Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski

Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski

Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski , Polish Brygida Helbig , (born November 12, 1963 in Stettin ) is a German-Polish writer , literary scholar and translator .

Educational path

Brygida Helbig began studying Polish at the University of Szczecin in 1982 . At the beginning of November 1983 she left the People's Republic of Poland and settled in the Ruhr area. In 1984 she attended the language school for ethnic repatriates of the Otto Benecke Foundation in Anrath near Krefeld. In 1985 she completed the German Abitur at the Eichendorffkolleg in Geilenkirchen and continued her studies at the Ruhr University Bochum , where she studied Slavic and German.

She completed her master's degree in 1990. From 1991 to 1994 she was a fellow of the Cusanuswerk . Together with Michael Fleischer and Magdalena Telus, she founded the poet club "Dichter-Fressen" in Bochum and wrote her first novel Pałówa in this context, alluding to the novel Połuba by Karol Irzykowski .

1994 doctorate it with the thesis about the Polish literary historian and critic Maria Janion and the literary world of Danzig in the 70s and 80s. In 2004 she completed her habilitation at the Humboldt University in Berlin (Slavic literature and culture) with a monograph on the almost forgotten Polish poet of the turn of the century Maria Komornicka, A Coat Made of Stardust. Sexual transgressions and madness in Maria Komornicka.  Brygida Helbig-Mischewski worked at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1994 to 2005.

Author

She made her debut in 1995 with excerpts from her poetic initiation novel about the growing up of a girl in socialist Poland in the 1970s in the magazine FA-art . The novel then appeared under the title Knüppelprügel (Pałówa) in 2000 in Gdansk . Her first volume of poetry, Jasmins Verse (Wiersze Jaśminy), was published in 1997 in Berlin in a menu series published by the “ Club of Polish Failures ”.

With the book  Ossis  and other people (Enerdowce i inne ludzie) in which, from the self-deprecating point of view of a private lecturer with a migration background, etc. a. writes about German-German sensitivities, she was nominated for the Nike Literature  Prize in 2012  and made it to the final round for the Gryfia Literature  Prize . The book of stories was published in 2015 by Freiraum Verlag in German, translated by Paulina Schulz .

The Polish short novel Anioły i świnie w Berlinie was staged by the director Janina Szarek and is presented as pancakes, pigs, halos , etc. a. performed at the Studio am Salzufer in Berlin. It is a migration grotesque and an ironic campus novel at the same time. It was published in 2016 by Freiraum-Verlag as angels and pigs in a translation by Lothar Quinkenstein . Together with Lothar Quinkenstein, she organizes events on the work of Bruno Schulz .

Her novel Himmelchen (Niebko) was nominated for the Nike Literature Prize in 2013 and reached the final in 2014. It is a partly autobiographical "root novel" about the search for German-Polish origins, traumatizing and energizing family heritage, embedded in the aftershocks of Central European history. The novel tells the story of a Galician German who stays in Poland after the Second World War and changes identity; he becomes a Pole. He comes to Stettin and marries Basia, who has also been expelled from her eastern Polish homeland. The title Niebko refers to the Polish children's game “ Himmelchen ”, in which small collages made of dried leaves and candy wrappers, covered with a piece of glass, buried in the earth as treasure and then searched again. In her novel, the author ties in with the story of her own ancestors. Those on his father's side were Galician Germans and lived in Steinfels , Bandrow and Makowa until 1939 ; Locations that today belong to the Subcarpathian region of south-east Poland ( Bieszczady ). The ancestors on the mother's side come from the vicinity of Nowogródek , from what is now Belarus.

The story Inna od Siebie is about the life and work of the poet and writer Maria Komornicka. It is a fictional story that interprets the fate of the poet, her family, her friends and accompanying artists. Maria Komornicka's biography is one of the most unusual artist biographies in Polish and European literature. The narrative is also an emotional search for clues that carefully approaches the artist's change of identity and illuminates the myths surrounding her. The book was nominated for the Warsaw City Literature Prize in 2017.

Brygida Helbig also writes for Der Freitag , Zeitonline and Tagesspiegel on political issues in the German-Polish context. She gives courses in creative writing and writing coaching. Since 2018 she has published radio features on the radio station COSMO .

scientist

At the end of 1994, Brygida Helbig started working as a research assistant at Professor Heinrich Olszowski, and later as an assistant at the chair for West Slavic literatures and Polish studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin . She then worked there from 2005 to 2015 as a private lecturer . From 2006 to 2007 she taught Polish studies as a visiting professor at the  Charles University in Prague . From 2008/09 to 2013 she was a visiting professor at the University of Szczecin in the departments of cultural studies and journalism. Since 2013 she has been a professor at the German-Polish Research Institute of the Collegium Polonicum in Słubice , which is part of the University of Poznan and the University of Viadrina . Your place of residence remains Berlin.

As a scientist, Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski (also under the name Brygida Helbig-Mischewski or Miszewski) has published several scientific and journalistic texts in the fields of literature, theater, film, culture, intercultural communication and politics in German and Polish. These include works about the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska , Maria Janion , Olga Tokarczuk , the German translator and poet Henryk Bereska , Inga Iwasiów , Bożena Keff, Eugen Ruge , Marion Brasch , Hans-Joachim Maaz , the writers Bruno Schulz and Bolesław Leśmian or Maria Komornicka, the members of the “Club of Polish Failures” and the Polish writers in Germany, but also films such as B. Brokeback Mountain . Her literary and cultural studies research areas are diverse, the central topics in her work are: German-Polish culture and knowledge transfer, feminism and gender, men's studies, migration literature, comparative literature, identity and Jewish heritage in Polish literature. Most recently (2017) she was the editor of the German-Polish anthology Migrantenliteratur im Wandel , published by Leipziger Universitätsverlag , which is dedicated to the narrations of the younger generation - not only - of Polish authors in Europe.

She writes scientific articles a. a. for drugie Teksty , Pogranicza , Rocznik Komparatystyczny , Studia Poznańskie , Journal of Slavic Studies and Journal of Slavic Philology . She is a member of the editorial board of the literary magazine Autobiografia .

Brygida Helbig – Mischewski is co-founder of the Berlin project “University of the Three Generations” (UTP). The project brings the Polish language into public space through scientific guest lectures and is aimed at interested people across generations.

With her work she makes important contributions to German-Polish understanding and basic research as well as cultural cooperation between science and art such as u. a. with the “Club of Polish Failures”, the Funkhaus Europa or the Buchbund Berlin. In addition, the Humboldt University has awarded her twice the Faculty Prize of the Philosophical Faculty for excellent teaching.

Her former students include: Lisa Palmes , Antje Ritter-Jasinska, Magdalena Parys , Natalie Buschhorn, Joanna Lipniewicz.

Fonts (selection)

• New Age discourse in Polish literary studies, literary criticism and poetry of the 1970s and 1980s. Reconstruction of a world view . ( Doctoral thesis Bochum 1994), Verlag Otto Sagner, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-87690-611-9 .
• Jasmine's Verses (Wiersze Jaśminy). Mordellus Press, Berlin 1997.
• Cudgel (Pałówa). Wydawnictwo B 1, Gdańsk 2000, ISBN 83-910-8830-8 .
• Monograph: A coat of stardust. Sexual transgressions and madness in Maria Komornicka . (PhD dissertation Humboldt University Berlin 2004), Book-on-Demand , Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2969-0 .
  • Polish translation: Strącona bogini. Rzecz o Marii Komornickiej . Universitas, Kraków 2010, ISBN 978-83-242-0823-4 .
• Anioły i świnie. W Berlinie! Wydawnictwo Forma, Szczecin 2005.
  • German translation by Lothar Quinkenstein : Angels and pigs . Freiraum-Verlag, Greifswald 2016, ISBN 978-3-943672-91-6 .
• as editor (with Gabriela Matuszek ): Ferryman unlimited. Germans and Poles in Europe today. On the thought of Henryk Bereska . Georg Olms Verlag , Hildesheim 2008, ISBN 978-3-487-13639-4 .
• Help. Poems . Wydawnictwo Forma, Szczecin 2010, ISBN 978-83-60881-52-1 .
• Enerdowce i inne ludzie, czyli jak never zostałem bohaterem . Wydawnictwo Forma, Szczecin 2011, ISBN 978-83-60881-71-2 .
  • German translation by Paulina Schulz : Ossis and other people . freiraum-Verlag, Greifswald 2015, ISBN 978-3-943672-71-8 .
• Niebko . Wydawnictwo WAB, Warszawa 2013, ISBN 978-83-7747-959-9 .
  • German translation by Natalie Buschmann: Small sky . Klak Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-948156-07-7 .
• Inna od siebie . Wydawnictwo WAB, Warszawa 2016, ISBN 978-83-280-2137-2 .
• as editor (with Małgorzata Zduniak-Wiktorowicz): Migrantenliteratur im Wandel / Literatura migracyjna w procesie (= studies on German-Polish cultural transfer . Volume 6). Leipziger Universitätsverlag , Leipzig 2017, ISBN 978-3-96023-072-4 . (German Polish)

Publications

• “Pałuba” Karola Irzykowskiego. Konstrukcja i psychologiczna koncepcja powieści . Master's thesis , Ruhr University Bochum 1990.
• with Judith Arlt , Krzysztof Maria Załuski : New stories from the Pollakey . In: Anthology of Contemporary Polish Prose . B1 Verlag, Jestetten 2000, ISBN 3-00-006717-5 .
• Dear Rainer . In: Piastów 75 . Wydawnictwo Forma, Szczecin 2005, pp. 29-36.
• Socially realistic poetry by Wisława Szymborska . In: Alfrun Kliems , Ute Raßloff, Peter Zajac (eds.): Poetry of the 20th century in East-Central Europe . Volume 2: Socialist Realism . Frank & Timme, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86596-021-9 , pp. 191–203 ( PDF; 142 kB ).
• The words cause fornication in heaven. Bolesław Leśmian and the conception of the subject in late modern times . In: Alfrun Kliems, Ute Raßloff, Peter Zajac (eds.): Spätmoderne. 20th Century Poetry in Central and Eastern Europe 1 . Frank & Timme , Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-86596-020-7 , pp. 225-234.
• Kallemalle . In: Antologia współczesnych polskich opowiadań . Wydawnictwo Forma, Szczecin 2008.
• Polak, Turek, Niemiec. Szczecin-Angermünde-Berlin . In: Antologia współczesnych polskich opowiadań . Wydawnictwo Forma, Szczecin 2011.
• Little Princess (Mała księżniczka). In: Heinrich von der Haar (ed.): Dzieciństwo w Polsce, Dzieciństwo w Niemczech. Proza i Poezja = childhood in Poland, childhood in Germany. Prose and poetry . ( Anthology ). Heidi Ramlow Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-939385-08-0 , pp. 148-156.

Play

• with Janina Szarek (director): pancakes, pigs, halos . 'Teatr Studio am Salzufer' in Berlin 2014 / Teatr Współczesny in Stettin 2014.

Honors

Awards and finalist positions

• 2011: Rector Prize of the University of Szczecin for the habilitation thesis Strącona bogini
• 2012: Finalist for the Gryfia Literature Prize with Enerdowce i inne ludzie
• 2014: Finalist for the Nike Literature Prize with Niebko
• 2016: Golden Owl (Złota Sowa Polonii) in Vienna for Niebko

Nominations

• 2012: Nomination for the Nike Literature Prize with Enerdowce i inne ludzie
• 2013: Nomination for Śląski Wawrzyn Literacki in Katowice with Niebko
• 2017: Nomination for the literary price of the capital Warsaw with Inna od siebie

literature

• Helbig-Mischewski, Brigitta in: Daniel Henseler, Renata Makarska (Hrsg.): Polish literature in motion. The wave of exiles of the 1980s . Transcript Verlag , Bielefeld 2013, ISBN 978-3-8376-2032-0 , p. 355.

Web links

• Literature by and about Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Prof. Dr. Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski at Collegium Polonicum
• Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski website
• Helbig, Brigitta in: Polish personal database
• Brigitta Helbig-Mischewski; List of publications (PDF; 100 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Brygida Helbig. COSMO , accessed May 28, 2020 (Polish). 
2. ↑ http://www.helbig-mischewski.de/prosa-palowa-pl.pdf
3. ↑ http://www.helbig-mischewski.eu/habil-1.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ http://www.helbig-mischewski.de/lyrik-hilfe-10-13.pdf
5. ↑ 11. Złote Sowy Polonii rozdane! Magazyn Kulturalno-Informacyjny Jupiter, 2016, accessed on May 21, 2019 (Polish). 
6. ↑ Śląski Wawrzyn Literacki 2013