Герард Хоффунг: Өмір және шығармашылығы

Gerard Hoffnung (22 March 1925|group= n and named Gerhard, Hoffnung was the only child of Jewish parents, Hildegard and Ludwig Hoffnung. He was sent to England, where he attended Bunce Court School in 1938. In 1939, his parents left Germany; his father went to Palestine to enter the family's banking business. Gerard went with his mother to London, where she rented a house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, where Hoffnung lived for the rest of his life. In 1939 he enrolled at Highgate School, where, according to one biographer, he was "remembered for his anarchic spirit". Hoffnung had his first cartoon published in the same publication while he was still at school.|group= n He then attended Harrow School of Art, after which he became a schoolmaster. He was art master at Stamford School (1945–46) and assistant art master at Harrow School (1948), with an intervening and overlapping spell as a staff artist on the London Evening News. He was a staff artist to Cowles Magazines Inc in New York in 1950, and otherwise pursued a career as a freelance cartoonist. He contributed to Punch, The Strand Magazine and The Tatler,|group= n</blockquote>

Much of Hoffnung's humour centred on the world of music, particularly the various instruments of the orchestra with which he was fascinated. another shows a singer whose waistcoat buttons are control knobs labelled On/off, ppp/fff, Wobble, and Sobs. He depicted Malcolm Sargent as "Elegantemente", conducting with a full length mirror at the front of his rostrum. The derivation of the story is confused, but it first arises in the 1930s. It was published in Reader's Digest in 1940 as a letter from a naval officer who had supposedly received it from an enlisted man explaining his late return from leave. Hoffnung first saw the story in The Manchester Guardian in 1957; the version printed there is identical with the text used by Hoffnung, except for the location, which he changed from Barbados to Golders Green. Hoffnung used the piece to warm up the audience before each recording session of One Minute, Please. In these performances he perfected the timing before the Oxford Union speech. The story was part of his speech in a debate called Life Begins at 38 and was recorded by the BBC. In 1956 Hoffnung took part in one of the popular "April Fool's" concerts in Liverpool, organised by Fritz Spiegl. He took up the idea, and presented a similar, but larger scale, concert at the Festival Hall in November the same year, in which Spiegl joined him. The 1956 "Hoffnung Music Festival" played to a sell out audience in the hall and to BBC viewers throughout Britain. The success of this concert led to two more Hoffnung Festivals, the second in 1958 and the third in 1961, presented as a tribute after his death. They featured contributions from distinguished musicians. Donald Swann revised Haydn's Surprise Symphony to make it considerably more surprising. Franz Reizenstein's Concerto Popolare featured a battle between the soloist, playing the Grieg Piano Concerto, and the orchestra, determinedly playing Tchaikovsky. Sir William Walton conducted a one note excerpt from his cantata Belshazzar's Feast: the word "Slain!" shouted by the chorus. After Hoffnung's death, similar concerts were promoted by his widow, Annetta, and collaborators. Hoffnung learned to play the tuba well enough to play the solo part in the Tuba Concerto by Vaughan Williams in a serious concert at the Festival Hall, and was an active participant in Morley College Orchestra, a respected amateur ensemble in London.

In 1952 Hoffnung married Annetta Perceval, née Bennett; they had two children, Ben (Benedict) and Emily who became, respectively, a timpanist and a sculptor. Hoffnung's uncle was Bruno Adler,

Hoffnung collapsed at his home on 25 September 1959, and died of a cerebral haemorrhage three days later in New End Hospital in Hampstead at the age of thirty four. Hoffnung's widow published a biography of him in 1988. In 2009, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Hoffnung – Drawn to Music, a comedy drama written by Alan Stafford which featured Matt Lucas as Hoffnung and Gina McKee as Annetta, with a cameo appearance by the real Annetta Hoffnung. In 1996 Humphrey Lyttelton recorded a portrait of Hoffnung entitled Hoffnung At Large for BBC Audiobooks, written by Judith Liddell King.