Andrzej Szczypiorski

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Listen to Andrzej Szczypiorski [ 'andʒɛɪ̯ ʃʧɨ'pʲɔrski ] ? / i (born February 3, 1928 in Warsaw ; † May 16, 2000 ibid) was a Polish writer who achieved importance not only through his literary, but also through his political commitment. Audio file / audio sample

Life

Szczypiorski's grave in Warsaw

Szczypiorski's work can be explained by the way he lived: Growing up in a family characterized by the educated middle class, he experienced at the age of 15 how Germans occupied Poland . During this time he studied at the underground university that his father Adam, a socialist historian and mathematician, helped organize. In 1944 Andrzej Szczypiorski took part in the Warsaw Uprising , was captured and interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp .

After the war he first worked as a journalist, in 1955 he began his literary work. He wrote some detective novels under the pseudonym Maurice S. Andrews . From 1977 he published increasingly in opposition newspapers and was active in the opposition committee for the defense of the workers , which led to his temporary internment after martial law was declared in December 1981 .

After the political change in Poland in 1989, he held the post of senator in the second chamber of the Polish parliament as a representative of the Unia Demokratyczna until 1991 . In 1989 he was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize and in 1995 the Andreas Gryphius Prize . Until his death in 2000, he kept talking about the political and moral development of the Third Polish Republic .

The latest research by the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), which deals with the processing of the history of communist rule in Poland, has shown that Szczypiorski worked together with the Polish State Security Service Służba Bezpieczeństwa from 1955 . The details of this collaboration were presented in the 2007 film by Grzegorz Braun Errata do biografii ( Correction to biography ).

plant

Andrzej Szczypiorski processed his experiences during the world war, which were associated with many ailments, in his works, with a special focus on his hometown Warsaw . Pre-war Warsaw appears as the beautiful past, also shaped by Judaism , which was then destroyed by the German occupying forces. Since God did not intervene during this time, he concluded that God was fundamentally absent from history. Szczypiorski campaigned for German-Polish reconciliation early on, as he - deeply connected to German literature - not only condemned the Germans, whom he had experienced as oppressors and murderers. In 1990 he was awarded the Art and Culture Prize of the German Catholics , in 1995 he received the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany for his efforts to reconcile Germans and Poles . In 1998 he was a lecturer at the Tübingen Poetics Lecturer .

Andrzej Szczypiorski's best-known work is the 1986 novel Początek (German: The Beginning ), which was published in Germany under the title Die Schöne Frau Seidenman . Here Szczypiorski describes the different fates - of victims and perpetrators - in Warsaw from 1941–43 in small, independent episodes. In doing so, he in no way acts moralizing or guilty, nor does he fail to build bridges to the present and to question the behavior of the protagonists in the future, in socialist Poland. The Jewish heroine, who survived the war, became a victim of the anti-Semitic policies of Polish communists in 1968 .

A Mass for the City of Arras is the title of his 1971 novel about the events that took place in Arras between around 1458 and 1461. Both because of the citizens despairing of the plague and the following religious fanaticism, all moral standards are temporarily lost and lead to pogroms against the Jews, cannibalism, witch trials, murder and manslaughter, arbitrary legal acts and private settlements. The prince-bishop's city ​​lord finally restores order with very mild punishments for the plebeian councilors, who are not only perpetrators but also victims of a Christian fundamentalist .

effect

Since 2000, the Polska Fundacja Dzieci i Młodzieży, of which he was President, has been awarding the Andrzej Szczypiorski Prize ( Polish nagroda im. Andrzeja Szczypiorskiego ) in memory of him . It is given to people who have had the greatest positive impact on their social environment . The first prize in 2000 went to Marzena Łotys , the president of Stowarzyszenie "Edukacja Inaczej" .

In October 2006, the Szczypiorski House was opened in the immediate vicinity of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, an international youth meeting place with the main goal of meeting and understanding with Poland. The Szczypiorski house is located in the former service villa of SS officer Theodor Eicke , who held various leading positions in concentration camps .

bibliography

The German-language editions were all published by Diogenes Verlag , Zurich. Below are the current ISBN cited.

Published elsewhere:

Articles (published in):

  • Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs (Ed.): The story is not over! Talks about the future of man and Europe. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 1999, ISBN 978-3-85165-387-8 .
  • About virtue and values. Contributions by Andrzej Szczypiorski, Bozena Choluj and Heinrich Olschowsky. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 978-3-631-39541-7 .

literature

  • Horst Fuhrmann : Laudation to Andrzej Szczypiorski. In: Orden Pour le Mérite for Science and the Arts. Speeches and memorial speeches. Volume 26, 1996, pp. 69-71.
  • Marta Kijowska : The last righteous one. Andrzej Szczypiorski. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2003.
    • Paperback edition with the title: Andrzej Szczypiorski. A biography (= Diogenes-Taschenbuch. No. 23563). Diogenes, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-257-23563-1 .

Web links

Commons : Andrzej Szczypiorski  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. (dpa / lh): For a tolerant togetherness. (No longer available online.) In: Lausitzer Rundschau . October 20, 2006, archived from the original on December 5, 2013 ; accessed on May 30, 2018 .