Alfred Andersch

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Alfred Hellmuth Andersch (born February 4, 1914 in Munich ; † February 21, 1980 in Berzona , Switzerland ) was a German writer and a time-critical author of post-war literature who participated in political discussions with numerous essays . Andersch was the editor of literary magazines, radio editor and founding member of Gruppe 47 . In his works he mainly portrays outsiders .

Life

1914 to 1939

Alfred Andersch came from a middle-class, conservative family. He was the middle of three sons of the veterinarian , later bookseller, real estate agent and insurance agent Alfred Andersch (1875–1929) and his wife Hedwig, née. Watzek (1884-1976). He left the Wittelsbacher Gymnasium in Munich after graduation because of poor grades, the cause of which Andersch also saw in the pedagogical attitude of his teachers.

The director of the grammar school was Joseph Gebhard Himmler, Heinrich Himmler's father . Andersch processed the memories of him in the main character of his last story The Father of a Murderer , which was published posthumously in 1980. There were readers who, as pupils, had seen the director's real person differently; there were former students who saw the real person hit in the narrated figure; Above all, Andersch was well received in the literary scene, which pointed to the fundamental difference between a biographical suggestion and the typifying construction of literary figures.

Andersch's father had already joined the NSDAP in 1920 . He died in 1929 at the after-effects of an injury he as an officer in the First World War had contracted.

After an apprenticeship as a bookseller, Alfred Andersch joined the KPD in 1930 . He was unemployed and was able to concentrate on political activity. At the age of eighteen he became the organizational leader of the Communist Youth Association in southern Bavaria. According to his own statements, he spent three months in the Dachau concentration camp in 1933, imprisoned by the National Socialist rulers in the wave of persecution after the Reichstag fire . According to research by radio author Bernhard Setzwein, the Dachau archives are said to have found no evidence of Andersch's stay in the Dachau concentration camp. He was arrested and interrogated again in September 1933 when a communist printing company was evicted. He escaped a second internment in Dachau because of a credible alibi.

Andersch gave up political work for fear of further persecution and fell into a depressive phase of "total introversion ". He found a job at a publishing bookstore and made his first trip to Italy in 1934 with his girlfriend Angelika Albert. After the wedding in May 1935, the couple went on a second trip to Italy. In 1937 Andersch was brought in by his brother-in-law, Fritz Albert, to work as an advertising manager at the Leonar photo paper factory in Hamburg-Wandsbek . That year he began writing stories in earnest. An important advisor in literary matters for him was the private scholar Günther Herzfeld-Wüsthoff from Munich , who advised him to train himself in large forms, such as B. the works of Leopold von Ranke , Stendhal or Thomas Mann .

1940 to 1945

Andersch was prevented from writing continuously by the Second World War : in 1940 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht for the first time and deployed in France . In autumn of the same year he met his future second wife, the painter and teacher Gisela Groneuer , while on leave from the front in Cologne . In 1941 Andersch was provisionally released from the Wehrmacht because of his marriage to a " half-Jewish " woman according to the Nuremberg Laws - possibly due to a voluntary disclosure . He worked as an office worker at a cosmetics company in Frankfurt am Main and began a love affair with Gisela Groneuer, who had a child from him.

In 1942 Andersch separated from his wife Angelika, and the marriage was divorced in 1943. His mother-in-law was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942 and fell victim to the Holocaust . In order to obtain the right to publish, he announced himself prematurely as divorced in an application to the Reichsschrifttumskammer . As a result, Andersch was drafted again in 1943 for military service.

On June 7, 1944, Andersch deserted as a senior soldier in the 20th Air Force Field Division near Oriolo north of Rome and went over to the US Army . From 1944 to 1945 he was a prisoner of war in Louisiana , Rhode Island and Fort Hunt Park , Virginia ; he worked as an editor for the camp newspaper Der Ruf - papers for German prisoners of war . In relation to the Americans, he cited his previous marriage to a “half-Jewish woman” in order to be able to return to Germany. On the basis of eavesdropping protocols from the camps that were evaluated later, Felix Römer characterized Andersch as a representative of a regime-critical but also conformist segment in the Wehrmacht, who, like other educated, nationally oriented bourgeoisie, decidedly rejected the Nazi rule, but joined the armed forces of the Nazi regime almost without contradiction State integrated.

In 1945 Andersch returned to Germany and initially lived in Darmstadt .

1946 to 1958

Andersch worked from 1946 to 1947 as Erich Kästner's assistant editor at the Neue Zeitung in Munich. He was dissatisfied with the American occupation policy . Of the five D's ( democratization , denazification , demilitarization , decentralization , dismantling ), democratization in particular seemed to him inadequately achieved. Andersch's positions, which were partly oriented towards French existentialism , were not those of the Neue Zeitung , so that he decided to publish his own magazine: together with Hans Werner Richter, the monthly Der Ruf, published in the American-occupied zone .

Because Andersch and Richter were not prepared to take a clearly pro-American position at the beginning of the Cold War , but instead took a clearly left-wing position that sought to mediate between East and West, they were withdrawn from publishing. The official rationale was nihilism . They decided to start a new magazine that would focus more on literature. In 1947 they organized a meeting of writers and literary critics for this purpose. They were refused a license to publish the magazine. The meeting, however, is considered the first meeting of Group 47 .

From 1948 to 1958, Andersch worked as a cultural and literary radio editor: first for the evening studio of the Hessischer Rundfunk , then for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk . As editor of the studio frankfurt book series (1952 to 1954) and the magazine Texte undzeichen (1955 to 1957) and as founder and head of the radio essay editorial team at Süddeutscher Rundfunk, he promoted new and unusual literature, such as that of Ingeborg Bachmann and Arno Schmidt .

In 1950 Andersch married his second wife, Gisela born. Dichgans, with whom he lived at Kerpen Castle near Daun in the Eifel until 1952 . In 1952 the couple moved to Hamburg .

1958 to 1980

From 1958 Andersch lived in Berzona in the Valle Onsernone in Ticino ; among the neighbors were Max Frisch and Golo Mann . His move to Switzerland was also a protest against the political, social and cultural development of the Federal Republic of Germany ; In 1972 he received Swiss citizenship . He lived as a successful freelance writer and went on extensive trips with his wife.

Andersch continued to play an important role in the German literary scene and maintained numerous correspondence, for example with Ingeborg Bachmann , Johannes R. Becher , Heinrich Böll , Günter Eich , Hans Magnus Enzensberger , Günter Grass , Helmut Heißenbüttel , Wolfgang Koeppen , Martin Walser and Peter Weiss . In 1976 he published the poem Article 3 (3) , in which he criticized the radical decree. His drastic formulation “the new concentration camp has already been built” sparked heated controversy.

Since 1970 he was a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

Alfred Andersch, who had to rely on dialysis for the last three years of his life , died on February 21, 1980 of kidney failure . His grave is in the Berzona cemetery.

Cemetery in Berzona with the gravestones of Alfred and Gisela Andersch in the right half of the picture
Gravestones of Alfred and Gisela Andersch in Berzona

plant

Alfred Andersch is one of the time-critical authors of post-war literature. In his novels, stories, radio plays and a few poems, the central theme is the individual's free will. In 1952 his autobiographical report Die Kirschen der Freiheit appeared , in which Andersch took up the experience of his own desertion and interpreted it as a decision to freedom in the sense of existentialism .

The novel Zanzibar or the last reason takes up this theme again, as does the follow-up works The Red and Efraim , which play through the theme under the conditions of contemporary society. In Efraim the protagonist is an emigrated Jewish journalist who makes a futile attempt to break out of his reality by introducing his self-devoured person into a novel as a literary fictional character.

Andersch often abandoned the paths of a traditional narrative style and tried to assemble documentary material, quotations or narrative set pieces: One example is his novel Winterspelt , in which Andersch depicts a war situation with an assembly technique reminiscent of James Joyce of comments, internal monologues and chronic statements constructed in which desertion is played out as a possibility of individual and collective liberation. His radio play The Death of James Dean , in which he used texts by John Dos Passos , he himself called a radio montage .

Quotes about Andersch

  • "Alfred Andersch has become an integral part of literature and intellectual life in Germany after 1945." ( Karl Otto Conrady )
  • “I owe him a lot because he made me known, he introduced me to the culture industry. He explained to me the tricks, [...] the opportunities, the risks of the industry, and not abstractly, but in practice. "( Hans Magnus Enzensberger )
  • "I mean: any appreciation of his literary work that depoliticizes Alfred Andersch as a master of German prose would be a mockery." ( Max Frisch )
  • “One of the first works [on desertion and military justice] is the autobiographical story [...]“ The cherries of freedom ”[...]. In view of the fact that desertion has remained a politically controversial topic to this day [around 2010], this [... work] can definitely be described as a risk. "(Peter Kalmbach)

Controversy

Andersch's behavior during World War II and its consequences for his writing were critically appreciated in 1993 by W. G. Sebald . Sebald also accused Andersch of “literary counterfeiting and bigotry”. He questioned Andersch's moral integrity.

Sebald's irreconcilable criticism and his reliance on proven personal misconduct by Andersch during the war did not lead to the intended scandal. Instead, a controversy arose that had both the person of Sebald and Andersch on the subject. The debate did not lead to a reassessment of Andersch's works. According to Gunter E. Grimm , Sebald's report was “rightly rejected in its generality”.

Celebrations for the 100th birthday

On the occasion of his 100th birthday, Fritz J. Raddatz paid tribute to Andersch as an “advocate of freedom” following Jean-Paul Sartre . Andersch was able to “spread an aura of [...] justice; also by denouncing injustice ”. The “great thing about his work” is “that he has transferred the error of the subject - including his own ego - into the confusion of history”. Manfred Koch praised Andersch as a "key figure in the German cultural history". As “a kind of modern patron” he made the literature of Arno Schmidt and Wolfgang Koeppen possible. Tilman Krause , on the other hand, took Andersch's 100th birthday as an opportunity to take up the “opportunism” allegations again. Andersch was "a great hope of German literature after 1945", "at least for those who rubbed against their stink and stench, their dreary social homogeneity and pesky intellectual conformity". However, this hope was deceptive, because with the “stain on his honor” there was “a barrier” “on which this man repeatedly failed, although he tirelessly tried to jump over it”. Ingar Solty , on the other hand, took up the Sebald debate and recent historical-critical Andersch research in German studies in a longer essay and defended both the literary and the biographical Andersch as nonconformists . Andersch's attitude of “combative resignation” and the “left-wing melancholy” in his best-known works from the 1950s must be understood and deciphered in the historical context of the “golden age of capitalism” and the widespread “impression of a calming of class confrontation”. Solty referred to parallels between Andersch's orientation at this time and other “homeless leftists” of this era such as Michel Foucault , Herbert Marcuse and Pier Paolo Pasolini . Solty contradicted the common thesis of Andersch's presumed "founding again of the left" in the 1970s; he certified Andersch a continuous "non-conformist courage".

Awards

Works

Novels

stories

  • The cherries of freedom . A report. FVA, Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1952, DNB 450072991 .
  • Piazza San Gaetano. Suite. Walter, Olten 1957
  • Ghosts and people. Ten stories. Walter, Olten 1958
  • A lover of the penumbra. Three stories. Walter, Olten 1963
  • Daughter. Narrative. Diogenes, Zurich 1970, DNB 454576838 .
  • Collected stories. Diogenes, Zurich 1971
  • My disappearance in Providence. Nine new stories. Diogenes, Zurich 1971
  • Old periphery. Selected stories. Structure, Berlin 1973
  • Master tales. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1975
  • World tour the German way. A story. Diogenes, Zurich 1977
  • The father of a murderer . A school story. Diogenes, Zurich 1980
  • Escape to Etruria. Two stories and a report. Diogenes, Zurich 1981
  • All the stories. Diogenes, Zurich 1983
  • World tour the German way. Collected stories. Structure, Berlin 1985
  • Remembered figures. Early narratives. Diogenes, Zurich 1986
  • The Islands under the Wind and other stories , selected by Winfried Stephan , Diogenes, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-257-06865-8 .

Radio plays

Poetry

  • indignant yourselves the sky is blue. Poems and adaptations 1946–1977. Diogenes, Zurich 1977

Essays

  • German literature in the making. A contribution to the analysis of the literary situation. Volk & Zeit, Karlsruhe 1948
  • The blindness of the artwork and other essays. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1965
  • Giorgio Bassani or the sense of storytelling. Cultural Office, Dortmund 1969
  • How trivial is the trivial novel? Diogenes, Zurich 1971
  • Some drawings. Diogenes, Zurich 1977
  • Public letter to a Soviet writer regarding the obsolete. Reports and essays. Diogenes, Zurich 1977
  • A new pyre for old heretics. Criticisms and Reviews. Diogenes, Zurich 1979
  • There is no other suffering. Letters and essays on war and peace. With Konstantin Simonow . Gallery, Schwifting 1981
  • "... really live once". A diary in letters to Hedwig Andersch 1943–1975. Diogenes, Zurich 1986

Travel reports

  • Walks in the north . Walter, Olten 1962
  • From a Roman winter. Travel pictures . Walter, Olten 1966
  • High latitudes or messages from the border . Diogenes, Zurich 1969
  • North, South, Right and Left. From journeys and books 1951–1971 . Diogenes, Zurich 1972
  • Irish impressions. Hahnemühle, Dassel 1982

Collections

literature

  • Norman Ächtler (Ed.): Alfred Andersch, committed authorship in the literary system of the Federal Republic, conference publication Metzler, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-02638-5 .
  • Jörg Döring, Felix Römer, Rolf Seubert: Alfred Andersch deserted. Desertion and literature (1944–1952).  : Verbrecher Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-943167-98-6 .
  • Dörte Baumeister: Alfred Andersch. Narrative forms and limits of fiction in the novel "Winterspelt" (= European University Writings, Series 1, German Language and Literature , Volume 1536). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-631-49137-9 .
  • Maria Elisabeth Brunner: The deserter and narrator Alfred Andersch. "That nothing may be said in the dark that can also be said clearly". Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-631-31892-8 .
  • Alfons Bühlmann: In the fascination of freedom. An investigation into the structure of the basic theme in Alfred Andersch's work. E. Schmidt, Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-503-00740-7 . (= Philological studies and sources 72)
  • Jörg Döring , Markus Joch (Eds.): Alfred Andersch revisited. Biographical studies in the context of the Sebald debate. De Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-026826-3 .
  • Anita Gröger: 'Told doubts about memory'. A narrative figure in the German-language novel of the post-war period (1954–1976). Ergon-Verlag, Würzburg, 2016. ISBN 978-3-95650-149-4 .
  • Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, Volker Wehdeking (ed.): Alfred Andersch. Perspectives on life and work. Colloquium on the 80th birthday of the author in the Werner Reimers Foundation, Bad Homburg vd H. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1994.
  • Michael Hesse: Art as a fractal game. Potentials of communication in Alfred Andersch's novels. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-631-51884-6 . (= Studies on German and European literature of the 19th and 20th centuries 54)
  • Rüdiger Heßling: Autobiography in Stories. Studies and interpretations of the Franz Kien stories by Alfred Andersch. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-631-37040-7 . (= European university publications series 1, German language and literature 1775)
  • Bernhard Jendricke: Alfred Andersch. With testimonials and photo documents. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-499-50395-6 . (Rowohlt's Monographs 395)
  • Anja Koberstein: "God or nothing". Sartre reception in Alfred Andersch's early post-war work in the context of the contemporary discussion of existentialism. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-631-49630-3 . (= Contributions to literature and literary studies of the 20th century 15)
  • Matthias Liebe: Alfred Andersch and his “radio essay”. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-631-42267-9 . (= European university publications series 1, German language and literature 1185)
  • Christian Loffet: Sense and structure of A. Andersch's novels "Sansibar or the last reason" and "Die Rote". Université de Liège, 1966.
  • Dietmar Noering: Imaginary dialogues. Arno Schmidt's influence on the work of Alfred Andersch. In: Rudi Schweikert (Ed.): Zettelkasten. 26. Articles and works on the work of Arno Schmidt. Yearbook of the Society of Arno Schmidt Readers 2007/2008. Bangert & Metzler, Wiesenbach 2009, pp. 85-130.
  • Anne Raabe: "The word comes from Kierkegaard". Alfred Andersch and Sören Kierkegaard. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-631-35449-5 . (= Contributions to literature and literary studies of the 20th century 18)
  • Stephan Reinhardt: Alfred Andersch. A biography. Diogenes, Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-257-22874-0 . (= Diogenes paperback 22874)
  • Ursula Reinhold: Alfred Andersch. Political engagement and literary effectiveness. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-05-000429-0 .
  • Gary Schmidt: The Nazi abduction of Ganymede. Representations of male homosexuality in postwar German literature. Lang, Oxford 2003, ISBN 3-906769-60-7 . (= Studies in Modern German Literature 95)
  • Erhard Schütz: Alfred Andersch. Beck, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-406-07883-4 . (= Author books 23)
  • WG Sebald : The writer Alfred Andersch. In: Air War and Literature . Hanser, Munich 1999. (5th edition. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-14863-4 )
  • Angela Weber-Hohlfeldt: Max Frisch, Alfred Andersch. A contradicting friendship. Edition AB Fischer, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-937434-77-3
  • Volker Wehdeking: Alfred Andersch. Metzler, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-476-10207-6 . (= Metzler Collection 207; Dept. D., History of Literature)
  • Volker Wehdeking: To Alfred Andersch. Interpretations. Klett, Stuttgart 1983 (= LGW interpretations 64).
  • Volker Wehdeking, Irene Heidelberger-Leonard: Alfred Andersch. Perspectives on life and work. West German publishing house, Opladen 1994.
  • Berlin booklets on the history of literary life. 7/2005, ISSN  0949-5371 , therein:
    • Jörg Döring, David Oels: The correspondence between Alfred Andersch and Günter Eich. Pp. 7-74.
    • Christian Ganseuer: Andersch in Siegen, 1943–1944. Pp. 75-86.
    • David Oels: "Hofmannsthal is to blame for everything". An unknown text by Alfred Andersch about Günter Eich. Pp. 87-93.
    • Angela Abmeier, Hannes Bajohr: "Re: Letter to Minister Malraux". Alfred Andersch and the petition to André Malraux. Pp. 94-102.

Web links

Commons : Alfred Andersch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Character assassination of the Rex? In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1980 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Zanzibar is elsewhere - How Alfred Andersch set out to learn to fear . Bayerischer Rundfunk, February 2, 2014
  3. ↑ Cf. Alfred Andersch: The cherries of freedom. Zurich 1968, pp. 39–46.
  4. ^ Stephan Reinhardt: Aesthetics as Resistance - Andersch as a citizen and committed writer . In: Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, Volker Wehdeking (Ed.): Alfred Andersch. Perspectives on life and work. Colloquium on the 80th birthday of the author in the Werner Reimers Foundation, Bad Homburg vd H. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1994. Page 34
  5. ↑ Presentation on Deutschlandfunk
  6. ^ Stephan Reinhardt: Alfred Andersch. A biography. Diogenes, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-257-01823-1 .
  7. ↑ Tilman Krause : Was Andersch a Great? , The Literary World , February 1, 2014, p. 4
  8. ↑ Manfred Koch : The Praeceptor Germaniae in the Funkhaus , NZZ , February 1, 2014, p. 30
  9. ↑ faz.net Does the literary priest keep the last word? In: FAZ. August 19, 2008.
  10. ↑ Registration protocol of the US Army (PDF; 11.6 MB)
  11. ^ Felix Römer: Comrades. Inside the Wehrmacht Piper Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-492-05540-6 , p. 38.
  12. ↑ Cf. Dieter Lamping: Introduction to the 10-volume edition 2004 and Volker Wehdeking (Hrsg.): Alfred Andersch - Perspektiven zu Leben und Werk. Opladen 1994; Willi Winkler: The shabby trickery of the great moralist. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. October 18, 2010, p. 12.
  13. ^ Felix Römer: Alfred Andersch bugged. "Anti-Nazis" prisoners of war in the American interrogation camp Fort Hunt . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . 58 (2010), 4, p. 538 ff., Degruyter.com
  14. ↑ Klaus Wagenbach u. a. (Ed.): Fatherland, mother tongue. German writers and their state from 1945 to the present day. A reading book. Berlin 1979, pp. 297-299.
  15. ↑ a b Portrait on Büchergilde.de ( Memento from March 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ^ Annual paper: About the writer Alfred Andersch.
  17. ↑ Peter Kalmbach: Wehrmachtjustiz , Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-053-0 , introduction p. 13 (to his dissertation)
  18. ↑ Alexander Ritter: A scandalous production without a scandalous result. On the controversy surrounding Alfred Andersch in the nineties. In: Stefan Neuhaus , Johann Holzner (Hrsg.): Literature as a scandal. Cases - functions - consequences . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-20855-7 , pp. 469-479.
  19. ↑ Gunter E. Grimm : Alfred Andersch: The father of a murderer. In: Stories of the 20th Century. Interpretations Volume 2 . Reclam, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-15-009463-1 , p. 247.
  20. ^ Fritz J. Raddatz: Alfred Andersch was an advocate of freedom . In: Die Welt, February 4, 2014
  21. ↑ Manfred Koch: Uneasiness in post-war Germany: Alfred Andersch was born 100 years ago . In: NZZ , January 31, 2014.
  22. ↑ Tilman Krause: He was the man who always spoiled everything . In: Welt Online , February 4, 2014
  23. ↑ Ingar Solty: Combative Resignation. Alfred Andersch was born 100 years ago . In: Junge Welt , February 4, 2014, p. 10 f.
personal data
SURNAME Andersch, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Andersch, Alfred Hellmuth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1980
Place of death Berzona , Switzerland