Max Aub

Max Aub Mohrenwitz (June 2, 1903, Paris – July 22, 1972 Mexico City) was a Mexican-Spanish experimentalist novelist, playwright, poet, and literary critic. In 1965 he founded the literary periodical Los Sesenta (the Sixties), with editors that included the poets Jorge Guillén and Rafael Alberti.

Early life Aub was born in Paris to a French-Jewish mother and German father, who was a travelling salesman. At the outbreak of World War I, his father was in Spain on business and could not return to France, as he had become an enemy alien. Max and his mother joined him there and they all took Spanish citizenship. In 1914 Aub and his family settled in Valencia. There he completed his secondary education. In 1920, Aub became a salesman, like his father and from 1920 to 1935 he traveled through Spain and other European countries selling a variety of different products. In 1921, he became a Spanish citizen. His work, Geografía, was first published in Revista de Occidente in 1927. In 1929, Aub joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and remained a lifelong member.

Spanish Civil War During the Spanish Civil War, the Republican government posted him to Paris as a cultural attaché. In 1937, he was responsible for placing Picasso's "Guernica" on display at the International Exposition, and wrote its screenplay. By 1940, the Spanish State had come to consider him a serious opponent, and in March 1940 he was denounced to the new Vichy government of France as a militant communist and a "German-Jew", and therefore a possible spy or traitor. He was imprisoned for a year in Camp Vernet, then deported to the forced labor camp of Djelfa in Algeria. In 1942, with the help of a guard, he escaped. He also wrote for the newspapers Nacional and Excélsior and worked as a professor at the Film Academy in Mexico. He became a Mexican citizen in 1955