Alexander Arkadevich Galitsch

Alexander Arkadjewitsch Galitsch ( Russian Алекса́ндр Арка́дьевич Га́лич , actually Alexander Arkadjewitsch Ginsburg ; born October 20, 1918 in Yekaterinoslav ; † December 15, 1977 in Paris ) was a Soviet poet , playwright and actor . He gained great importance as an artist with his own poems, performed and sung by himself. The name Galitsch (a suitcase word formed from his surname, first name and father's name ) was his literary pseudonym.

Life

Early years

Alexander Galitsch was born on October 20, 1918 in Yekaterinoslav (today Dnipro ) to an educated Jewish family. His father Aron Samojlowitsch Ginsburg was an economist, his mother Fejga (Fanny) Borissowna Weksler worked in the conservatory . His uncle Lev Samoylowich Ginsburg , a literary scholar and Pushkin expert, taught at Moscow State University . His younger brother Valeri Ginsburg was a cameraman .

In 1920 the Ginsburg family moved to Sevastopol and in 1923 to Moscow .

Galitsch showed an early interest in poetry : at the age of fifteen he was a member of a literary circle led by Eduard Bagrizki . After the ninth grade, he studied both at the Maxim Gorki Literature Institute and at the drama school of Konstantin Stanislawski , but broke both off again. In 1939, Galitsch joined the acting studio of Alexei Arbusow . There he made his debut in February 1940 as a co-author of the play Stadt im Morgenrot ( Gorod na Sare ). Declared unfit for military service in World War II , Galitsch went to southern Russia in 1941 as a member of a geological exploration team and temporarily worked as a dramaturge and actor at the Lermontov Theater in Grozny . In the same year Galitsch went to Tashkent , where Arbusow reunited his theater troupe from the former members of the drama studio.

Theater and screenwriter

In the 1940s and 1950s, Galitsch was particularly successful as a dramatist. Pieces like you calls Taimyr ( Was wysywajet Taimyr , 1948 with Konstantin Issajew , filming 1970) or An Hour Before Dawn ( Sa tschas do rassweta , 1957) brought the author national fame and considerable wealth. The 1954 film Journey with Obstacles ( Vernyje drusja , directed by Mikhail Kalatosow ) was based on a template by Galitsch and won the main prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival . For the script for the film The State Criminal ( Gossudarstwenny prestupnik , 1964) Galitsch received the special award of the State Security Service KGB . The ban on the play Sailor's Silence ( Matrosskaja tischina ), which Galitsch wrote in 1958 on the occasion of the opening of the Moscow Sovremennik Theater , represents a turning point in Galitsch's life. It was only premiered in 1988 under Oleg Tabakov .

Poet and songwriter

Towards the end of the 1950s, Galitsch began to compose songs, set them to music and perform them on the guitar . Vocally and stylistically oriented to Alexander Wertinski , Galitsch is one of the most outstanding representatives of the Russian author's song alongside Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudschawa . None of his "sung poems" were published in the official publishing houses of the Eastern Bloc during his lifetime . The increasing spread of tape recorders , however, made it possible to record his private appearances ( Magnitisdat ) and thus contributed to his enormous popularity.

His early songs such as Lenotschka (1959), About the painter, the stoker and the theory of relativity ( Pro maljarow, istopnika i teoriju otnossitelnosti , 1962) or Law of Nature ( Sakon prirody , 1962) are relatively harmless from a political point of view, but dissonate with the official Soviet aesthetic . Later, however, Galitsch criticized more or less openly the grievances in Soviet society, for example in Night Watch ( Notschnoi dosor ), Little Gold Digger Waltz ( Staratelski walsok ), The Red Triangle ( Krasny Treugolnik ) and others.

Conflict with the authorities

Galitsch's increasingly critical author's songs, which appeared primarily in samizdat , ultimately led to a conflict with the Soviet authorities. His only public concert in the USSR took place in 1968 as part of a bard festival in the Novosibirsk district of Akademgorodok . There he performed his author's song In memory of Pasternak ( Pamjati Pasternaka ) in front of an audience of around 2500 , which resulted in a ban on performing.

In 1969 Galitsch's first volume of poetry was published by the German Possev publishing house, entitled Pesni ( Songs ). This, as well as Galitsch's membership in the Human Rights Committee of the USSR, led to his exclusion from the Writers' Union of the USSR in 1971 and later from the Association of Filmmakers and the Litfond . This amounted to a professional ban. From then on, Galitsch only earned his living at "house concerts".

Exile and death

Due to increasing repression, Galitsch was forced to emigrate to Norway in 1974. On October 22, 1974, all of his published works were banned by order of the Glawlit with the consent of the Central Committee of the CPSU . A little later he moved to Munich , where he worked for the American radio station Radio Free Europe . Finally, Galitsch moved to Paris , where he was electrocuted on December 15, 1977. The exact circumstances of his death are not finally clear. The Galitsch biographer Michail Aronow cites several pieces of evidence for the murder of Galitsch by KGB agents, although it is also speculated that the CIA had reasons to eliminate Galitsch as well.

Alexander Galitsch is buried near Paris in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois . At the request of his daughter, Alexander Galitsch was rehabilitated on May 12, 1988 by the Association of Filmmakers and on May 15, 1988 by the Writers' Association.

Private life

During his time in Tashkent, Galitsch met the actress Valentina Arkhangelskaya, whom he married in Moscow in 1942 . Their daughter Alexandra (Aljona) was born on May 21, 1943. In 1945, Valentina received an offer from the Ochlopkow Drama Theater in Irkutsk and left Moscow. At the same time Galitsch began a relationship with Angelina Schekrot (Prokhorova). This and the spatial separation of the family eventually led to the divorce.

In 1947 Galitsch married Angelina Schekrot.

On September 3, 1967, his illegitimate son Grigori was born, who bears the family name of his mother Michnow-Woitenko.

literature

• Mikhail Aronov: Alexander Galitsch. Polnaya biography. NLO, Moscow 2012, ISBN 978-5-86793-931-1 (in Russian)
• Dagmar Boss: The Soviet Russian Authors' Song: An investigation using the example of the work of Aleksandr Galič, Bulat Okudžava and Vladimir Vysockij. Sagner, Munich 1985. (Full-text scan available from Digi20 .)
• Christoph Garstka: The color of evil. Comments on the Jewish theme in poems by Boris Sluckij and Aleksandr Galič. In: Frank Grüner et al. (Ed.): "Destroyer of Silence". Forms of artistic memory of the National Socialist race and extermination policy in Eastern Europe. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2006, ISBN 3-412-36105-4 .
• Wolfgang Kasack (ed.): Major works of Russian literature. Kindler, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-463-40312-9 .
• Russian songwriter. Vysotsky, Galich, Okudschava. Russian German. Translation and annotations by Kay Borowsky. Afterword by Katja Lebedewa. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-15-018056-2 .
• The Russian artist rebel Alexander Galitsch (author: Michael Hänel ), SWR2 April 12, 2018

Web links

• Alexander Galitsch on the singer-songwriter portal bards.ru (in Russian)
• Playlist with Galitsch recordings (YouTube)
• Russian website on Alexander Galitsch's work
• Alexander Galitsch: his mysterious death (article in Russian on http://www.svoboda.org/ )

References and comments

1. ↑ In many sources the date of birth is given as October 19th. As the Galitsch biographer Mikhail Aronov explains, Alexander's birthday was celebrated from childhood on this date, the day the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum was founded . (Michail Aronow: Alexander Galitsch. Polnaja biografija. Moscow 2012, p. 12)
2. ↑ Dagmar Boss: The Soviet Russian Author's Song. Munich 1985, p. 9.
3. ↑ Michail Aronow: Alexander Galitsch. Polnaya biography. Moscow 2012, p. 20ff.
4. ↑ Ibid., P. 24ff.
5. ↑ Ibid., P. 37ff.
6. ↑ Ibid., Pp. 40ff.
7. ↑ Efim Etkind: The homecoming of Alexander Galitsch. In: Alexander Galitsch: The rope to paradise. Poems, songs and ballads. Edited and translated by Tamina Groepper and Dietz Otto Edzard. Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 5.
8. ^ Ibid.
9. ↑ Dagmar Boss: The Soviet Russian Author's Song. Munich 1985, p. 10.
10. ↑ Michail Aronow: Alexander Galitsch. Polnaya biography. Moscow 2012, p. 850.
11. ↑ Christoph Garstka: The color of evil - remarks on the jewish theme in poems by Boris Sluckij and Aleksandr Galič. In: Frank Grüner et al. (Ed.): "Destroyer of Silence". Forms of artistic memory of the National Socialist race and extermination policy in Eastern Europe. Cologne et al. 2006, p. 152f.
12. ↑ Dagmar Boss: The Soviet Russian Author's Song. Munich 1985, p. 34.
13. ↑ Michail Aronow: Alexander Galitsch. Polnaya biography. Moscow 2012, p. 244ff.
14. ^ Renate Mazur: The lyrical work of Aleksandr A. Galič. In: Wolfgang Kasack (Ed.): Major works of Russian literature. Munich 1997, p. 517ff.
15. ↑ Michail Aronow: Alexander Galitsch. Polnaya biography. Moscow 2012, p. 464ff.
16. ↑ Ibid., P. 761ff.
17. ↑ Ibid., P. 86.
18. ↑ Ibid., P. 86.
19. ↑ http://www.library.ru/2/lit/sections.php?a_uid=59 (short biography in Russian, last accessed: November 11, 2014)