Diego Viga

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Diego Viga (born June 7, 1907 as Paul Engel in Vienna , † August 27, 1997 in Quito ) was an Ecuadorian doctor and writer of Austrian origin.

Life

Paul Engel was the son of a Jewish textile manufacturer. From 1918 he attended the Viennese high school Wasagasse . After graduating from high school in 1926, he began to study medicine at the University of Vienna . During the higher semesters he mainly dealt with biochemistry and published a number of articles on his research in this area. He later moved to the Institute for General and Experimental Pathology, where he mainly researched endocrinological topics and specifically the role of the human epiphysis . In February 1933 he received his doctorate in medicine in Vienna .

After completing his doctorate, Engel practiced as a surgeon at the Surgical University Clinic in Vienna with the aim of establishing a branch as a gynecologist; at the same time he continued his hormone research. After the domestic political situation, especially for the Austrian Jews, had deteriorated in 1934 after the suppression of workers' uprisings by Federal Chancellor Dollfuss in February and an unsuccessful attempt at a National Socialist coup in July, Engel decided to go abroad for a while. He applied for a job in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo and traveled by ship across the Mediterranean and Atlantic to South America. In Montevideo he worked in an endocrinology laboratory. In October 1935 he married his long-time girlfriend Josefine Monath, who had stayed behind in Vienna, by long-distance marriage in front of a rabbi . The hope of being able to bring his wife to Uruguay was dashed, and Engel returned to Austria in early 1936. He found a job as an assistant doctor for gynecology at the Vienna University Clinic , continued his hormone research there and published further articles in specialist journals. After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, Engels position in Austria became untenable. He accepted an offer from a Hungarian pharmaceutical company and traveled by ship to South America, where he was supposed to work as a pharmaceutical representative.

Paul Engel arrived in Colombia in May 1938 . He worked as a medical representative in the capital Bogotá . In addition, with the help of local researchers, he was able to continue his research on sex hormones . From July 1938 he was Associate Professor of Endocrinology at the Universidad Libre in Bogotá. In the course of the year, after overcoming many obstacles, his wife Josefine, his brother Walter with his wife and his parents also ended up in exile in Colombia . At the beginning of 1939 Engel took over the chair of biology at the Universidad Libre in Bogotá. At the same time he became a representative of a US pharmaceutical company, for which he undertook extensive business trips through Colombia, Venezuela , Ecuador and Panama in the years to come . During these trips, Engel began writing essays and his first attempts at fiction. In Bogotá he made the acquaintance of the anti-fascist exiled author Erich Arendt , who had a strong influence on his writing and his Marxist worldview. From 1941 onwards, in addition to his academic work, he wrote novels and stories in German and Spanish, in which Engel processed experiences from his Austrian years as well as his South American trips.

At the beginning of 1945 Engel gave up traveling and took a position as a research assistant in the “Laboratorios Hormona”, which his former Hungarian employer ran in Bogotá. Engel refused to return to Austria after the end of the Second World War. He took on further teaching duties, including a. in Pharmacology from the Colombian Universidad Nacional. From 1950 Engel was employed as a scientific advisor at an Italian-Colombian pharmaceutical company, for which he worked in the Ecuadorian capital Quito from 1950 to 1955; a little later the entire family moved to Ecuador. In 1955, Engels' first literary publication, the novel "Der Freiheitsritter", appeared, like all his literary works, under the pseudonym "Diego Viga" by the East German Paul List Verlag .

After Engel lost his job as a pharmacologist, the author, who was a passionate mountaineer throughout his life , worked as a representative of an export company for tropical timber in the high mountain region around the Chimborazo ; these experiences also later flowed into narrative works. In 1958, Engel held a series of philosophical lectures at the Ecuadorian State University and was given the opportunity to travel to the Galápagos Islands for the first time . At the same time he received a professorship in biology and general pathology at the Universidad Central in Quito; from 1961 he practiced as a specialist in endocrinology in the Ecuadorian capital. In the sixties Engel received several literary prizes in Ecuador, in 1972 and 1977 he was awarded the badge of honor of the League for Friendship of Nations by the GDR , in which his works in German were published exclusively .

Works (selection)

stories
  • El diagnóstico. 16 cuentos de 3 dêcadas. Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Quito 1969.
  • Las pecas de mamá. seis cuentos. Editorial Minerva, Quito 1970.
  • Cuentos. Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Guayaquil 1978.
Novels
  • The Knight of Freedom. Development story of an older gentleman. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1955.
  • Fate under the mango tree. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1957.
  • The seven lives of Wenceslao Perilla. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1958.
  • The sacrificed farmer. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1959.
  • The Indians. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1960.
  • Guns and cocoa. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1961.
  • The strange journey of the seagull. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1964.
  • Eva Heller. Novela. Editorial Universitas, Quito 1966.
  • The parallels intersect. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1969.
  • La viuda de soto. Novela. Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Quito 1971.
  • Station in Esmeraldas. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1973.
  • The conquistadors. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1975.
  • The lots of San Bartolomé. Novel. List-Verlag, Leipzig 1977.
  • World tour in the jungle. Novel. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Saale 1979.
  • The lost year. Novel. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Saale 1980.
  • Promotion without a chance. Novel. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Saale 1982.
  • Prosecutor of Socrates. Novel from ancient Athens. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Saale 1987, ISBN 3-354-00165-8 .
Plays
  • Sanatorio para nerviosos. 4 piezas en un acto. Editorial Universitas, Quito 1967.
Non-fiction
  • Evolución filogenética emergente. Commemoración del centenario de la publicación por Charles Darwin “El origen de las especies”. Editorial Universitas, Quito 1958 (together with José D. Paltán and José A. Homs).
  • Visión de la filosofía en el sigo XX. Editorial Universitas, Quito 1958.
  • El eterno dilema. 4 moments de la historia del espíritu. Editorial Universitas, Quito 1964.
  • Shakespeare en su cuatricentenario. Cuenca 1964.
  • Los sueños de Cándido. Editorial Universitas, Quito 1968.
  • Algunas deliberaciones sobre arte. Ciencia y literatura. Editorial Universitas, Quito 1972.
  • Point de salida, point de llegada. Editorial Universitas, Quito 1977.
  • Thinking about the living. Urania-Verlag, Leipzig 1977.
  • The Galápagos Islands and the Darwin Islands. Quito 1981.
  • Catorce ensayos. Editorial Su Liberia, Quito 1985 (Breves ensayos de cultura general; Volume 3).
  • Mauricio Toledana en espejo cóncavo. Editorial El Conejo, Quito 1987.

literature

  • Dietmar Felden: Diego Viga: doctor and writer. Leipzig: Hirzel Verlag 1987, ISBN 3-7401-0103-2 .
  • Erich Hackl : At the right time - request to finally see Diego Viga. For the 100th birthday of a great Austrian storyteller. In: Zwischenwelt. Journal of the Culture of Exile and Resistance. 24th year No. 1/2; Vienna, October 2007, pp. 7–9, ISSN  1606-4321 .
  • Maurer, Paul Pinchas, Paul Engel (alias Diego Viga), Austrian writer in exile and doctor, witness of the persecution, emigrant, Jerusalem, 2019, ISBN 978-965-572-761-6

Web links