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Paul Roubiczek correspondence and papers

Archive Collection: MS 1736

Details

Type of record: Archive

Title: Paul Roubiczek correspondence and papers

Level: Collection

Classmark: MS 1736

Creator(s): Roubiczek, Paul()

Date(s): 1936-1989

Language: English; German

Size and medium: 14 boxes, manuscript, typescript and printed material.

Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/8667

Description

Collection relating to Paul Roubiczek, the philosopher, publisher and journalist. The collection is divided into 14 boxes as follows:


Box 1: Original typescript and further drafts for Roubiczek's book 'Thinking in Opposites'; an essay by Gregory Needham entitled 'Paul Roubiczek: some aspects of his thinking; two typescript essays with MS corrections: 'Towards Existentialism' and 'Progress or Catastrophy'; notes about books on ethics and psychoanalysis;


Box 2: Reviews and press-cuttings of Roubiczek's book '{232}Uber den Abgrund' (Across the Abyss); extracts from philosophers; notes on philosophical topics; notes for discussions about lectures, and students' essays;


Boxes 3-4: Lecture notes on philosophy;


Box 5: Correspondence, 1936-1949, received by Paul Roubiczek and his wife, Hj{232}ordis;


Box 6: Correspondence, 1950s;


Box 7: Correspondence, 1960s and 1970s;


Box 8: Correspondence with Carl Rabus, Graham Storey, Erich Heller, Werner and Elizabeth Heisenberg, Ilse (?), Charles Davis, and Maja Wiener (?), and correspondence relating to Hugh Rank, Hj{232}ordis' 60th birthday, and the Czech Refugee Trust Fund; press-cuttings relating to Erich Fried and Thomas Bernhard, and to miscellaneous topics; material relating to Roubiczek's extra-mural teaching;


Box 9: Academic correspondence with colleagues and students;


Box 10: Souvenirs; invitations; press-cuttings and postcards of film stars; a manuscript music note book; poetry and short stories by Robb Morrison, and by Medhurst (?); 7 notebooks of manuscript poetry in German, 1946-1962, by Rudolf Wallfried (one of the books is dedicated to the Roubiczeks);


Box 11: Theatre programmes of UK productions from the 1940s to the 1980s;


Boxes 12-13: Miscellaneous press-cuttings from the 1940s.


Additional material received 2016:

Box 14: various German cultural publications, newspapers, theatre programmes, correspondence, and watercolours by Walter Jonas.

Biography or history

Paul Roubiczek, the philosopher, publisher and journalist, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1898. He served as a subaltern in the Austrian army during the First World War, but later became a pacifist. After the war he studied philosophy in Berlin, and then worked as a publisher and writer in Berlin, Paris, Vienna and Prague. He escaped from the Nazis at the outbreak of the Second World War, and moved with his wife to Cambridge. He gave German supervisions in various Cambridge colleges, and was employed by the German department of the University from 1961 to 1965. He lectured in philosophy for the University of Cambridge Board of Extra-Mural Studies, and in 1959 began a popular series of public lectures, entitled 'Philosophy, science and religion'. He was elected a Fellow of Clare College. In 1956 he had been granted the honorary degree of Master of Arts. Roubiczek died at Gmund in Bavaria in 1972.

Provenance

Additional material received in 2016.

Access and usage

Access

Access to this material is unrestricted.

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