Hermann Kant

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Hermann Kant (1987)

Hermann Kant (* 14. June 1926 in Hamburg , † 14. August 2016 in Neustrelitz ) was a German writer and a politician of the SED . His books have been translated into numerous languages ​​and achieved high editions in the GDR. His main work is the book Die Aula . Kant held a number of functions in the GDR: from 1981 to 1990 he was a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR and from 1986 to 1989 a member of the Central Committee of the SED .

Life

Early years

Hermann Kant was born in Hamburg in 1926 as the son of a factory worker and a gardener in poor circumstances. His brother Uwe , who was ten years his junior , later became a well-known children's book author. Because of the threatened bombing raids on Hamburg, the family moved to Parchim in 1940 , where his paternal grandfather lived as a master potter. After elementary school he began an electrician apprenticeship in Parchim, which he successfully completed as a fitter in 1944. From December 8, 1944, he did military service in the Wehrmacht . He became a Polish prisoner of war and was first imprisoned in Warsaw's Mokotów Prison , and later in a labor camp located on the grounds of the Warsaw Ghetto . There he was a co-founder of the Antifa committee and a teacher at the Antifa central school. During this time he met the writer Anna Seghers , who made a lasting impression on him. After his release he went to the GDR in 1949 and joined the SED there .

In 1952, Kant made up his Abitur at the Workers and Farmers Faculty (ABF) in Greifswald . From 1952 to 1956 he studied German at the Humboldt University in Berlin . His diploma thesis was entitled The representation of the ideological-political structure of the fascist German army in Plivier's novel Stalingrad . He then worked until 1957 as a research assistant at the German Institute and from 1957 to 1959 as editor-in-chief of the student magazine Tua res . In 1960 he became a freelance employee of the GDR Writers' Association .

The writer

Hermann Kant (2008)

Kant's first book in 1962 published collection of short stories was a bit South Seas . The stylistic influences of the American short story and of authors such as O. Henry and Kant's new satirical and (even) ironic notation for the GDR literature of the time were already recognizable.

In his first novel Die Aula (1965) Kant described his own experiences at the workers and peasants faculty. In the book, the closing of the ABF is the occasion for a graduation ceremony, at which the main character is supposed to give a speech, for which she narrates the fate of her fellow students and thus part of her own life and the pioneering days of the GDR. "Kant's most famous and best novel" made him known in both East and West, also because the book was controversial in both German states. While in the GDR the "partisan commitment" of the Kantian main characters to "socialist development" was praised, Marcel Reich-Ranicki accused Kant of being too cowardly to write the truth about the situation in the GDR.

In 1972 the novel Das Impressum was published , in which he further perfected his style. The publication was preceded by a long-term dispute with parts of the GDR's cultural bureaucracy, in which Kant was accused of misrepresenting social conflicts. In 1976 he published the development and educational novel The Residence . It tells the story of Mark Niebuhr, a German mistakenly imprisoned as a war criminal. Kant's “hero” has nothing to do with the positive socialist novelists. No exemplary “change” is described, no “conversion” or “enlightenment”, but knowledge through “disillusionment”. In 1983 the DEFA film The Residence followed .

In addition, Kant occasionally wrote scripts and scenarios, such as for Günter Reisch's feature film Ach, dujoyliche… (1962 - with a supporting role) and, according to his own story, for Ulrich Thein's television film Mitten im kalten Winter (1968).

From the 1970s onwards, Kant, despite his rather narrow oeuvre , assumed an “important role” in contemporary GDR literature and “clearly shaped it”. Heiner Müller, for example, described Kant's story Bronze Age (1986) in his autobiography as "the sharpest GDR satire" that he had read in recent years. For many other colleagues, literary and social critics, on the other hand, Kant had become the “model and epitome of the agile and windy compromise literary writer” who swayed between conformity and confrontation; an impression that was reinforced by his vacillating attitude as a literary functionary. Kant remained "one of the most controversial figures in GDR literature" in East and West.

In the post-reunification period, Kant's autobiography Abspann (1991) first appeared, in which he "uses many artistic means to put his position, behavior and actions in the GDR in a bright and friendly light" (according to German scholar Paul Gerhard Klussmann ), and the novel Kormoran (1994). His late novels were also shaped autobiographically: In the "Justification Novel" Okarina (2002), in which the main character of the book The Stay , Mark Niebuhr, appears again, his transformation from Wehrmacht soldier to anti-fascist is told, while in Kino (2005) an old one is told Writer in Hamburg's pedestrian zone watched people passing by. The last novel to be published was Kennung in 2010 .

Functionary activity

Hermann Kant (1982)

At the Humboldt University, Kant took over the function of party secretary of the Germanist basic organization in the 1950s and later became a member of the university party leadership. Between 1974 and 1979 he was a member of the SED district leadership in Berlin, from 1981 to 1990 SED member of the People's Chamber of the GDR, and from 1986 to 1989 a member of the SED Central Committee . As early as 1961 he spied on the writer Günter Grass . Since 1990 he has been a member of the PDS or its successor organizations.

In 1959 he became a member of the Writers' Association of the GDR, in 1964 a member of the PEN Center East and West, in whose Presidium he was from 1967 to 1982. In 1969 he became vice-president of the GDR writers' association. His “skilful crisis management” during the Biermann expulsion in November 1976 qualified him for the post of association president. In this position, which he held until 1990, he was elected at the 8th Writers' Congress in May 1978, as the successor to Anna Seghers .

His “controversial position in the vicinity of the SED Politburo” was evident in Kant's public appearance as a proponent or executor of state sanctions. In 1976, for example, he commented on the relocation of the writer Reiner Kunze with the words “Time comes, rubbish passes”. In 1979 he sanctioned the exclusion of nine writers by the Berlin district association, including Adolf Endler , Stefan Heym , Karl-Heinz Jakobs and Klaus Schlesinger . Kant later justified this procedure with the threat of the First Secretary of the SED district leadership in Berlin, Konrad Naumann , otherwise to dissolve the district association. On the other hand, Kant tried repeatedly to mediate between the SED, the cultural bureaucracy and writers. In 1978 he helped Erich Loest in the struggle for the reprint of the book Es geht seine Gang in 10,000 copies in a Thuringian publishing house, whereby he threatened to resign. In 1987 he cautiously supported the attempt by Günter de Bruyn and Christoph Hein to relax the "printing approval practice" (read: censorship).

After the turn

From the Academy of the Arts , of which he had been a member since 1969, Kant resigned in 1992, as well as from the PEN Club, which had set up an "honorary council" for "self-education".

After the fall of the Wall , accusations were raised against Kant that he had worked for the Ministry for State Security (MfS) for many years . From March 5, 1963 to April 9, 1976, Kant was recorded by the MfS as IM "Martin". Right up to the end, Kant denied having "ever been an unofficial employee of the ministry in question" and repeatedly successfully led trials to prevent publications from the files of the BStU concerning him . The Spiegel publications, however, were not contradicted. However, a volume of documents edited by Karl Corino and Joachim Walther's standard work Security Area Literature leave no doubt about the close contacts between him and the MfS. Shortly before his 80th birthday, Kant commented on the complex in a radio interview as follows:

“At first it was a matter of course for me that these people came and said: Listen, we protect the republic and your club in a special way. At first I thought that was very logical. I couldn't declare myself for socialism and the socialist state, and at the same time against those who - as they said - wanted to protect them. So that didn't work. Only the story is more complicated in that respect - only from then on hardly anyone listens - when afterwards it got terribly on the wick at some point, because the kind of fears of the end of the world these guys were endowed with, I found that ridiculous. And at some point I also said, now let me be satisfied with it. But it doesn't change anything. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m absolutely connected with what one understands as GDR. "

The Berliner Zeitung commented: "Who cares today whether Kant really spoken only in his role as a writer functionary regularly with state security, or whether he was the IM Martin, as they tried to demonstrate to him in the '90s?" The Welt, on the other hand, ventured the prognosis: “From the writer Hermann Kant: Karl Corino's study The Kant files …, a document of amplification.” Kant himself, on the other hand, hoped “that I will go beyond all other good and bad get said again: you may be a scoundrel, but you can write quite well! That's enough for me!"

In the mid-1990s, Kant retired to his house in Prälank , a green area belonging to Neustrelitz. Because of health problems, he had been living in an assisted living facility in Neustrelitz since the end of 2015 / beginning of 2016.

Private

Hermann Kant's first marriage from 1956 to Lilliana Pfau (* 1931), his second marriage from 1971 to 1976 with Vera Oelschlegel and his third marriage from 1985 to 1998 with Marion Reinisch, a daughter of Ernst Hermann Meyers .

Awards and honors

Hermann Kant with Luise Rinser (1987)

Works

Hermann Kant (2001)
  • A little bit of the South Seas , stories, Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1962, DNB 452307872
  • The auditorium , Roman, Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1965, DNB 452307864
  • In Stockholm , travel description, photo Lothar Reher , 1971
  • The imprint , novel, 1972
  • A transgression , stories, Rütten and Loenig, Berlin, 1975
  • The Stay , Roman, 1977
  • The third nail , stories, Rütten and Loenig, Berlin, 1981
  • On the documents , Journalism, 1957–1980, 1981
  • Coronation Day , narrative, 1986
  • Bronze Age , Stories, 1986
  • The Sum , Satire ("An Incident"), 1987
  • Credits , Memories, 1991
  • Cormorant , Roman, 1994
  • Escape. A WORD game , 1995
  • Ocarina , Roman, 2002
  • Kino , Roman, 2005
  • The thing and the things , conversation with Irmtraud Gutschke , 2007
  • Identifier , Roman, Aufbau, Berlin 2010, ISBN 3-351-03301-X
  • Resume. Second paragraph , structure, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-351-03344-6
  • A strict game , Kulturmaschinen- Verlag, Ochsenfurt 2015, ISBN 978-3-943977-60-8

Film adaptations

literature

  • Karl Corino (ed.): The Kant. IM "Martin" files, the Stasi and the literature in East and West. Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-499-13776-3 .
  • Matthias Eckoldt : “You need a little something extra”. The writer Hermann Kant. In: Series literature . Deutschlandradio on June 6, 2006 (broadcast manuscript as PDF ).
  • Irmtraud Gutschke : Herrmann Kant - The thing and the things. Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-360-01906-7 .
  • Wolfgang Kaelcke: Parchim personalities. Part 2 (= series of publications by the Parchim City Museum. Volume 5). Parchim 1997, DNB 956384560 .
  • Hermann Kant, Gerhard Zwerenz: Infinite turn. A dispute. Dingsda-Verlag Querfurt, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-928498-70-3 .
  • Leonore Krenzlin : Hermann Kant, life and work. (= Contemporary writers. Volume 7), 3rd edition. People and knowledge, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-06-102663-0 .
  • Angelika Reimann: The design of reflections in the novels "The Miracle Worker, Second Volume", "The Stay" and "Childhood Pattern". Character, forms and functions. Leipzig 1982 DNB 830085149 (Dissertation A Pedagogical University Leipzig 1982, 196 pages).
  • Bernd Schick: personality conception and novel. On the tendency of personality representation in the fiction of the GDR in the second half of the seventies. Berlin 1981, DNB 820148504 ( Dissertation A Humboldt University Berlin 1981, 204 pages).
  • Helga Tille: The artistic design of the dialectic of the individual and society in Hermann Kant's narrative work; examines the development and unfolding of the author's conception of history. Pedag. Hochsch. Diss. B, Erfurt / Mühlhausen 1984.
  • Joachim Walther: Security area literature. Writer and State Security in the German Democratic Republic. Ullstein, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-548-26553-7 .
  • Andreas Kölling:  Kant, Hermann . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Linde Salber: Hermann Kant: Not without utopia. Biography, Bouvier, Bonn 2013, ISBN 978-3-416-03340-4 .

Web links

Commons : Hermann Kant  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Hermann Kant  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Kant is dead. In: Neues Deutschland . August 14, 2016
  2. ↑ s. Manfred Durzak: The German short story of the present. Author portraits, workshop discussions, interpretations. 3rd, exp. Würzburg 2002, p. 285
  3. ^ Hermann Wiegmann : The German literature of the 20th century. Würzburg 2005, p. 336
  4. ^ Maria-Verena Leistner: Hermann Kant's novel 'The Aula'. In: German as a Foreign Language. 2/1967, pp. 108-113, here p. 112 f.
  5. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: A land of smiles. In: On the literature of the GDR. Munich 1974, pp. 83-89 (first in: Die Zeit , April 1, 1966)
  6. ↑ s. Kant: credits. P. 286 ff .; Corino: Files. P. 41 ff.
  7. ^ Heinrich Küntzel: From 'Farewell' to 'Breathless'. About the poetics of the novel, especially the educational and development novel in the GDR. In: Jos Hoogeveen, Gerd Labroisse (ed.): GDR novel and literature society. Amsterdam 1981 (Amsterdam contributions to recent German studies. 11–12) , pp. 1–32, here: pp. 21 f.
  8. ↑ Durzak: Short Story. P. 284
  9. ^ Helmut Fuhrmann: Shades thrown ahead. Literature in the GDR - GDR in literature. Würzburg 2003, p. 19
  10. ^ Wiegmann: literature. P. 336
  11. ^ Paul Gerhard Klussmann, Frank Hoffmann: New life? Cultural political transformations from “reading country” to “literary market”. In: Holger Helbig (Ed.): Continue writing. On GDR literature after the end of the GDR. Berlin 2007, pp. 8–24, here p. 14
  12. ↑ Hans Christian Kosler: From the memoirs of a vessel of ideas. Hermann Kant's novel of justification "Okarina". In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . August 21, 2002; Review overview at perlentaucher.de
  13. ↑ Matthias Biskupek : Stilverhau, sloppy, mess. In: Eulenspiegel . 48./56. Vol., No. 5/02, ISSN  0423-5975 , p. 39
  14. ↑ Review overview at perlentaucher.de
  15. ^ Corino: Files. P. 14
  16. ↑ Sibylle Wirsing : The power and the measure. The Eighth Writers' Congress of the GDR . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 2, 1978, p. 23.
  17. ↑ Bernd Wittek: The literary dispute in the unifying Germany. An analysis of the dispute over Christa Wolf and contemporary German-German literature in newspapers and magazines. Marburg 1997, p. 33 f.
  18. ^ LeMO curriculum vitae (see web links); on this Kant later: "That is one of my absolute stupidities." (quoted from Eckoldt: "A little bit extra ..." , broadcast manuscript, p. 10)
  19. ↑ s. Corino: Files. P. 47 f.
  20. ^ Corino: Files. Pp. 45, 47
  21. ^ Walther: Security area. P. 967
  22. ↑ z. B. Miss the word pinscher . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1992 ( online ). As well as IM Martin as a psychologist . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1992 ( online ).
  23. ↑ Cf. Kölling: Kant, Hermann.
  24. ↑ FAZ v. October 6, 1992; last: Bronze Age and the South Seas - An exchange of letters via the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, Poetry and Truth. In: Concrete . 6/2007, p. 38
  25. ↑ cit. n. Eckoldt: A little something extra ... , broadcast manuscript, p. 13
  26. ↑ Cornelia Geissler: Love for many words. In: Berliner Zeitung . June 14, 2006
  27. ↑ Hermann Kant 80. In: Die Welt . June 14, 2006
  28. ↑ cit. n. Eckoldt: "A little something extra ..." , broadcast manuscript, p. 16
personal data
SURNAME Kant, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, GDR cultural functionary and politician (SED), MdV
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 2016
Place of death Neustrelitz