11 Facts About Carl Einstein

Carl Einstein, born Karl Einstein, known by pseudonym Savine Ree Urian, was a German writer, art historian, anarchist, and critic.

Carl Einstein's work combined many strands of both political and aesthetic discourse into his writings, addressing both the developing aesthetic of modern art and the political situation in Europe.

Carl Einstein who was born to a German Jewish family on 26 April 1885, in the Rhineland town of Neuwied.

The second child born to Daniel Einstein, an active member of the local Jewish community, and Sophie Einstein, Carl was a year younger than his sister Hedwig, who would become known as a concert pianist and the wife of sculptor Benno Elkan.

The young Carl Einstein spent much of his youth in Karlsruhe before moving to Berlin to study philosophy and art history in 1903.

Carl Einstein welcomed the outbreak of war and volunteered for the Imperial German Army.

Carl Einstein was actively involved in the short-lived Revolutionary Brussels Soldiers' Council and to a lesser extent in the failed Spartacist Uprising in Berlin and later in the defeated anarchist Durruti Column during the Spanish Civil War.

Albert Carl Einstein was offered a part-time professorship at Leiden University in 1920.

Carl Einstein established a reputation as a well-known author and art critic on the basis of work ranging from his debut novel Bebuquin oder die Dilettanten des Wunders, to his widely read work on African sculpture Negerplastik, credited as being one of the first important books acknowledging African art in Europe, the final volume of the prestigious Propylaen Verlag history of art series Die Kunst des 20.

Carl Einstein worked on numerous journals and collective projects, among some of the more important: Die Aktion edited by Franz Pfemfert, Die Pleite and Der Blutige Ernst with George Grosz, and the legendary journal Documents: Doctrines, Archeologie, Beaux-arts, Ethnographie edited with Georges Bataille.

Better received in France, Carl Einstein left Germany for permanent residence in France in 1928; with Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the exile became permanent and officially mandated.