Adam Kuckhoff

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25 + 10 Pfennig - special stamp of the GDR Post 1964 with Adam Kuckhoff

Adam Kuckhoff (born August 30, 1887 in Aachen , † August 5, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German writer and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Adam Kuckhoff was the son of the needle manufacturer Bernhard Kuckhoff. After he had passed the Abitur at the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium in Aachen in 1906 , he studied law , German , history and philosophy at the universities in Freiburg / Breisgau , Munich , Heidelberg , Berlin and Halle (Saale) . In 1912 he received his doctorate in Halle (Saale) with a thesis on Friedrich Schiller as a doctor of philosophy. From 1913 he completed an apprenticeship as an actor and assistant director at the Theater School Louise Dumonts in Düsseldorf . After initially greeting the First World War out of patriotic conviction, he turned into a pacifist in the course of the war . From 1918 he was a member of the USPD .

From 1917 to 1920 Kuckhoff worked as a dramaturge at the Frankfurter Neuen Theater and from 1920 to 1923 as the artistic director of the Frankfurt Art Theater for the Rhine and Main , where u. a. the young Günther Haenel was engaged. Since then he has been friends with the actor Hans Otto and later also has family ties.

Berlin memorial plaque on Wilhelmshöher Strasse  18 in Berlin-Friedenau

Between 1927 and 1929 he was an editor at the Jena Eugen-Diederichs-Verlag , for which he also edited the magazine Die Tat . Since Kuckhoff's ideas about the left-liberal tendency of this magazine met resistance from the conservative publishing house management, he had to vacate his editorial position. From 1930 he worked as a dramaturge at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin. After 1933 he worked as a freelance editor and writer .

From 1925 to 1932 eight radio broadcasts by him on various topics are documented, especially in the Südwestdeutscher Rundfunkdienst Frankfurt , including on March 3, 1928 about amateur plays and the workers' stage .

Since the beginning of the Third Reich , Kuckhoff had ties to left resistance circles . He and his third wife Greta Kuckhoff , with whom he had been married since 1937, belonged to the resistance circle around Arvid Harnack and later to the Rote Kapelle , a resistance organization for which he wrote leaflets and articles for the underground magazine The Inner Front during the Second World War .

After the group was exposed, Kuckhoff was arrested by the Gestapo on September 12, 1942 in Prague . In a trial before the Reich Court Martial , he was sentenced to death in February 1943 . Half a year later he was executed in Plötzensee .

children

Honors

The Erikabrunnen on
Berlin's Adam-Kuckhoff-Platz

After 1945 Adam Kuckhoff was officially recognized as an active resistance fighter, first and foremost in the GDR . He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner by the Soviet Union in 1969 .

Memorial plaques

Namesake

plant

Adam Kuckhoff's work consists of plays , novels , short stories , essays and poetry . Most of the stories he wrote during the Weimar Republic were only published posthumously . In his novels Der Deutsche von Bayencourt and Strogany and the Missing - first published in the Kölnische Zeitung and then as a book during the Third Reich - a second, anti-fascist reading was hidden under a surface that was thoroughly loyal to the regime.

Works

  • Schiller's theory of the tragic up to 1784. Halle 1912.
  • Scherry. Frankfurt 1931.
  • Weather changeable! Berlin 1932 (together with Eugen Gürster).
  • Discipline. Berlin 1933.
  • Till Eulenspiegel. Berlin 1933.
  • The German from Bayencourt . Berlin 1937.
    • New edition: edited and with an afterword by Ansgar Warner. ebooknews press, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-944953-56-4 .
  • Strogany and the missing . Berlin 1941 (together with Peter Tarin, pseudonym for Edwin Tietjens )
    • New edition: edited and with an afterword by Ansgar Warner. ebooknews press, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-944953-43-4 .
  • Adam Kuckhoff in memory. Berlin 1946.
  • Adam Kuckhoff. Hall 1967.
  • Adam Kuckhoff. Berlin 1970.
  • Pass it happily. Alano, Aachen 1985, ISBN 3-924007-18-7 .

Editing

literature

  • Sigrid Bock: fighters before victory. Adam Kuckhoff: "The German from Bayencourt" . In: Sigrid Bock, Manfred Hahn (ed.): Experience Nazideutschland. Novels in Germany 1933–1945. Analyzes. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1987, ISBN 3-351-00590-3 , pp. 132-188.
  • Ingeborg Drewitz : Life and Work of Adam Kuckhoff. Berlin 1968.
  • Karlheinz Jackste (ed.): Adam Kuckhoff - tradition and task. Halle (Saale) 1977.
  • Greta Kuckhoff: From the Rosary to the Red Chapel. Berlin 1972.
  • Vincent Platini: "Strogany" et le IIIe Reich. La subversion d'un "Crime" anodin . In: Germanica , vol. 58 (2016), pp. 53–65.
  • Gert Rosiejka: The Red Chapel. "Treason" as an anti-fascist resistance. With an introduction by Heinrich Scheel. results, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-925622-16-0 .
  • Gerald Wiemers (Ed.): A bit more reality. Berlin 1968.
  • Gertraude Wilhelm:  Kuckhoff, Adam. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 163 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Dieter Götze: An idealist on the left . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 12, 1997, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 71-74 ( luise-berlin.de ).

Web links

Commons : Adam Kuckhoff  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Writers on the radio - Authors appearances on the radio during the Weimar Republic 1924–1932
  2. ↑ Article. In: Neues Deutschland , December 23, 1969, p. 4.
  3. ↑ Kuckhoffstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  4. ↑ Adam-Kuckhoff-Platz. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  5. ^ Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium and on Kuckhoffstraße in Aachen , accessed on August 12, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Kuckhoff, Adam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1943
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee