Alfred Kittner

Alfred Kittner (born November 24, 1906 in Czernowitz , Austria-Hungary ; died August 14, 1991 in Düsseldorf ) was a German writer .

Life

Kittner fled from the Russian front from Chernivtsi to Vienna at the beginning of the First World War in 1914 and returned in 1918. His homeland became part of the Kingdom of Romania in 1918 and he served in the Romanian army for two years . He went to Breslau to study German , but broke it off in 1931 and returned to Chernivtsi. From 1932 to 1935 he worked as an editor for the newspaper Der Tag . In 1940 Bukovina was ceded to the Soviet Union, and in 1941 it was conquered by Romanian and German troops. He was ghettoized and deported to the Romanian occupied area of Transnistria in 1942. His forced labor in a quarry and stay in camps ended in 1944 with the liberation by the Red Army , after which he was able to return to Chernivtsi, which has now become Soviet again. In 1945 he moved to Bucharest .

In 1958 Kittner was recruited as an employee of the Romanian secret service Securitate , for whom he gave details about the writers Alfred Margul-Sperber (1898-1967) and Oscar Walter Cisek (1897-1966), later also about Paul Schuster , Dieter Schlesak and Petre Stoica (1931 –2009) should find out. At that time, Kittner signed a declaration of commitment and was given the code name Ludwig Leopold (later also Lalu , Karol or Andrei Karol ).

In the years that followed, Kittner tried in vain to break away from the Securitate's dependency. In 1977 she temporarily waived his collaboration, but without informing him. In the same year he was reactivated as an employee by the Colonel of the Securitate Gheorghe Preoteasa . In 1979, Kittner threatened to kill himself in a letter if the secret service did not let go of him. In an internal report of the Securitate of January 31, 1979 it was stated that they had waived their cooperation.

After the death of his wife in 1980, Kittner moved to the Federal Republic of Germany. He settled in Düsseldorf and died there too.

Publications

• Schattenschrift - Gedichte 1925–1987 , 1988. ISBN 3-89086-966-1
• Memoirs 1906–1991 , 1996. ISBN 3-89086-873-8
• Der Wolkenreiter - Poems 1925–1945 , (1938) 2004. ISBN 3-89086-699-9
• Hunger march and barbed wire. Verses of Defiance and Confidence , ESPLA, Bucharest 1956
• Truth Game - Poems 1945–1991 , 2005. ISBN 3-89086-819-3
• Helmut Braun (Ed.): "My dear Roisele!" Itzig Manger - Elieser Steinbarg . Yiddish poet of Bukovina. Illustrations Arthur Kolnik . Publication series of the Rose Ausländer-Gesellschaft, Volume 6, Üxheim, 1996. ISBN 978-3-86575-255-0

Letters

• Letters with rose foreigner . 2006. ISBN 3-89086-581-X .

literature

• Helga Abret: Encounters with Alfred Kittner. In: Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter , volume 1/1987, pp. 18–26.
• Walter Engel : “Only dwell in the word.” The Bukovinian poet Alfred Kittner 1906–1991 : in: Zwischenwelt. Journal of the Culture of Exile and Resistance. 17th year, # 3; Theodor Kramer Society Vienna, November 2000; Pp. 40-44 ISSN  1606-4321
• Claus Stephani : "Green Mother Bukowina". German-Jewish writers from Bukovina. Documentation in manuscripts, books and pictures. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name from April 22nd to June 25th, 2010. House of the German East: Munich, 2010. 48 pp., 9 illustrations. ISBN 978-3-927977-27-3
• Claus Stephani : "Take my song". To the documentary show of German-Jewish poets from Bukovina. In: David. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift (Vienna), 23/88, Apr. 2011, pp. 28–31.
• Horst Fassel : Stephani, Claus, "Green Mother Bukowina (...)". In: Estudios Filológicos Alemanes. Revista del Grupo de Investigación Filología Alemana. Vol. 21, Seville, 2010, p. 390-391.
• Claus Stephani : Coffee hour with Alfred Kittner. After meeting Immanuel Weißglas . In: A. Corbea-Hoișie, G. Marcu, J. Jordan (eds.): Immanuel Weißglas (1920–1979). Studies of life and work. Editura Universităţii "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" Iaşi, Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz: 2010, pp. 179–182. ISBN 978-3-86628-326-8
• Edith Silbermann: Kittner, Alfred. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , pp. 279-281.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred Kittner in the catalog of the German National Library
• "Leopold Ludwig", hjs-online from December 16, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ernest Wichner : Poetry and betrayal. The same is not the same. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 7, 2011
2. ^ William Totok : Drama scriitorului Alfred Kittner. In: Deutsche Welle , December 16, 2010, in Romanian
3. ↑ exhibition catalog. The title comes from a letter from Kolnik to foreigners. Other authors are Kittner, Rose Ausländer , Alfred Margul-Sperber , Edith Silbermann, Helios Hecht and others. Other ISBNs: ISBN 3-932670-05-1 ISBN 3-931826-07-4

Remarks

1. ↑ At the end of 2010, while studying his files at the National Council for the Study of the Archives of the Securitate , the writer Dieter Schlesak discovered several reports signed by Kittner and Oskar Pastior . (Source: Dieter Schlesak : The School of Schizophrenia. , In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 16, 2010, p. 33)