Bruno Maria Adler was a German art historian and writer. He taught art history in Weimar and lectured about it at the Bauhaus. Adler fled Germany after the Nazisseized power and emigrated to England, where he worked first at a German-Jewish refugee school in Kent, then as a writer with the German Service of BBC Radio.
Early years
Adler was born to Jewish parents in Carlsbad, Bohemia. His mother was Therese Adler and his father was Moritz Adler, editor and critic with the social democratic newspaper, Volkswille and an elected representative. Adler attended gymnasium in Carlsbad and Prague. From 1910 to 1916, he studied art history, the history of literature, and philosophy at universities in Vienna, Erlangen and Munich, acquiring his doctorate in 1917 with a dissertation on the origin and beginning of woodcuts. From 1919 to 1924, Adler lectured on art history at the Bauhaus and between 1920 and 1930, he taught art history at the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School. His association with Johannes Itten, who also taught at the Bauhaus, led to him publishing and editing Utopia: Dokumente der Wirklichkeit. This included translations by Adler from the Rigveda and work by Nicholas of Cusa. During this period, Adler also edited writings by Adalbert Stifter and Matthias Claudius.
Exile in England
After the Nazis seized power, Adler was forced to flee to Prague. In 1936, he went to England. Writing under the pseudonymous anagramUrban Roedl, Adler released a biography of Stifter with the publisher Ernst Rowohlt, who was afterward prohibited by the Nazis from working, having been charged with disguising Jewish writers. From 1936 to 1938, Adler continued to use the pseudonym during World War II and occasionally, after the war. Adler taught at the New Herrlingen School, a German-Jewish school founded by Anna Essinger with help from British Quakers. Originally located in Herrlingen, Germany, it was relocated to Kent, England because of Nazi persecution, where it became a haven for refugees, including both children from the Kindertransports and adults, who joined the staff. Adler's nephew, Gerard Hoffnung, was a pupil at Bunce Court.
During the war, Adler worked in the German Service of the BBC. Under the guise of literary entertainment, these German-language programs broadcast British propaganda to Germany, using established native-speaking writers in exile, such as Adler and Robert Lucas, and targeted the average German, who was growing weary of endless war. Listening carried severe penalties in Germany, imprisonment and even death, so the programs were short, between three and seven minutes. Characters had to be easily identifiable and they had little time to impress the thought of their target audience. Adler created the satirical "Frau Wernicke", a program broadcast from summer 1940 to January 1944. The lead role, Frau Gertrud Wernicke, was voiced by the German actress and cabaret artist Annemarie Hase, also in exile. The character was a Berlin woman married to a tradesman and World War I veteran. She commented on the shortages plaguing the German populace, the state of the war and she launched subversive tirades against the Nazis, turning them into a laughing stock. Frau Wernicke became one of the most popular programs of the BBC's German Service. Adler wrote the satirical series "Kurt und Willi" with the Scottish poet Norman Cameron. It featured two characters, a teacher named Kurt Krüger and Willi Schimanski, an official in the German Ministry of Propaganda. So skilled was the character Willi as a propagandist, that he was reputedly much admired within the actual Nazi Ministry. Adler later edited the monthly German-language magazine Neue Auslese aus dem Schrifttum der Gegenwart, published by the US Information Services Division, Central Office of Information in London after the war.
