Bruno Adler was born in 1888 into a Jewish family in Karlsbad, Austria-Hungary (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic), and studied Art History, Literature and Philosophy in Vienna, Erlangen and Munich. An art publisher, writer and lecturer at the Bauhaus, Adler was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1933, moving to Prague before immigrating to England in 1936. As a refugee, he continued teaching and publishing, as well as authoring several successful satirical propaganda broadcasts for the BBC's German Service during the Second World War.
Art and literary historian Bruno Adler was born in 1888 into a Jewish family in Karlsbad, Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic). His father was a theatre critic and editor of the social-democratic newspaper Volkswille and his nephew was the prominent cartoonist and broadcaster, Gerard Hoffnung (1925–1959), who was based in England from the mid-1930s. From 1910–16 Adler studied art history, literature and philosophy at universities in Vienna, Erlangen and Munich. His doctoral dissertation in 1917 was entitled Ursprünge und Anfänge des Holzschnitts [On the Origins of Woodcut]. While in Munich Adler also became familiar with artists of the Der Blaue Reiter group whose work he promoted. In 1919, Adler moved to Weimar and founded his own publishing house, Utopia Verlag, through which in 1921 he published a periodical entitled Utopia: Dokumente der Wirklichkeit [Utopia: Documents of Reality] in collaboration with several Bauhaus artists. The cover was designed by Adler's first wife, graphic artist, Margit Tery, a student of Johannes Itten at the Bauhaus. The periodical included translations by Adler from the Rigveda, an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns, and work by Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), among others. From 1919–24 Adler lectured on art history at the Bauhaus and, from 1920–30, he taught at the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School. With the rise of Nazism and the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation in Germany, Adler was prevented from teaching and turned to writing. During this period, he published on the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868) and German poet Matthias Claudius (1740–1815) under the anagram pseudonym, Urban Roedl, with the German publisher Ernst Rowohlt, who was subsequently prohibited from working by the Nazis, charged with disguising the identity of Jewish writers.
Adler was forced to flee Germany in 1933, first settling in Prague and later fleeing to England in 1936. During the late 1930s, Adler taught at Bunce Court School, a German-Jewish school in Kent founded by refugee Anna Essinger with help from British Quakers, and attended by Gerard Hoffnung. During the Second World War, Adler worked for the BBC's German Service, which had begun broadcasting in German in September 1938, with the aim of 'breaking the Nazi monopoly on news within the Third Reich' (BBC website). This employment may have prevented Adler from being interned in 1940 as an 'enemy alien'. He authored several satirical propaganda broadcasts, including the series Frau Wernicke and Kurt und Willi. Frau Wernicke, one of the most popular broadcasts of the service, in existence until 1944, was described by media historian Wolfram Wessels: 'In the Berlin dialect, the resolute woman argues about Fuehrer's birthday, lack of supplies, Goebbels' Sportpalast speech and billeting. Their satirical attacks are aimed at the leaders and functionaries of the party, state and business. The common people, on the other hand, are portrayed as the deceived ones' (Wolfram Wessels, 'Adler, Bruno: Frau Wernicke', Medienwissenschaft, No. 2, 1991, p. 239).
Postwar, Adler lectured in journalism and broadcasting, and from 1944 to 1950, he was editor-in-chief of Die Neue Auslese and a contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. Returning to art history in the 1960s, Adler published on Hans von Marées (1837–1887) and late classicism. During 1968, as one of the few surviving witnesses of the Bauhaus, he lectured extensively during the run of a Bauhaus retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art, London. Adler died at his home in London later the same year. His recollections of life in Weimar were published in English in 1993 as part of a volume edited by Eckhard Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People: Personal Opinions and Recollections of Former Bauhaus Members and Their Contemporaries.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Bruno Adler]
Publications related to [Bruno Adler] in the Ben Uri Library