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H.F. Garten Papers

Papers of Hugo Frederick Garten (formerly Hugo Friedrich Königsgarten) (HFG), including correspondence with the expressionist playwright Georg Kaiser (GK) and his wife Margareta from the 1920s to 1940s.

H.F. Garten was born Hugo Friedrich Königsgarten into a Jewish family in Brünn [now Brno], Moravia, on 13 April 1904. He was educated at a Gymnasium in Berlin and at the Universites of Jena (1923), Vienna (1923-1924), Berlin (1924-1926), and Heidelberg, where he obtained his doctorate in 1930.

He worked as a freelance writer in Berlin from 1928 to1933, and then moved to Vienna in 1933, and London in 1938. From 1940 to 1945, he taught at New College School, Oxford, was on the staff of Die Zeitung (London) from 1941 to 1944, and, in 1944, was awarded the DPhil degree by the University of Oxford.

From 1946 to 1965, he taught modern languages at Westminster School, London, before being appointed to a Lectureship at the Universities of Surrey and London. He was a member of the International PEN Club, the English Goethe Society, and the Gerhart Hauptmann-Gesellschaft. He married Anne Leonard Smith in 1952; they had no children.

University of London Archives

University of London, Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies