Alfred Matusche

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Alfred Matusche (born October 8, 1909 in Leipzig , † July 31, 1973 in Karl-Marx-Stadt ) was a German playwright .

Life

Alfred Matusche was born on October 8, 1909 in Leipzig, the son of a worker; the father died in the First World War , the widow supported the family by working from home for a clothing factory. In 1923 Matusche began an apprenticeship as a locksmith; This was followed by unemployment and the beginning of a technical degree, which he broke off to devote himself entirely to his literary inclinations.

From 1925 to 1933 Matusche published poems and short prose texts in newspapers; he worked for the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , where Eugen Kurt Fischer , head of the literary department, promoted him. Matusche sought connection to left literary circles. For a long time he went on a journey and visited u. a. Hermann Hesse and Johannes Schlaf .

In 1933 the Gestapo searched his apartment and interrogated him. Almost all of his manuscripts were destroyed, in part by Matusche himself. Between 1933 and 1945 he lived in Portitz near Leipzig and later in Silesia. Although drafted briefly, he was able to evade a frontline deployment in World War II . Despite his anti-fascist attitude, no active resistance activity was proven.

In 1945 Matusche returned to Portitz and worked for the Leipziger Rundfunk. In 1951/1952 he wrote his first dramatic film, Which, von der Frauen? . In 1955 Die Dorfstraße was premiered at the Deutsches Theater Berlin after working with the chief dramaturge Heinar Kipphardt (directed by Hannes Fischer ). In 1958, Nacktes Gras was premiered at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin (directed by Hans Dieter Mäde ).

From 1959 Matusche worked as a dramaturge at the Maxim Gorki Theater. There he made friends with Armin Stolper . Between 1960 and 1966 Matusche lived in Kolberg , in Petershagen near Schöneiche and in other places in the Berlin area. For a short time he worked as a dramaturge at the Hans-Otto-Theater Potsdam.

Between 1958 and 1968 three television plays were made: The same series (1961), Der Regenwettermann (1965) and Der Ausreißer (1965) as well as the radio play Unrast (1961). Between 1960 and 1973 he wrote numerous plays, including The Song of My Way (1963/1965), The Night of the Linden trees (1965) and Cape of Unrest (1968). “ Promoted by Wolfgang Langhoff and Heinar Kipphardt , admired by Peter Hacks and Heiner Müller , the GDR theater ostracized him as an outsider all his life. His plays were traded as hot irons that were only touched with fire-proof director's gloves or, better still, not at all. "

In 1969 Matusche moved to Karl-Marx-Stadt ; there he met Peter Sodann . Matusche received the Lessing Prize in 1973 and shortly before his death, accompanied by two doctors, saw the world premiere of his Van Gogh at the municipal theaters of Karl-Marx-Stadt.

tomb

Alfred Matusche died on July 31, 1973. His grave is in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin. His estate is in the literary archive of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin .

Works

  • Which of the women? 1952/53 (WP Schwedt)
  • Dorfstrasse 1955 (WP DT Berlin)
  • Naked Grass 1958 (Premiere Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin)
  • The same route in 1960/61
  • The fiery city 1960
  • Unrast 1961 (radio play), directed by Wolfgang Schonendorf , Broadcasting Company of the GDR
  • The runaway 1963
  • The Rainy Weather Man 1963/65 (WP Potsdam)
  • The other 1965
  • The Night of the Linden trees 1965 (Premiere Potsdam)
  • The Song of My Way 1967 (WP Karl-Marx-Stadt)
  • Cape of Unrest 1968 (Premiere Potsdam)
  • New houses (forecast) 1971 (UA Potsdam)
  • On Both Banks 1971 (Premiere Potsdam)
  • Van Gogh 1973 (premiered in Karl-Marx-Stadt).

Effect and aftermath

Alfred Matusche was always an "insider tip". In 1969 his play Van Gogh was filmed in the Federal Republic of Germany by Thomas Fantl . Matusche had and still has a loyal community of some well-known theater professionals, authors and literary scholars who have referred to him for decades.

His dramas repeatedly found their way onto the stage, most recently Cape of Unrest with its premiere on September 26, 2008 at the Thalia Theater (Halle) , directed by Katka Schroth . They would be "worth it to be defended against the Ostalgie, which they could bring on stage in 2009, on the 100th birthday,".

Works

  • Dramas . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1971.
  • Which of the women? Henschelverlag, Berlin 1979.
  • Dramas [edition of works]. Published by Gottfried Fischborn . VAT Verlag Andre Thiele, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-940884-08-4 .

literature

Both Dramen (1971) and Dramen (2009) contain texts on Matusche.

  • Christoph Trilse : Alfred Matusche . In: Literature of the German Democratic Republic. Individual representations , vol. 2. Edited by a collective of authors under the direction of Hans Jürgen Geerdts . Verlag Volk und Wissen, Berlin / GDR 1979.
  • Jürgen Serke : At home in exile. Poets who stayed in the GDR on their own initiative . Piper 1998, Munich, ISBN 3-492-03981-2 , p. 69 ff.
  • Werner Liersch: Poet Land Brandenburg. Literary forays between the Havel and the Oder . Artemis and Winkler, Zurich and Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-538-07199-3 .
  • Peter Sodann: No half measures. Memories . Ullstein, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-550-08721-9 , p. 157 ff.
  • Gottfried Fischborn (Ed.): The song of his way. Festschrift for the poet Alfred Matusche . VAT Verlag Andre Thiele, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-940884-07-7 .
  • Short biography for:  Matusche, Alfred . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Gottfried Fischborn: The playwright Alfred Matusche . In: Ders .: Political culture and theatricality. Articles, essays, journalism . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-631-63251-2 .
  • Julia Lind: Alfred Matusche and Lothar Trolle. Cross-border commuters of the GDR theater . Transcript, Bielefeld 2018, ISBN 978-3-8376-4382-4 .

Quotes

By Alfred Matusche

  • “You know, as long as the houses are built taller than the trees grow, it will be nothing with humanity. And that won't work with this society either, because people have forgotten to pray. Communism is a beautiful thing. But if you have forgotten to pray, you shouldn't aim for communism. ”(1973 - according to Peter Sodann)
  • “Not just prosperity, not the wealth of whole worlds; / Often not goods; often from day to day / the own sum of life to the fullest, / rich yourself to riches. "(1971 - from" prognosis ")
  • “Create with the simplest language. The greatest simplicity of the action. Clarity against the contradictions. "(From the estate)

To Alfred Matusche

  • "With you, every line you write is true." ( Bertolt Brecht to Matusche)
  • "Stubborn, provocative and sensitive, devoid of any reason when it comes to common sense." ( Armin Stolper )
  • "A recognized, brittle folk poet."
  • “Alfred Matusche, poet and vagabond, would have been one hundred years old this year; he died in 1973, emaciated from an unsteady life, lifelong material worries and the feeling that he was not really wanted. […] Which, on the other hand, should not prevent any theater or self-respecting dramaturgy from carefully examining Alfred Matusche's dramatic oeuvre for the purpose of revitalizing it. Martin Linzer promises interesting discoveries . "
  • “Matusche was something like the Wittgenstein of the GDR; very peculiar, very private, but evidently guided by an unmistakable moral compass, which he pursues with the utmost rigor, so consistently that it must appear to the outside world again as antisocial, although at its core it is deeply thought and felt socially. "
  • "Alfred Matusche is perhaps the only playwright in our country who wrote as if Brecht had never lived."

Footnotes

  1. ^ A b Andreas Rossmann : Persecuted artists. The House of Forgotten Witnesses . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from April 16, 2008.
  2. ↑ https://archiv.adk.de/bigobjekt/46880
  3. ^ New Germany, May 10, 1995.
  4. ↑ Linzers Eck . In: Theater der Zeit , March 2009, p. 73.
  5. ↑ Felix Bartels , in: Junge Welt, October 8, 2009.
  6. ↑ Gottfried Fischborn, in: The song of his path , Mainz 2009.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Matusche, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fetz, Willi (civil)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German playwright
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1973
Place of death Karl Marx City