was an
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
i
writerA writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms.-Profession:...
,
satiristSatire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods,...
, dramatist,
screenwriterScreenwriters or scenarists or scriptwriters are people in a film crew who write/create the screenplays from which films and television programs are made....
, and
film directorA film director, or filmmaker is a person who directs the making or production of a film. Some also consider a film producer to be a filmmaker....
.
Born into a middle-class Jewish family in
BudapestBudapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it serves as the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation center and is considered an important hub in Central Europe. In 2009, Budapest had 1,712,210 inhabitants, down from a mid-1980s...
,
HungaryHungary , in English officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state...
, as
Ferenc Hoffmann (
HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries...
Hoffmann Ferenc), Kishon studied
sculptureSculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard and/or plastic material, sound, and/or text and or light, commonly stone , metal, glass, or wood. Some sculptures are created directly by finding or carving; others are assembled, built together and fired, welded, molded,...
and
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
, and then began publishing humorous essays and writing for the stage.
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the
NazisNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
imprisoned him in several
concentration campsNazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps were greatly expanded in Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
. At one camp his
chessChess is a board game played between two players. The current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from a similar, much older game of Indian origin...
talent helped him survive as the camp commandant was looking for an opponent.
was an
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
i
writerA writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms.-Profession:...
,
satiristSatire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods,...
, dramatist,
screenwriterScreenwriters or scenarists or scriptwriters are people in a film crew who write/create the screenplays from which films and television programs are made....
, and
film directorA film director, or filmmaker is a person who directs the making or production of a film. Some also consider a film producer to be a filmmaker....
.
Biography
Born into a middle-class Jewish family in
BudapestBudapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it serves as the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation center and is considered an important hub in Central Europe. In 2009, Budapest had 1,712,210 inhabitants, down from a mid-1980s...
,
HungaryHungary , in English officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state...
, as
Ferenc Hoffmann (
HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries...
Hoffmann Ferenc), Kishon studied
sculptureSculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard and/or plastic material, sound, and/or text and or light, commonly stone , metal, glass, or wood. Some sculptures are created directly by finding or carving; others are assembled, built together and fired, welded, molded,...
and
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
, and then began publishing humorous essays and writing for the stage.
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the
NazisNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
imprisoned him in several
concentration campsNazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps were greatly expanded in Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
. At one camp his
chessChess is a board game played between two players. The current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from a similar, much older game of Indian origin...
talent helped him survive as the camp commandant was looking for an opponent. In another camp the
GermansThe German people are an ethnic group, in the sense of sharing a common German culture, descent, and speaking the German language as a mother tongue. Within Germany, Germans are defined by citizenship , distinguished from people of German ancestry...
lined up the inmates shooting every tenth person, passing him by. He later wrote in his book
The Scapegoat, "They made a mistake—they left one satirist alive." He managed to escape while being transported to the
SobiborSobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp set up in the Lublin region of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. Jews, including Jewish Soviet prisoners of war , and possibly Gypsies were transported to Sobibor by rail, and...
death camp in
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, and hid the remainder of the war disguised as "Stanko Andras", a
SlovakiaThe Slovak Republic is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe with a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia borders the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south. The largest city is its capital, Bratislava...
n laborer.
After 1945 he changed his surname from Hoffmann to Kishont to disguise his Jewish heritage and returned to Hungary to study art and publish humorous plays. He
immigratedAliyah is the immigration of Jews to Eretz Israel. It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology, and a value in almost all movements of Judaism...
to Israel in 1949 to escape the
CommunistCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
regime, and an immigration officer gave him the name
EphraimEphraim was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph and Asenath, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Ephraim; however some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to...
Kishon.
His first marriage, in 1946 to Eva (Chawa) Klamer, ended in
divorceDivorce or dissolution of marriage is the final termination of a marriage, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between two persons...
. In 1959, he married his second wife Sara (
née Lipovitz), who died in 2002. In 2003, he married the Austrian writer Lisa Witasek. He had three children: Raphael (b. 1957), Amir (b. 1963), and Renana (b. 1968).
Literary career
Acquiring a mastery of
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
with remarkable speed, Kishon started a regular satirical column in the easy-Hebrew daily,
Omer, after two years in the country. From 1952, he wrote the column "Had Gadya" in the daily
Ma'arivMaariv is a Hebrew language daily tabloid published in Israel. It is second in sales after the Yedioth Ahronoth tabloid but third in readership after Israel HaYom as well...
. Devoted largely to political and social satire but including essays of pure
humourHumour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. Many theories exist about what humour is and what social function it serves. People of all ages and cultures respond to humour...
, it became one of the most popular columns in the country. His extraordinary inventiveness, both in the use of language and the creation of character, was applied also to the writing of innumerable sketches for theatrical revues.
Collections of his humorous writings have appeared in Hebrew and in translation. Among the English translations are
Look Back Mrs. Lot (1960),
Noah's Ark, Tourist Class (1962),
The Seasick Whale (1965), and two books on the
Six-Day WarThe Six-Day War of June 5-10, 1967 was a war between the Israel army and the armies of the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The Arab states of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria also contributed troops and arms. At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the...
and its aftermath,
So Sorry We Won (1967), and
Woe to the Victors (1969). Two collections of his plays have also appeared in Hebrew:
Shemo Holekh Lefanav (1953) and
Ma´arkhonim (1959).
His works have been translated into 37 languages, the majority of which were sold in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
. Kishon rejected the idea of universal guilt for the Holocaust and had many friends in Germany. Kishon said “It gives me great satisfaction to see the grandchildren of my executioners queuing up to buy my books.”
Friedrich TorbergFriedrich Torberg is the pen-name of Friedrich Kantor, an Austrian writer.-Biography:He worked as a critic and journalist in Vienna and Prague until 1938, when his Jewish heritage compelled him to emigrate to France and, later, after being invited by the New York PEN-Club as one of "Ten...
was his congenial translator to German, until he died in 1979; thereafter Kishon himself wrote in German. Ultimately, he wrote over 50 books.
Chess
Kishon was a life-long chess enthusiast, and took an early interest in
chess-playing computersComputer chess is computer architecture encompassing hardware and software capable of playing chess autonomously without human guidance. Computer chess occurs as solo entertainment , as aids to chess analysis, for computer chess competitions, and as research to provide insights into human...
.
In 1990, German chess computer manufacturer Hegener & Glaser together with Fidelity produced the
Kishon Chesster, a chess computer distinguished by the spoken comments it would make during a game. Kishon wrote the comments to be humorous, but were also carefully chosen to be relevant to chess and the position in the game.
Residence in Switzerland
In 1981, Kishon established a second home in the rural
SwissSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
canton of
AppenzellAppenzell is a region in the northeast of Switzerland, entirely surrounded by the Canton of St. Gallen. A former canton of the Old Swiss Confederacy, Appenzell has been divided since 1597 into Appenzell Innerrhoden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden.-History:The name Appenzell means "cell of the abbot"....
. He had come to feel somewhat estranged and unappreciated in Israel, believing that some native-born Israelis were against him because he was a Hungarian immigrant and that the literary establishment looked down on his best-selling "middle-brow" works. Kishon became increasingly conservative and continued to strongly support Zionism.
Awards
Among the numerous awards won by Kishon over the years are the following:
- In 1953, Kishon won the Israeli Nordau Prize for Literature;
- In 1958, he received the Israeli Sokolov Prize for Journalism;
- in 1964, he received the Israeli Kinor David Prize;
- In 1998, he was the co-recipient (jointly with Nurit Guvrin and Aryeh Sivan) of the Bialik Prize
The Bialik Prize is an annual literary award given by the municipality of Tel Aviv, Israel for significant accomplishments in Hebrew literature. The prize is named in memory of Hayyim Nahman Bialik. There are two separate prizes, one specifically for "Literature", which is in the field of fiction,...
for literatureHebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. Beyond comparison, the most important such work is the Hebrew Bible ....
;
- In 2002, he was awarded the Israel Prize
The Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...
for his lifetime achievement & special contribution to society and the State of Israel. He commented "I've won the Israel Prize, even though I'm pro-Israel. It's almost like a state pardon. They usually give it to one of those liberals who love the Palestinians and hate the settlers."
He also won two Academy Award nominations for best foreign language film and three Golden Globe Award nominations.
Plays
- His reputation precedes him (1953)
- Ha-Ketubbah (1953)
- Take the plug out (1968)
- Oh, oh, Juliet (1972)
- Salah Shabati the musical. (1988)
His sketches and plays have been performed, in translation, on the stages and television networks of several countries.
Films
Kishon wrote, directed and produced five feature films (all of them comedic and/or satirical). Three movies were nominated for major international awards, one of which went on to win (see below):
- Sallah Shabati
Sallah Shabati is a 1964 Israeli comedy film about the chaos of Israeli immigration and resettlement. This social satire placed the director Ephraim Kishon and producer Menahem Golan among the first Israeli filmmakers to achieve international success...
(1964, nominated for Oscar for best foreign language film)
- Ervinka
Ervinka is a 1967 Israeli film written and directed by Ephraim Kishon. The film, starring Chaim Topol is a comical tale of a con man who falls in love with a police officer.-Plot:...
(1967)
- Blaumilch Canal
Blaumilch Canal is a 1969 Israeli comedy directed by Ephraim Kishon, which depicts the madness of bureaucracy through a municipality’s reaction to the actions of a lunatic....
, also known as The Big Dig (1969, nominated for Golden Globe 1971)
- Ha-Shoter Azoulay (literally, Constable Azoulay), also known as The Policeman
The Policeman is the international release title of a 1971 Israeli feature movie, written and directed by satirist Ephraim Kishon. Its Hebrew title is HaShoter Azoulay...
(1971, nominated for Oscar for best foreign language film, awarded 1972 Golden Globe for best foreign language film)
- The Fox in the Chicken Coop
Based on Ephraim Kishon’s satirical book by the same name, The Fox in the Chicken Coop is a 1978 Israeli film directed by Kishon. It features many prominent Israeli actors of the time, most notably Shaike Ophir and Seffy Rivlin...
(1978)
Death
Kishon died in Switzerland at age 80, apparently of a heart attack. His body was returned to Israel and buried in the artists' cemetery in
Tel AvivTel Aviv-Yafo , usually called Tel Aviv, is the second largest city in Israel, with an estimated population of 391,300. The city is situated on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline, with a land area of...
.
External links
See also
- List of Israel Prize recipients
- List of Bialik Prize recipients
The Bialik Prize is an annual literary award given by the municipality of Tel Aviv, Israel for significant accomplishments in Hebrew literature. The prize is named in memory of Hayyim Nahman Bialik. There are two separate prizes, one specifically for "Literature", which is in the field of fiction,...