Action group Banat

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Members of the Banat Action Group

The authors Helmuth Frauendorfer , Roland Kirsch , Herta Müller , Horst Samson and Werner Söllner were close to the action group , but were members of the Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn literary circle in Timișoara, in which most of the previous members of the action group also participated after 1975 .

  • Johann Lippet

  • Gerhard Ortinau

  • Anton Sterbling

  • William Totok

  • Richard Wagner

  • Ernest Wichner

The Action Group Banat was from 1972 a literary group of schoolchildren and students in Timișoara ( German  Timisoara ), Socialist Republic of Romania . It was dissolved by state bodies in 1975.

development

The action group Banat originated at the Lyceum of Sânnicolau Mare ( German  Großsanktnikolaus ), where the local German teacher Dorothea Götz started a literature group. The nine founding members Albert Bohn , Rolf Bossert , Werner Kremm , Johann Lippet , Gerhard Ortinau , Anton Sterbling , William Totok , Richard Wagner , Ernest Wichner shared a common world from the start. They came from the village socialization of the German minority in the Banat and were all born between 1951 and 1955. With the exception of Sterbling and Ortinau, who were high school students at the time they were founded, they completed a degree in German at the University of Timișoara (later West University ).

According to Anton Sterbling, the official framework in which the literary circle moved was “the self-written that became increasingly important to us”, “first on the student page of the Neue Banater Zeitung and then in other newspapers and magazines”, “later in the student supplement Universitas ". The group was named after Horst Weber, then editor and reviewer of the newspaper Die Woche from Hermannstadt ( Romanian : Sibiu ), who called the discussion group “an action group of young writers”. The readings of the literary group took place in the rooms of the student culture house of the West University.

According to his own account, three members of the group (Totok, Ortinau, Wagner) and the literary critic Gerhardt Csejka were arrested during a visit to the border area on the pretext of wanting to leave the country. In days of interrogation by the Romanian secret service Securitate , they were accused of attempting to violate borders and of “crossing the boundaries of poetry”, whereby the group was also compared to the Baader-Meinhof gang . The state organs gave them to understand that they “no longer want to accept this literary fun guerrilla”. To reinforce the threat, William Totok was arrested and spent eight months in custody. ”Wagner, Ortinau and Csejka were released from custody one week later. The publication prohibition initially imposed was lifted shortly afterwards and the confiscated membership books of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) were returned. " Totok, who was expelled from the communist youth organization Uniunea Tineretului Comunist (UTC) in 1971 , was not a member of the PCR. All members were summoned to the Securitate for interrogation at various times; everyone was bullied, some even beaten up.

Some of its members joined the Adam Müller Guttenbrunn Literature Circle (previously Nikolaus Lenau Literature Circle ) in Timișoara; so also the authors who were friends with them, Helmuth Frauendorfer , Roland Kirsch , Herta Müller , Horst Samson and Werner Söllner , who were not members of the action group . Others withdrew from the literary business, some submitted applications to travel to the Federal Republic of Germany .

Nikolaus Berwanger

The situation came to a head for the remaining authors when Nikolaus Berwanger , who in his role as deputy chairman of the Romanian Council of Journalists had campaigned for the young authors, did not return to Romania from a trip abroad to Germany in autumn 1984. With the exception of Werner Kremm, the remaining members of the Adam-Müller-Guttenbrunn literary circle submitted applications for permanent departure to Germany. Some then lost their jobs; her work was no longer published in Romania. The exit applications were granted between 1985 and 1987.

Four of the nine founding members - Lippet, Ortinau, Wagner, Wichner - are still active as authors in Germany today. Bohn withdrew from the literary scene in Germany. Kremm stayed in Romania and works there as a journalist; Totok works as a journalist in Germany; Sterbling works as a professor for sociology and education in Germany. Two months after his departure, Rolf Bossert was found lifeless under his open room window in a refugee home in Frankfurt am Main. The circumstances of his death remained largely unexplained.

program

The action group's program was initially of an aesthetic but also of a political nature. The members discussed similar topics and emphasized shared views and togetherness. The group of authors was shaped by the fundamental motif of Romanian-German literature . On the one hand, the authors were linguistically linked to the German cultural area, on the other hand, they were dominated by everyday Romanian life. The group opened appearances with the poem Engagement . The collective text can be seen as a guide for the authors and constitutes an appeal to the audience and the authors. The lyric was given more than an aesthetic function to the members of the group; it should make the reader act. The members were connected by the school and study time most of them spent together, their views on the function and impact strategy of the texts, the sober language and the political commitment.

The group saw itself as a community of solidarity among writers and professed Marxism. Her literary role models were Bertolt Brecht , the Romanian-German poet Anemone Latzina and GDR authors such as Volker Braun and Rainer Kirsch . Further influence came from the Beat Generation , the Viennese group and the 1968 movement . Preferred topics were the examination of political reality - the demand for system reform from within, according to the dialectics of Marx and Engels - and the tradition of the Banat Swabians .

The members saw themselves as an “intellectual group of young provocateurs. This self-image was strengthened not least by the identification “with the attitude towards life of western youth culture”; they saw themselves as "anti-Romanian German provocateurs and western-oriented intellectuals". "An open, reality-changing criticism of the regime was not the aim of the Banat Action Group."

After the action group was dissolved, the remaining members discussed their texts in the “Adam-Müller-Guttenbrunn” literary group , which also resulted in polemical disputes between younger and older members. The authors went on reading tours in Banat villages. Discussions also dealt with the activities of "informers, on whose indications the Securitate, among others, searched the house of Horst Samson and William Totok in 1982". The group's relationship with Nikolaus Berwanger was ambivalent. He tried to promote the circle, but opinions on literature diverged, which was expressed, for example, by the fact that Berwanger wanted to invite the "court poet" Franz Johannes Bulhardt to the Guttenbrunn district. These circumstances led to the resignation of some members from the group, which encouraged the Securitate to try to split the group.

rating

The classification of the members of the Banat Action Group as dissidents and persecuted persons is controversial.

Looking back, Sarah Langer referred to in her work Between Bohème and Dissidenz. The Banat Action Group and its Authors in the Romanian Dictatorship the Banat Action Group as one of the most important dissident groups in Romania in the 1970s, which also influenced authors from the Banat who spoke other languages.

The author Claire de Oliveira describes dissidence with a view to the action group as any form of resistance against the total instrumentalization of language by the communist regime, the questioning of everyday language, the confirmation of belonging to a minority, and the refusal to participate in the official discourse Use of dialect and non-engagement to participate.

The Transylvanian literary historian and journalist Horst Schuller Anger rejected the term "dissidence" as well as the terms "opposition" and "resistance" as misleading in comparison with opposition groups in other socialist countries and found the term "refusal" to be more appropriate.

Richard Wagner points out that the action group was not politically oppositional, but literary. Only in the Adam-Müller-Guttenbrunn literary circle did the authors practice more "the classic form of dissidence".

Werner Kremm said that during the Ceaușescu dictatorship there were hardly any manuscripts critical of the regime “for the time afterwards”: “It was said that after the fall of the Wall, that is, after freedom had finally come over Romania, literature would finally be published become. Nothing happened: there was no literature in the drawer. "

Anton Sterbling was critical of the constitution of a "kind of myth of the action group, which does not necessarily appeal to me because - as with every myth - poetry and truth are mixed up in a peculiar and sometimes annoying way."

Christina Rossi emphasizes that the merit of the action group did not lie in provocation, but in lending emphasis and effect to a major literary turning point in German-language literature from Romania. From the beginning - and especially at the beginning - the members of the action group were not concerned with dissidence and criticism of the regime, but with a change in consciousness, criticism of ideology and the unmasking of conventions - using the means of literature.

Olivia Spiridon observes the attempts on the part of the Romanian state to win these authors over - Richard Wagner became a member of the Romanian Writers' Union, among others. In the 1980s, however, there was a final break with the increasingly nationalist Romanian state.

Sarah Langer incorrectly reported that, except for Sterbling, Wichner and Ortinau, all members of the group had joined the Romanian Communist Party (RKP) after they reached the required age . It is correct that Ortinau was a member of the party, but was excluded from it in 1976. He moved to the Federal Republic in 1980. Totok, who was also excluded from the UTC youth association in 1971, was not a RKP member.

The former director of the Bucharest Kriterion publishing house Hedi Hauser said in an interview: “[...] the Romanian-German poets [had] more freedom to express and publish their opinion than their Romanian colleagues. The government let them go within certain limits because they believed that it would have little influence on the people and would be well received in the West. "

The writer Dieter Schlesak called the then young Banat authors "luxury dissidents during the thaw Ceauşescu, the grotesque communist king with scepter and throne". There was by no means only the literary resistance of the “Action Group Banat”, “which is hardly mentioned in the sources as a marginal phenomenon, mostly not at all”. The group worked “only on its own” and showed “no connection or even solidarity with the real social actions”. The former civil rights activist Carl Gibson defined it as a "Banat action group without action". The former civil rights activist Mircea Dinescu said that the German-speaking poets from the Banat in the Ceauşescu period were not considered to be the Securitate's biggest problem children: "That was a small pelican colony, far away in Timisoara, but always in its sights."

The writer and victim of the communist dictatorship in Romania, Wolf von Aichelburg, replied to the anthology Obituary on Romanian German Literature by the Germanist Wilhelm Solms : “... and it is a stupid arrogance and propaganda lie on the part of the Wagner-Müller-Totok group, if they play up their role as grave bearers of this literature, supported by unsuspecting German lecturers like Mr. Solms in Marburg ”.

literature

Detailed information in:

  • William Totok: The Constraints of Memory. Records from Romania . Junius, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-88506-163-5
  • Ernest Wichner (Ed.): A pronoun has been arrested. The early years in Romania. Texts by the Banat Action Group . Suhrkamp ( edition suhrkamp 1671), Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-518-11671-1
  • Anton Sterbling: "In the beginning there was the conversation". Reflections and contributions to the "Action Group Banat" and other works related to literature and art . Krämer, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-89622-091-2
  • Sabina Kienlechner: “Under the influence of bourgeois ideology”. The “Action Group Banat” in the Securitate files. In: Sinn und Form , Volume 62, Issue 6, November / December 2010, pp. 746–769.
  • Anneli Ute Gabanyi : Party and Literature in Romania since 1945 . Studies on Contemporary Studies in Southeast Europe 9, Oldenbourg, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-486-49201-2
  • Roxana Nubert : Romanian German literature in the time of the dictatorship. With special reference to the early 1970s. In: Trans . Internet magazine for cultural studies No. 13, Timișoara, May, 2002 (→ online )
  • Olivia Spiridon: Studies on the Romanian-German narrative literature of the post-war period . Literature and media studies 86, Igel Verlag, Oldenburg, 2002, ISBN 3-89621-150-1
  • Diana Schuster: The Banat Authors' Group. Self-presentation and reception in Romania and Germany . Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz, 2004, ISBN 3-89649-942-4

Video material

Web links

Commons : Action group Banat  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anton Sterbling : Some subjective comments on the "Action Group Banat". In: Semi-annual publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics : 40 years of the Banat Action Group , April 2, 2012 (→ online )
  2. ↑ Chemnitz University of Technology , Sarah Langer: Between Bohème and Dissidenz. The Banat Action Group and its authors in the Romanian dictatorship , December 2010, p. 16 (→ online ( Memento of February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ); PDF; 638 kB)
  3. ^ Neue Banater Zeitung , special supplement Universitas: In the beginning was the conversation. First discussion of young authors. Point of view and locations. , No. XXX, April 2, 1972, p. 5
  4. ↑ a b Landsmannschaft der Banat Schwaben , Peter Kottler: Forty Years “Action Group Banat” , June 9, 2012 (→ online ( Memento from October 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ))
  5. ↑ Ernest Wichner (Ed.): A pronoun has been arrested. The early years in Romania - texts by the Banat Action Group. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main, 1992, p. 247, here p. 10
  6. ^ Eckard Grunewald: Reports and Research - Yearbook of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe . Volume 11, Munich, 2003, p. 156, (→ online )
  7. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau, Dieter Schlesak: Cultural Policy with Police Deployment , July 10, 1976
  8. ↑ a b Half-year publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics: Unmasking 2 - demascare 2 , September 7, 2012 (→ online )
  9. ↑ a b Deutschlandradio , Thomas Wagner: Fear of being able to inspect files , November 27, 2010, (→ online )
  10. ↑ Die Zeit , Fokke Joel: Drangsaliert von der Securitate , November 19, 2010 (→ online )
  11. ↑ Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Romania , Elke Sabiel: There is no obituary for Romanian-German literature, because they are still writing today , May 12, 2012 (→ online )
  12. ^ Federal Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe : Short biographies of writers, translators and literary scholars , Rolf Bossert (→ online ( Memento from August 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ))
  13. ↑ Half-yearly publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics: 40 years of the Banat Action Group , April 2, 2012 (→ online )
  14. ↑ Peter Motzan: Because there is nowhere to stay. The poet Werner Söllner in the context of his generation , 2011 (→ online ( Memento from May 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ); PDF; 1.1 MB)
  15. ↑ Chemnitz University of Technology , Sarah Langer: Between Bohème and Dissidenz. The Banat Action Group and its authors in the Romanian dictatorship , December 2010, pp. 37, 41, 61 (→ online ( Memento from February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ); PDF; 638 kB)
  16. ↑ a b Sarah Langer: Between Bohème and Dissidence. The Banat Action Group and its authors in the Romanian dictatorship , December 2010 (→ online ( Memento of February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ); PDF; 638 kB)
  17. ^ Claire de Oliveira: La poésie allemande en Roumanie: entre hétéronomie et dissidence, 1944-1990 , Volume 32 of Contacts. Série 3, Etudes et documents, P. Lang, 1995, ISBN 3-906754-17-0 , p. 375, here p. 176-223
  18. ↑ Raluca Cernahoschi-Condurateanu: The Political, the Urban, and the Cosmopolitan: The 1970s generation in Romanian-German Poetry , August 2010, p. 270, here p. 49, in English (→ online ; PDF; 1.2 MB )
  19. ^ Richard Wagner / Christina Rossi: Poetologik. Interview with the writer Richard Wagner , Wieser Verlag Klagenfurt 2017, pp. 41–42.
  20. ↑ Sarah Langer: Between Bohème and Dissidence. The Banat Action Group and its authors in the Romanian dictatorship , December 2010, p. 5 (→ online ( Memento from February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ); PDF; 638 kB)
  21. ^ Spiegelungen , Christina Rossi: 45 years of the Banat Action Group , Spiegelungen. Journal for German Culture and History of Southeast Europe 1/2017, Munich 2017, pp. 222–224
  22. ↑ Olivia Spridon: Studies on Romanian-German narrative literature , Igel Verlag , Hamburg 2002, p. 154
  23. ↑ Siebenbürgische Zeitung: German culture cultivated in communist Romania: Interview with Hedi Hauser , January 26, 2011 (→ online )
  24. ↑ Die Zeit , Dieter Schlesak : Oskar Pastior Securitatespitzel? September 23, 2010 (→ online )
  25. ↑ Schwäbisches Tagblatt , Wilhelm Triebold: Spy accusation against Horst Fassel renewed. “I'm not Filip”. July 12, 2010 (→ online ( Memento from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))
  26. ↑ Carl Gibson : On the Truth of Lies , December 26, 2010 (→ online )
  27. ↑ Der Spiegel , Walter Mayr : Poison in the luggage. Edition 3/2011, (→ online )
  28. ^ Wilhelm Solms : Obituary for Romanian German Literature , Hitzeroth, Marburg, 1989, ISBN 3-89398-034-2
  29. ↑ Wolf von Aichelburg My position on literature. In: Banat-Ja. Bonn, Timișoara, issue 1993/94, p. 5 ff
  30. ^ Banater Zeitung , Robert Tari : Romanian German writers written in the margin , July 28, 2011 (→ online )