial Fund resolved:

Negotiations and preparations proceeded bit by bit. In April 1950 bookplates with a dedication — ‘This book forms part of the Kurt Offenburg Memorial Collection, dedicated to the Promotion of International Understanding’ — were printed. The Kurt Offenburg Memorial Collection at the State Library of Victoria was opened with ‘a simple ceremony’ on a Friday afternoon, 2 June 1950. Vance Palmer spoke on behalf of the Kurt Offenburg Memorial Committee, and Irving Benson on behalf of the Library Trustees. A sheet outlining ‘visitors expected’ at the ceremony mentioned that Paula Pentley, Secretary of the Memorial Committee, wished to say ‘a very few words’ and that ‘she knew Kurt Offenburg pretty well’.51 Her words were not reported.

Later that month she wrote to Colin McCallum:

Paula Pentley was the driving force behind the Kurt Offenburg Collection, as her correspondence with Colin McCallum attested. ‘Just keep up your present good work,’ McCallum wrote to her on 8 September 1955. On 11 July 1956 she wrote to him:

Colin McCallum (1895-1981), chief librarian at the Public Library of Victoria from 1945 to 1960 and a member of staff for forty-one years, has been described as ‘undoubtedly the best man ever to have held the chief's office’.53 He would have known about ‘war and disaster’ and the need to prevent it; in December 1917, on the Western Front, he had been burned by mustard gas.54 Paula Pentley, née Mandl (1896-1957), and her husband, Oscar Pentley (1889-1966), were both born in Vienna and later lived in Czechoslovakia. They arrived in Sydney with their son, Martin, in May 1939.55

Martin Pentley has described his mother for me as follows:

It is fitting that an article on the State Library memorial to Kurt Offenburg and his ideals should honour Paula Pentley's memory also. After her death, Oscar Pentley wrote to Colin McCallum: ‘Knowing and understanding how deep in the heart of my late wife was the desire to perpetuate Mr. Offenburg's work I was contemplating in which way I could continue her work.’57 From then on — in fact, until 1972 — a cheque for 15 guineas was sent each year to the Library Trustees, ‘to be applied by them in the purchase of suitable books to be added to the Kurt Offenburg Memorial Collection at the Library and to be inscribed “In Memory of Paula Pentley.”’. Oscar Pentley hoped that ‘this little brick may be a contribution to the gigantic idea of attaining a better understanding and ultimately Peace’.58

Offenburg and the Offenburg Collection are indeed bricks to treasure. How is it that we had allowed them to be forgotten, and what can we now do to make amends, ‘not to appease our conscience,’ as Fritz Stern put it, ‘but to summon the courage of future generations’?

Since the day when I first asked Anne-Marie Schwirtlich and Shane Carmody about the Kurt Offenburg Memorial Collection at the State Library of Victoria, and then when Tim O'Grady found the relevant correspondence, many people have given help on a host of particulars: Peg Anthony, John Arnold, John Barnes, Leslie Bodi, Regina Brischle (Germany), Deborah Brown, Peter Coleman, Tom Darragh, George Dreyfus, the late Peter F. Drucker (USA), Ruth Dwyer, Wilgha Edwards, Sol Encel, Helen Ferber, Caroline Grafe (Germany), Judith Hamilton (UK), Volker Harms-Ziegler (Germany), Irmgard and Hans Heidler (Portugal), Michael Heidler (Germany), Ross Humphreys, Myfanwy and the late Donald Horne, Ken Inglis, Konrad Kwiet, Lee Kersten, Wallace Kirsop, Anna Lanyon, Michael Lenarz (Germany), Morag Loh, Peter Lyssiotis, Michael Maaser (Germany), John McLaren, Brian McLure, Joyce McGrath, Humphrey McQueen, Robin Marsden, George Matoulas, Leone Mills, Johanna-Elisabeth Palm (Germany), Martin Pentley, Warren Perry, Neville Petersen, Graeme Powell, the late Maria Prerauer, John Ramsland, Monica Raszewski, John Romeril, Norman Rothfield, Susan Rutland, Peter Ryan, Sebastian Salt (Spain), Bernard Smith, Gavin Souter, Dennis Spiteri, Gerda and Werner Struve, Vicente Such-Garcia (Germany), Marjorie Tipping, the late Prue Torney, Guy Tranter, Johannes Voigt (Germany), David Walker, Diane Wallace (USA), Andrea Wölbing (Germany), Eva Wuthenow (Germany), Valerie Yule, and Heidi Zogbaum. Both Humphrey McQueen and John Barnes gave kind advice when they saw an unwieldy first draft.

Der englische Boccaccio: den erbaulichen und kecken Canterbury-Geschichten des seligen Herrn Chaucer. Nacherzählt von Kurt Offenburg.

Dresden, Sibyllen-Verlag, 1924.

Frankfurt am Main, Mittelland-Verlag, 1925.

Frankfurt am Main, Mittelland-Verlag, 1925.

Frankfurt am Main, Mittelland-Verlag, 1925 (?).59

Berlin, Verlag der Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1928.

These Glorious Crusades: a Contemporary Novel. Translated by the late C.J. Brennan.

Sydney, Macquarie Head, 1934.

[a translation of 11/10: ein zeitgenössischer Roman.]

Sydney, Gayle, 1941.

Sydney, Gayle, 1941.

Sydney, Gayle, 1942.

Sydney, Gayle, 1945.