Jean Améry
Sign in to saveAlso known as Hanns Chaim Mayer, Jean Amery, Hans Mayer
Austrian-born essayist and Holocaust survivor (1912-1978)
Key facts
- Born
- Hanns Chaim Mayer , ( 1912-10-31 ) 31 October 1912, Vienna , Austria-Hungary
- Died
- 17 October 1978 (1978-10-17) (aged 65), Salzburg , Austria
- Occupation
- Author
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Chaim
- Family name
- Mayer
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Cisleithania
- Place of birth
- Vienna
- Place of death
- Salzburg
- Occupation
- opinion journalist
- Languages spoken
- French
- Religion
- Judaism
- Field of work
- philosophy
- Image
- Jean Améry par Félix De Boeck 1951.jpg
- Work location
- Brussels
- Residence
- Belgium
Show 13 more facts
- start of work period
- 1935-00-00
- place of burial
- Vienna Central Cemetery
- Commons category
- Jean Améry
- date of birth
- 1912-01-01
- date of death
- 1978-01-01
- name in native language
- Jean Améry
- manner of death
- Suicide
- place of detention
- Buchenwald concentration camp
- cause of death
- drug overdose
- archives at
- German Literature Archive Marbach
- writing language
- German
- birth name
- Hans Chaim Mayer
Sources (10)
via Wikidata · CC0
Works in European collections
6 objects attributed to Jean Améry, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana
~21 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Jean Améry (31 October 1912 – 17 October 1978), born Hans Chaim Maier, was an Austrian-born essayist who wrote about his experiences surviving the Holocaust. His most celebrated work, At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (1966), suggests that torture was "the essence" of the Third Reich. Other notable works included On Aging (1968) and On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death (1976). He adopted the pseudonym Jean Améry after 1945. Améry died by suicide in 1978.
Formerly a philosophy and literature student in Vienna, Améry's participation in organized resistance against the Nazi occupation of Belgium resulted in his detainment and torture by the German Gestapo at Fort Breendonk, and several years of imprisonment in concentration camps. Améry survived internments in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and was finally liberated at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. After the war he settled in Belgium.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Jean Améry” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.