Joachim Walther
Joachim Walther (born October 6, 1943 in Chemnitz ; † May 18, 2020 in Berlin ) was a German writer .
Life
Joachim Walther was the son of an infant sister and an official. He attended high school in Karl-Marx-Stadt and passed his Abitur there in 1962 . He then worked for a year as a locksmith and stage worker . From 1963 to 1967 he studied literature and art history at the Humboldt University in Berlin . After a year as a teacher for German and art education , he went to the book publisher Der Morgen in 1968 , where he worked as a lecturer and editor . In addition, he wrote articles for the world stage .
1974/1975 he stayed in Warsaw to study. From 1976 until the entire editorial team was replaced for political reasons in 1978, he was editor of the literary magazine Temperamente . From 1983 Walther was a freelance writer ; In 1984 he withdrew to the Mecklenburg province out of disappointment about the development of the situation in the GDR . In 1989 he returned to Berlin and in 1990 was the last deputy chairman of the GDR writers' association , for whose renewal he campaigned.
Walther wrote novels , short stories , children's books and radio plays . Early on in his works he showed contradictions in GDR society, which he increasingly viewed as a perversion of socialist ideals. He often resorted to the means of satire and polemics . After the fall of the Wall in 1989, one of his main concerns was to document the disastrous influence of the SED policy on GDR literature and to expose the practices with which the Ministry for State Security had monitored the GDR literature business. Walther's book Safety Area Literature (1996) is a standard work on this subject. In 2001, together with Ines Geipel , he initiated the project of an “ archive of suppressed literature in the GDR ”. Together they collected texts that were written here in the GDR but not published there, from which they then published the ten-volume series “Die Verschwiegene Bibliothek” in the Edition Büchergilde . For this they were awarded the Antiquaria Prize for Book Culture in 2011 .
Walther had been a member of the GDR Writers' Association since 1972, of the Association of German Writers since 1990 and of the PEN Center of the Federal Republic of Germany since 1991 . From 1997 to 2002 he was chairman of the Federal Republic of Germany's group of authors . He died in May 2020 at the age of 76.
Awards
- 1981: Prize of the international radio play meeting in Burgenland
- 1991: Radio play award from the Funkhaus Berlin
- 1996: Golden Cable
- 2008: Hohenschönhausen Prize of the Friends of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial
- 2011: Antiquaria Prize for Book Culture
Works
- Six days of New Years Eve. With illustrations by Holm Heinke. Berlin 1970, DNB 458571431 ; 2nd edition, 1972, DNB 576874604 .
- Between two nights. Roman (= NL podium ). Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1972, DNB 730252337 ; 3rd edition, 1979.
- Butterflies, for sure. Conversations with writers. Buchverlag Der Morgen. Berlin 1973, DNB 740089668 .
- The seductive book. Eulenspiegel-Verlag, Berlin 1974, DNB 750095660 ; 6th edition, 1987, ISBN 3-359-00156-7 .
- I'm not a yogi. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1975, DNB 750483237 ; 5th edition, 1985, DNB 860155935 ; various licensed editions in the Federal Republic of Germany, template for the film And next year at Lake Balaton .
- City landscape with friends. Stories and miniatures. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1978, DNB 780351789 ; 2nd edition, 1980, DNB 800397487 .
- A village on this earth. Fringe residents. Infarct. Radio plays. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1979, DNB 790214989 .
- Keep Calm. Stories. Verlag Authors' Edition in the Athenäum-Verlag, Königstein / Ts. 1979, ISBN 3-7610-0546-6 ; Licensed edition by the Neues Leben publishing house, Berlin.
- Application to court. Historical novel. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1982, DNB 821018914 ; 6th edition, 1989, ISBN 3-355-00282-8 .
- Double head. Radio plays. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1985, DNB 850755557 .
- With the scissors to the moon (= mini book. Volume 31). With illustrations by Peter Bauer . Children's book publisher, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-358-00677-8 ; 2nd edition 1989.
- Riesling & dwarf linden. A picture book story. With illustrations by Karl-Heinz Appelmann . Berlin 1986, DNB 870548190 ; (4th edition), Eulenspiegel-Kinderbuchverlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-359-02311-1 .
- Between the chairs. Stories. Freese, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88942-006-0 .
- Coka. A good morning story. With illustrations by Peter Bauer. Children's book publisher, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-358-00343-4 .
- Hero life. Of great men and their acts of fame. With illustrations by Peter Muzeniek . Eulenspiegel-Verlag, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-354-00226-1 , DNB 881008451 .
- Unlucky Till. With illustrations by Danuta Griese . Altberliner Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-357-00251-5 .
- Cracks in the ice. Novel. Galgenberg, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-925387-56-0 ; Hinstorff, Rostock 1990, ISBN 3-356-00304-6 .
- Candide or learn to survive. Play based on Voltaire (= Henschel play ). Henschel, Berlin 1990, OCLC 915756063 .
- Kuddelmuddelkunterbunt and extraordinary (= ABC, I can read ). With illustrations by Christa Unzer-Fischer . Kinderbuchverlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-358-02047-9 ; 1996 (edition according to the new spelling ).
- State Security and Writer. Report on the research project (= Germany. The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic : BF informs. 1993,2). Together with Gesine von Prittwitz . The Federal Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former Dt. Democratic Republic, Department of Education and Research, Bonn 1993, DNB 940344580 .
- Deserted shore. Prose. Forum Verlag, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-86151-052-9 .
- Safety area literature. Writer and State Security in the German Democratic Republic. Ch. Links, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-86153-121-6 .
- Landscapes in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. With photos by Thomas Grundner . Hinstorff, Rostock 2003, ISBN 3-356-01002-6 .
- The fifth censor: suppressed literature in the GDR. In: Claudius Rosenthal (Ed.): Censorship. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e. V. 2003, ISBN 3-933714-90-7 , p. 77.
- Sky bridge. Novel. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle 2009, ISBN 978-3-89812-602-1 .
- Joachim Walther: Writing outside the canon or the defense of intellectual autonomy . In: Hans Jörg Schmidt, Petra Tallafuss (ed.): Totalitarianism and literature: German literature in the 20th century: literary public in the field of tension of totalitarian opinion formation (= writings of the Hannah Arendt Institute for research on totalitarianism . Volume 33 ). Vandenhook & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-36909-8 , pp. 161–172 (via the archive of suppressed literature in the GDR ).
- with Ines Geipel : Locked filing. Suppressed literary history in East Germany 1945–1989. Lilienfeld Verlag, Düsseldorf 2015, ISBN 978-3-940357-50-2 .
Editing:
- Landing on paradise place. Love stories. Book publisher Der Morgen, Berlin 1971, DNB 457350946 .
- The anti-ghost train. Stories, cheerful, funny, bizarre, fantastic. Ill. By Frank Leucht. Berlin 1973, DNB 730396541 .
- Nine day book. The 10th World Festival in Berlin. Experiences, reports, documents. New life publishing house, Berlin 1974 (together with Gisela Steineckert ; Thomas Billhardt (photo), Achim Kollwitz (designer)), DNB 740538241 .
- Saving the Zaragoza Sea. Fairy tale. Buchverlag Der Morgen, Berlin 1976 (together with Manfred Wolter ), DNB 770012280 .
- The guy seems glazed to me. Poets about painters. With photographs by Christian Borchert . Buchverlag Der Morgen, Berlin 1978, DNB 790160110 ; 2nd edition DNB 203067304 .
- From the taste of words. Miniatures . With miniatures v. Waltraut Fischer. Buchverlag Der Morgen, Berlin 1980, DNB 810078597 ; 2nd, modified edition 1983, DNB 204404649 ; 3rd, modified edition 1987, ISBN 3-371-00103-2 .
- Nettle soup and hiatiti. Narrated childhood. Buchverlag Der Morgen, Berlin 1983, DNB 840496486 (afterword by Joachim Walter).
- The dream of all dreams. Utopias from Plato to Morris. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-355-00327-1 (afterword by Joachim Walter); 2nd edition 1990.
- Minutes of a tribunal. The exclusions from the GDR writers' association 1979. Original edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-499-12992-2 , two further editions 1991.
- The secret library . Book Guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 2005–2009 (series together with Ines Geipel ).
Radio plays
- 1974: Randbewohner - Director: Werner Grunow (radio play - Broadcasting of the GDR)
literature
- Andreas Kölling, Helmut Müller-Enbergs: Walther, Joachim . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
- Sybille Bolik: Joachim Walther. In: Jörg Hucklenbroich, Reinhold Viehoff (Hrsg.): Writer and radio. UVK, Konstanz 2002, ISBN 3-89669-374-3 , pp. 369-389.
Web links
- Literature by and about Joachim Walther in the catalog of the German National Library
- Website Joachim Walther - writer and publicist
- Joachim Walther at the Authors' Circle of the Federal Republic
- The secret library in the Gutenberg Book Guild (overview page of the foundation for processing )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ines Geipel : The responsible person - on the death of Joachim Walther. In: Berliner Zeitung. 19th May 2020.
- ↑ Cornelia Geissler: Archive "Suppressed Literature in the GDR" presents his work: The world is a box. In: berliner-zeitung.de . July 7, 2001, Retrieved March 19, 2019 .
- ^ Michael Bienert: The archive of suppressed literature . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . January 11, 2011 ( full text on text-der-stadt.de [accessed on March 18, 2019]).
- ↑ Publications of the series Archive suppressed literature in the GDR - The silent library. Retrieved June 1, 2016.
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Walther, Joachim |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German writer and editor |
DATE OF BIRTH | October 6, 1943 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Chemnitz |
DATE OF DEATH | May 18, 2020 |
Place of death | Berlin |