Fonds F0472 - Eric Koch fonds

Title and statement of responsibility area

Title proper

Eric Koch fonds

General material designation

    Parallel title

    Other title information

    Title statements of responsibility

    Title notes

    Level of description

    Fonds

    Reference code

    CA ON00370 F0472

    Edition area

    Edition statement

    Edition statement of responsibility

    Class of material specific details area

    Statement of scale (cartographic)

    Statement of projection (cartographic)

    Statement of coordinates (cartographic)

    Statement of scale (architectural)

    Issuing jurisdiction and denomination (philatelic)

    Dates of creation area

    Date(s)

    • 1938-2004 (Creation)

    Physical description area

    Physical description

    2.4 metres of textual records 22 audio cassettes 50 photographs 1 video cassette

    Publisher's series area

    Title proper of publisher's series

    Parallel titles of publisher's series

    Other title information of publisher's series

    Statement of responsibility relating to publisher's series

    Numbering within publisher's series

    Note on publisher's series

    Archival description area

    Name of creator

    Biographical history

    Eric Koch (1919-), writer, broadcaster and professor, was born on 31 August 1919 in Frankfurt, Germany. He left Germany for England as a refugee in 1935 where he attended Cranbrook School in Kent from 1935 to 1937 and later St. John's College, Cambridge from 1937 to 1940. In May 1940, he was interned as an "enemy alien" and later transported to Canada where he remained interned until 1941, following which he continued his studies at the University of Toronto. He began his career as a broadcaster with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1944 when he joined the German Section, International Service (RCI) based in Montreal. From 1953 to 1967, he was a member of the Department of Talks and Public Affairs in Toronto. He was promoted in 1967 to Area Head, Arts and Science and was responsible for the creation of a large number of radio and television programmes. From 1971 to 1977, he served as regional director (Montreal). He retired from the CBC in 1979 to devote himself to writing. He is the author of ten books of fiction, many of which were published in Germany, and four books of non-fiction including "Hilmar and Odette", which was awarded the Yad Vashem Prize for Holocaust Writing in 1996. He was a course director at York University in the Social Science Division where he taught a course on The Politics of Canadian Broadcasting for over 15 years.

    Custodial history

    Scope and content

    Fonds consists of material that documents his career as a writer and broadcaster and, as such, includes correspondence with publishers, fan mail, research material, newspaper clippings, reviews of his work, notes, drafts and galleys related to his novels and works of non-fiction. The writing files include photocopies of his own letters written to his mother when he was an internee in England and manuscript and photocopies of letters written to Koch from Daria Hambourg and used as research material for his novel, "The Brothers Hambourg". Fonds also includes transcripts of interviews as well as written reminiscences in the form of letters from many former German internees; these letters were subsequently used as resource material for his book "Deemed Suspect: A Wartime Blunder". Fonds includes a complete set of published copies of his books. The broadcasting files contain correspondence, memos, notes and drafts of scripts, scrapbooks and other material that documents his long career with the CBC.

    Notes area

    Physical condition

    Immediate source of acquisition

    Donated by Eric Koch in 2004.

    Arrangement

    Language of material

      Script of material

        Location of originals

        Availability of other formats

        Restrictions on access

        To be determined

        Terms governing use, reproduction, and publication

        Finding aids

        archivesfa.library.yorku.ca/fonds/ON00370-f0000472.htm

        Associated materials

        Related materials

        Accruals

        The fonds comprises the following accession: 2004-047. Further accruals may be expected.

        General note

        Some of the material in the writing files, particularly correspondence with German publishers and some research material, is in German.

        Alternative identifier(s)

        Standard number

        Standard number

        Access points

        Subject access points

        Place access points

        Name access points

        Genre access points

        Control area

        Description record identifier

        Institution identifier

        Rules or conventions

        Status

        Level of detail

        Dates of creation, revision and deletion

        Language of description

          Script of description

            Sources

            Accession area