Bernhard Ohsam

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Bernhard Ohsam (born June 5, 1926 in Braller in Transylvania , Romania ; † November 6, 2001 in Bremen ) was a Romanian-German journalist , writer and radio editor . He belonged to the German-speaking minority of the Transylvanian Saxons in today's Romania, was deported by the Soviets to a Soviet-Ukrainian forced labor camp during the Second World War and from there fled to the West in Germany in several stages . He later processed his origins and his experiences from his deportation and flight in a journalistic and literary way; he was also known through numerous travel stories .

Life

Childhood, youth and deportation

The Samuel Brukenthal High School in Sibiu

Bernhard Ohsam spent his childhood and youth in Transylvania. His grandfather was the dialect poet and author Friedrich Rosler (1855-1943), who lived mainly in Agnetheln (Romanian Agnita ) in Transylvania and worked there as a preacher teacher and temporarily as editor of the Agnethler Wochenblatt . Ohsam grew up in his birthplace Braller (Romanian Bruiu ) in Transylvania and later attended the Samuel Brukenthal Grammar School (picture) in the district town of Hermannstadt (Romanian Sibiu ), which served the German-speaking education of the German minority. When the Red Army reached his home region towards the end of World War II , he was about to take his Abitur exam.

Ohsam was taken prisoner at the beginning of 1945 when a column of the German Wehrmacht was captured by the Romanian Army  - which now fought on the side of the Soviet Union after the royal coup in Romania . A first attempt to escape failed. Family members were taken hostage and Ohsam was deported by the Red Army to Ukraine , where he had to do forced labor, which was declared “reconstruction work” .

View of the Petrowka labor camp near Stalino (now Donetsk) in Ukraine
Fritz Göckler , 1945/46
Pencil sketch (made by the builder and architect Fritz Göckler from Mediasch / Transylvania during his deportation to the Petrowka camp)

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

The transport took place in freight wagons , after a two-week journey the transport train reached the Petrowka labor camp near Stalino (now Donetsk ) in February 1945 , in the “ Donets Basin ” coal mine north of the Sea of ​​Azov . The inmates of the extremely primitive barracks camp were "Germans from Romania - Transylvanian Saxons and Banat Swabians  - who were abducted as workers for the reconstruction of Russia as part of the armistice negotiations between the Soviet Union and Romania ".

→  See also the section #Background of the carryover

With outside temperatures of up to minus 30 degrees in the winter months at that time, Ohsam had to do heavy forced labor in the Ukrainian coal mines. It was mainly used for carpentry work.

Escape from the forced labor camp to the West

After half a year, Ohsam and four classmates managed to break out of the forced labor camp. According to his later reports, an "adventurous escape" led the small group through the Caucasus and across the Black Sea back to their home in Romania.

Ohsam passed his Abitur there in 1946 and then continued his escape “ to the West ”. Undocumented, with little ready money he got through Hungary to Austria , where he crossed all borders on foot. He began to study engineering in Vienna and took his exams in 1951 in the Federal Republic of Germany . This is where “his escape from Soviet captivity to the West” ended, during which he “covered the path from the Volga to the Rhine ” in stages in “one and a half years” in an “adventurous journey and hike ” and “crossed seven borders without valid papers”. would have.

Further life and work in Germany

From 1951 Ohsam lived in (West) Germany. Due to his German ethnicity, he received German citizenship and initially worked for some time in industry as an engineer. In 1954 he began his journalistic and writing activities. From 1955 he published stories and other articles in various newspapers and magazines, such as u. a. in the Transylvania newspaper published in Munich . He was also a member of the Marburg Circle , founded in 1957 at a conference of the German Youth of the East (DJO) , which published the literary works of its members in limited and signed individual series of the so-called Marburg printed sheets .

In 1958 he made his debut with his novel A Handful of Machorka and has since worked full-time as a writer and journalist. Ohsam, who was living in Stuttgart at the time , worked for Südfunk Stuttgart . He undertook many private long-distance trips to countries around the world and processed his experiences in numerous travel stories . For the Südfunk he traveled a. a. In 1973, this time with valid papers, to Romania to prepare radio broadcasts. In 1974 he moved to the Rumania department of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne as a radio editor and relocated to his new place of work.

Ohsam later moved to Bremen , where he lived in the Borgfeld district. From 1984 he lived there with the German sculptor Alice Peters (* 1929), whom he later married. Together with his wife he continued on trips that led to Australia, North America, North Africa and the Middle East.

Bernhard Ohsam died in 2001 at the age of 75 in his adopted home Bremen.

Background of the procrastination

Before the end of the Second World War, around 360,000 Germans and people of German origin from Central and Eastern Europe who were able to work were deported to the Soviet Union for "reconstruction work" by the Red Army as it marched and from December 1944 by the Soviet secret service NKVD . In addition to Yugoslavia (around 73,000) and Hungary (around 50,000), Romania had around 70,000 deportees, a large contingent made up of around 30,000 to 35,000 Banat Swabians, around 30,300 Transylvanian Saxons, around 5,300 Sathmar Swabians and Northwestern Transylvanians  and around 5,000 Germans from the Altreich composed. The majority of them were deported to labor camps in the Donets Basin ( Donbass in Russian ), where they had to do forced labor in mining, heavy industry and on construction sites.

Due to the inhumane living and working conditions, around 15 percent of the deportees died until the decision to return them was made in 1949. The last Transylvanian did not return home until 1956.

Literary work

Ohsam dealt with his deportation and his “adventurous escape” from the Soviet labor camp in his novel A Handful of Machorka , which was published in 1958 by Adam Kraft Verlag in Augsburg . His first literary work had some success and was published for the fifth time in 1995 by Kösler Verlag in Cologne under the title Hunger und Sichel . After his debut novel, he mainly wrote travel stories. Almost all of the stories in his travel books appeared as preprints in the flying sheets of the German airline Condor's on-board magazine . Ohsam's humorous travel prose accompanied the holidaymakers to the hotels, where his stories were displayed as so-called travel candies. Ohsam wrote a total of around 200 to 300  short stories .

Awards and honors

Publications

  • A handful of machorka. Roman from Russia. Kraft, Augsburg 1958, DNB 453641792 ; 3rd edition under the same title: Meschendörfer, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-87538-000-2 ; 4th edition under the same title: Westkreuz, Berlin a. a. 1988, ISBN 3-922131-35-2 ;
    • 5th, edited and expanded edition under the title: Hunger & Sichel. The story of an escape. Kösler, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-924208-19-0 .
  • European transit. Adventurous journey across hot borders from the Volga to the Rhine. With illustrations by Franz Hauber. Heimatwerk, Munich 1964, DNB 453641784 ( youth stories ).
  • A strange journey and other stories. Heimatwerk, Munich 1964, DNB 453641806 .
  • Bridging a stone. Narrative (=  Marburg sheet printing , volume 19). Marburger Kreis, Freising 1970, DNB 720247691 .
  • Friends, let us praise cheerfully. 20 years of the South Moravian singing and playing band. Sealsfield, Stuttgart 1970, DNB 740444824 (media combination with record ).
  • Prague puppet shows. Stories (=  Marburg sheet printing , volume 34). Marburger Kreis, Freising 1974, DNB 750851554 .
  • Miriam and the purple suitcase. 15 cheerful travel sketches (=  humor in your pocket , volume 4). With drawings by Winnie Jakob . Wort-und-Welt, Innsbruck 1974, ISBN 3-85373-009-4 .
  • Mioritza doesn't want to eat (=  Marburg sheet printing , episode 62). Marburger Kreis, Freising 1980, DNB 880692952 .
  • The mouse in the beer glass. Tourist stories around the world. With 20 drawings by Wilfried Gebhard . Kösler, Cologne 1983, ISBN 3-924208-00-X ; New edition under the same title: Ibid., Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-924208-12-3 .
  • Divorce in Maghreb. Stories (=  Marburg sheet printing , volume 79). Marburger Kreis, Freising 1984, DNB 861129202 .
  • Paris with ladies and crooks. Cheerful travel stories from 5 continents. With illustrations by Steffen Köpf. Kösler, Cologne 1985, ISBN 3-924208-08-5 .
  • Prevented snack. Narrative (=  Marburg sheet printing , volume 96). Marburger Kreis, Freising 1989, DNB 947639543 .
  • Wolves and music. Serious, cheerful and adventurous stories between powers and ideologies. Westkreuz, Bad Münstereifel 1991, ISBN 3-922131-07-7 .
  • Doswidaniya Stalin. Odyssey of a search for freedom. Westkreuz, Bad Münstereifel 1991, ISBN 3-922131-14-X ( autobiography 1945–1947).
  • The Samburu lion. Narrative (=  Marburg sheet printing , volume 111). Marburger Kreis, Würzburg 1992, DNB 1020321571 .

Web links

Individual evidence

Note: Individual references given at the end of paragraphs refer to the entire paragraph before.

  1. ↑ Bernddieter Schobel: Friedrich Rosler: The uerem Tatar . In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung of March 16, 2006, ISSN  0488-7883 (online at www.siebenbuerger.de); accessed on February 11, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f (skw): Baroness was a “make-up aunt ”. Bernhard Ohsam wrote travel stories for Condorflotte. In: Wümme-Zeitung of January 21, 1999, p. 5. *
  3. ↑ a b c d e Franz Heinz : Obituary for Bernhard Ohsam . In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung of November 23, 2001, ISSN  0488-7883 (online at www.siebenbuerger.de); accessed on February 11, 2015.
  4. ↑ Fritz Göckler (junior): Deportation to the Soviet Union - draftsman identified . In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung of March 22, 2009, ISSN  0488-7883 (online at www.siebenbuerger.de); accessed on February 12, 2015.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f H. G .: A handful of Machorka was of great value. Bernhard Ohsam recalls the fate of abducted Transylvanian Saxons and Banat Swabians . In: The Ostpreußenblatt of June 7, 1986, p. 11; online at archiv.preussische-allgemeine.de; PDF, 15,902 kB; accessed on February 11, 2015.
  6. ↑ See report on the youth book Europatransit by Bernhard Ohsam, in the Siebenbürgische Zeitung of October 31, 1966, ISSN  0488-7883 , p. 8.
  7. ↑ a b c Cf. information on Ohsam Bernhard (1926–2001) in: Klaus Popa : Völkisches Handbuch Südosteuropa. Online encyclopedia of ethnic German Southeast Europe. Letter O, p. 8 (as of June 25, 2013); online as PDF, 210 kB; accessed on February 11, 2015.
  8. ↑ Silja Weisser: Sculpture is your dream job. Alice Peters-Ohsam has prevailed in an artistic male domain. In: Weser-Kurier / District Courier Northeast of August 9, 2012, p. 3. *
  9. ↑ a b Dagmar Seck: Deportation of the Romanian Germans in the mirror of beautiful literature . In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung of February 3, 2014, ISSN  0488-7883 (online at www.siebenbuerger.de); accessed on February 11, 2015.
  * Note: The corresponding newspaper article is available online via the digital newspaper archive of Bremer Tageszeitungen AG (subject to a charge).
personal data
SURNAME Oh, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian-German journalist, writer and radio editor
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Braller in Transylvania, Romania
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 2001
Place of death Bremen