BAB, JULIUS

BAB, JULIUS (1880–1955), German drama critic and literary historian. Born in Berlin, where he studied literature and philosophy, Bab was a critic of the Berlin theater for more than three decades. He was also lecturer and adviser to the Berlin people's theater, the Volksbuehne. In June 1933, in an attempt to maintain cultural life among the Jews after the rise of Nazism, Bab founded the Juedischer Kulturbund, which had its own theater. In 1940 he fled to the U.S., where he became the dramatic critic of the New York Staatszeitung. Bab's collected reviews of the Berlin theater, Die Chronik des deutschen Dramas (1921–22), are an important source for the history of modern German drama. His other works include monographs on Shakespeare, Shaw, Dehmel, and Albert Bassermann and a volume of essays, Am Rande der Zeit (1915). A book of verse, Ausgewaehlte Gedichte… (1930), includes the poem "Der Jude." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Rauschenbusch, in: Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2 (1946), 33–40; H. Bergholz, in: Books Abroad, 25 (1951), 26f. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Ricarda, "Geothe im Ghetto – Zum Selbstverständnis des Kulturbundes deutscher Juden (1933–1935)," in: Tribüne, 167 (2003), 138–47; M.H. Gelber, "Internationalismus in der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur – Glueckel von Hameln, Georg Hermann, Julius Bab und das 'Yale-Buch,'" in: Die deutsch-jüdische Erfahrung (2003), 69–84; E. Albanis, German-Jewish Cultural Identity from 1900 to the Aftermath of the First World War (2002); S. Rogge-Gau, Die doppelte Wurzel des Daseins – Julius Bab und der juedische Kulturbund Berlin (1999). (Rudolf Kayser / Bjoern Siegel (2nd ed.)