CalÙ, Walter
CALÉ, WALTER
CALÉ, WALTER (1881–1904), German poet. Calé abandoned his law studies at Berlin in 1903 to devote himself to literature and philosophy for a few months. Then, after destroying as much of his literary work as he could find, Calé committed suicide. His Nachgelassene Schriften, containing manuscripts that escaped destruction, were edited by his friend Arthur Brueckmann, with an introduction by Fritz *Mauthner (1907). The volume consists of poems, the final act of a drama, two fragments of a novel, and extracts from his diary. Calé's lyrics are filled with melancholy and lament the lack of communication between people. In his remaining writings there are no explicit statements concerning Judaism. Nevertheless Theoder *Lessing held Calé's suicide to be the outcome of his Jewish self-hatred.
bibliography:
T. Lessing, Der juedische Selbsthass (1930), 152–166. add. bibliography: R. Heuer (ed.), Lexikon deutsch-juedischer Autoren, 4 (1996), 398–403.
[Sol Liptzin]