Bruno Apitz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bruno Apitz (right) and Frank Beyer (left) during the shooting of the DEFA film Nackt unter Wölfen on August 16, 1962. In the middle the actor Herbert Köfer .

Bruno Apitz (born April 28, 1900 in Leipzig , † April 7, 1979 in Berlin ) was a German writer .

Life

Bruno Apitz was born the twelfth child of a laundress and an oilcloth printer at 15 Elisabethstrasse in Leipzig. Apitz attended elementary school until he was 14 , after which he trained as a stamp printer. During the First World War , as an opponent of the war, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Karl Liebknecht .

When he was 17 years old, he gave a speech to striking workers at an ammunition factory for which he served a 19-month prison term. After his early dismissal in 1918, he took part in a Leipzig working class in the November Revolution and began training as a bookseller. In 1919 he became a member of the SPD . Because of the participation in the booksellers strike, he lost his apprenticeship.

At the time of the Kapp Putsch , which he was actively involved in suppressing, he published his first poems and short stories in satirical weekly magazines and in KPD newspapers. During this time he worked, among other things, in a bookstore and in a scientific antiquarian bookshop . Eventually he became an actor . In 1924 he wrote his first play Der Mensch im Nacken . In the last phase of the Weimar Republic and the time of National Socialism , the novel Fleck and Barb, the Unshaven and several plays were created. None of these works have been published or performed. Today they are no longer preserved.

In 1927 Apitz joined the KPD and the Red Aid in Leipzig. From 1930 to 1933 he was a member of the League of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers and was its chairman in Leipzig.

After the First World War he was convicted several times for socialist anti-war propaganda; under the National Socialists he was imprisoned in various concentration camps. In 1933 he was imprisoned in the Colditz concentration camp and in the Sachsenburg concentration camp , and then from 1934 to 1937 in prison in Waldheim for high treason because he had tried to rebuild the Leipzig KPD. He was then a prisoner (prisoner number: 2417) in the Buchenwald concentration camp for eight years - until the liberation in April 1945 . There he was employed in the sculptors' command from 1938 and in the pathology command from 1942 . Here he was also the master of the "camp concerts", wrote poetry and carved.

After 1945 he worked as administrative director of the Leipzig theater . In 1946 he was a founding member of the SED . From 1949 he worked as an editor for the Leipziger Volkszeitung and was responsible for coordinating the people's correspondents . He also worked as a DEFA dramaturge and radio play author . As a freelance writer, he was a member of the main board of the German Writers' Association .

It was not until 1958 that his first book appeared, the novel Nackt unter Wölfen , which, translated into 30 languages, made him world famous. DEFA filmed his book in 1963 under the direction of Frank Beyer , also under the title Nackt unter Wölfen . Apitz himself worked as a screenwriter and actor on the filming.

Naked Among Wolves wasfilmed againin 2015 under the direction of Philipp Kadelbach .

In 1959 the novella Esther followed in the Almanac of the PEN Center . It was written much earlier and is therefore Apitz's oldest surviving prose work . It was made into an opera in 1969 by Robert Hanell and Günther Deicke .

Apitz was a member of the Academy of Arts and the PEN Club of the GDR . In 1976 his autobiographical novel The Rainbow was published .

Marriage and death

Grave of Bruno Apitz in Berlin

In 1965 he married Marlis Kieckhäfer, and daughter Sabine was born in the same year.

Honored with the highest awards in the GDR , Bruno Apitz died shortly before his 79th birthday in Berlin. His urn was buried in the tomb "Pergolenweg" in the memorial of the socialists in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

Works

  • The person in the neck. Drama. 1924.
  • Naked among wolves . Novel. 1958. New edition: Aufbau-Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-351-03390-3 , also as an e-book. (With documentation of the multiple editing and revision of the original text by Bruno Apitz. Ed. By Susanne Handtke.)
  • Esther . Novella. 1959.
  • The rainbow . Novel. Halle 1976, ISBN 3-88112-011-4 .
  • Smoldering fire. Autobiographical novel. Berlin 1984.

Awards and recognition

Apitz became an honorary citizen of Weimar on September 9, 1961 . The city of Leipzig granted him honorary citizenship on May 7, 1975 . The awards that Bruno Apitz has received for his work include the Erich Weinert Medal 1966 and the GDR National Prize . He received the latter twice: in 1958 for the novel Nackt unter Wölfen and in 1963 - together with others - for the film adaptation.

Several streets were named after him in the area of ​​the former GDR. In the East Berlin district of Marzahn, the 14th Polytechnic High School bore his name shortly after Apitz's death.

literature

Web links

Commons : Bruno Apitz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Apitz, Bruno in: Gitta Günther, Gerhard Hoffmann Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937 to 1945. Small encyclopedia. Rhinoverlag Ilmenau 2016, ISBN 978-3-95560-897-2 , p. 11.
  2. a b Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent historical exhibition. Göttingen 1999, p. 293.
  3. Brochure from the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, artist biographies from 2013.
  4. Weimar table of honorary citizens ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.weimar.de