Richard Plant papers

1916-1998

Author and educator Richard Plant was born Richard Plaut in Frankfurt, Germany on July 22, 1910. His father was a doctor, a Socialist and a Jew who in 1933 convinced his only son to flee Nazi persecution by moving to Switzerland. Plant enrolled at the University of Basel, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in languages in 1935. He contributed film criticism to Swiss and German newspapers, wrote a novel for children, Die Kiste mit dem Grossen 'S' (1936), and published a volume on cinema, Taschenbuch des Films (1938). In 1938 he emigrated to the United States (where his surname was changed to "Plant") and settled in New York. Plant acquainted himself with prominent émigrés, including the philosopher Paul Tillich, and resumed his career as a writer and teacher. During World War II he served as a translator in the Office of War Information. He later wrote film criticism, book reviews and essays that appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Saturday Review, The Nation and several German-language periodicals. The Dragon in the Forest, a novel based on his youth in Germany, was published in 1948. Plant collaborated with the composer Jack Beeson and the writer Elmslie Howard to produce the opera Lizzie Borden, which premiered at City Center in 1965. He taught German language and literature at The City University of New York from 1947-1973, and also lectured at The New School for Social Research during the 1960s-1970s. After his retirement from teaching, Plant devoted himself to a study of the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazi regime. He published numerous articles on the subject, as well as a definitive monograph, The Pink Triangle (1986). Richard Plant died in New York City in 1998.