Bodo Uhse

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Bodo Uhse at the German Writers' Congress 1950

Bodo Uhse (born March 12, 1904 in Rastatt ; † July 2, 1963 in Berlin ) was a German writer , journalist and political activist ( NSDAP , KPD , SED ).

Life

Childhood, youth and family

Uhse was the son of a Prussian officer . He spent his childhood in various places as his father was constantly transferred to work. After his parents separated, he lived with his grandparents in Braunschweig , where he joined the Wandervogel movement.

His professional goal was initially to be an officer like his father. Such hopes were dashed by the collapse of the German Empire in 1918 , and he moved to live with his father in Berlin, where he attended a secondary school. There he made contacts with paramilitary groups and in 1920, at the age of 16, participated in the Kapp Putsch as a reporter .

His brother Hans-Jürgen was married to the aviator and later erotic entrepreneur Beate Uhse . He died in an air accident in May 1944.

Commitment to the extreme right and left positions

In 1921 he became a volunteer in the editorial office of the Bamberger Tagblatt , which was owned by the tobacco industrialist Richard von Michel-Raulinos . In the same year he joined the “ Bund Oberland ”, where he met many personalities from the German national and ethnic scene , such as Julius Streicher . The marches of the federal Oberland led to several clashes with communists and social democrats and, because of the attitude to the question of the French occupation of the Ruhr, also with National Socialists , in which Uhse was also involved. It was only later that the Bund Oberland and the NSDAP allied .

In 1927 he joined the NSDAP, where he joined the left wing, and worked in the editorial office of the National Socialist Danube messenger in Ingolstadt . He was a protégé of the Otto and Gregor Strasser brothers , rose quickly and became editor-in-chief of the newspaper. However, when he protested in 1928 against the Nazi candidacy of Franz Ritter von Epp , who in his opinion was a reactionary man, he was dismissed. Through Gregor Strasser's mediation, he came to Schleswig-Holstein , where he became local group leader in Itzehoe . From 1929 on, he was also editor-in-chief of the newly founded National Socialist Schleswig-Holstein daily newspaper . He came into conflict with the Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse when he rejected a contribution that was directed against the militant rural people movement . Uhse steered a left course more and more openly in the paper. In 1929 he was elected to the city council of Itzehoe as a NSDAP mandate and befriended the communist Bruno von Salomon at the same time . The consequence of this was a study of Lenin's writings and, in 1930, the publication of the supplementary sheet The Proletarian , which was directed against what Uhse believed was the bourgeois course of Adolf Hitler . When he and other party links also spoke out in favor of a split from the NSDAP, there was a final break and on August 1, 1930, he was officially expelled from the NSDAP.

Turn to communism

Bodo Uhse (left) and Theo Harych , 1954

Uhse joined the splinter group of the Revolutionary National Socialists , became editor-in-chief of Nazi letters and celebrated the armed struggle of the rural people's movement. However, this was only a stopover before finally turning to the KPD , which in 1930 also represented a stronger nationalist position in its party program . From 1931 onwards, the party leadership established Uhse as a symbol of the intensified communist agitation among the rural population, analogous to the former National Socialist Lieutenant Richard Scheringer , who was supposed to promote the KPD among Reichswehr soldiers.

After the Reichstag fire in 1933, Uhse, like other communists, came under pressure from the Nazi state that was being established and moved to Paris . Here he became a prominent representative of the KPD's journalism in exile against the Third Reich and maintained connections with Ernst Niekisch . On November 3, 1934, he was expatriated from Germany and in 1935 joined the KPD in exile. In June of the same year he took part in the First International Writers' Congress alongside Johannes R. Becher and Bertolt Brecht . When the Spanish Civil War broke out , he volunteered and became political commissar . In 1938 he returned to France ill, emigrated to the USA in 1939 , where he continued to work for the KPD, and in 1940 to Mexico , where he was active in the Free Germany movement with Ludwig Renn . He also organized exit visas to Mexico for endangered writers who had been waiting in France for an opportunity to leave the country since the Wehrmacht marched in in May 1940. In 1945 Uhse married Alma Agee, an American of Jewish descent.

New beginning in the Soviet Zone and the GDR

1948 came Uhse with his wife, their son from his first marriage, Joel Agee , and their son Stefan (1946 to 1973) back to Germany and settled in the Soviet occupation zone , where he in 1949 editor of the Aufbau-Verlag appearing periodical structure . Cultural-political monthly. With literary contributions he was leading until it was discontinued in 1958.

From 1950 to 1954 Uhse was a member of the SED in the People's Chamber , from 1950 to 1952 first chairman of the German Writers' Association in the Cultural Association for the Democratic Renewal of Germany . In 1956 he took on the role of secretary of the poetry and language maintenance section of the Academy of Arts and was a representative of the GDR at the PEN congress in London . As with the XX. At the CPSU party congress, the crimes of Stalin became known, this led to a deep crisis at Uhse, especially since he wanted to praise the anti-fascist resistance in Germany and the leading role of the Soviet Union in a trilogy of novels. His stepson Joel Agee wrote after his death that while he was drunk he talked about botched his life, wasted his talent and sold his soul to the "bastard Stalin". In 1960 his marriage failed, after which Alma Agee moved to New York with both sons .

After a stay in Cuba in 1961, Uhse, who was a chain smoker and alcoholic , fell seriously ill. He had to stop many of his activities, and his office as editor-in-chief of Sinn und Form (1963) was short-lived. Uhse died of a stroke . He was buried in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery .

In 1986 a street in Berlin-Hellersdorf was named after him.

Grave of Bodo Uhse and his son Thomas in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery

Works (selection)

  • Mercenary and soldier. Roman , Éditions du Carrefour, Paris 1935 (reprinted several times, most recently: Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 978-3-7466-0140-3 ).
  • Lieutenant Bertram . Roman , 1944
  • We sons. Roman , 1948
  • Saint Kunigunde in the snow and other stories , 1949
  • The bridge. 3 stories , 1952
  • The patriots. Roman , 1954
  • Diary from China , 1956
  • Mexican Stories , 1957
  • The task. A Kollwitz story , 1958
  • Forms and Problems , 1959
  • Journey in a blue swan. Stories , 1959
  • Sunday daydream in the Alameda , 1961
  • To the rhythm of the conga. A Cuban Summer , 1962

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Bodo Uhse  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carl Freytag: Remembering and telling: the Spanish Civil War in German and Spanish literature and in the visual media . Gunter Narr Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3-8233-6168-8 , p. 360, note 33 ( google.de [accessed on July 28, 2019]).
  2. ^ Gerhard Schulz: Rise of the NSDAP. Crisis and Revolution in Germany. Propylaea, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1975, p. 706.
  3. ↑ Christian Striefler: Struggle for power. Communists and National Socialists at the end of the Weimar Republic , Propylaen, Berlin 1993, p. 135.
  4. ↑ Bodo-Uhse-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Uhse, Bodo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer (SED), MdV
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Rastatt
DATE OF DEATH 2nd July 1963
Place of death Berlin