Dorothee Schmitz-Köster

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Dorothee Schmitz-Köster (* 9. October 1950 in Bergisch Gladbach as Dorothee Schmitz ) is a German author and journalist .

Life

Dorothee Schmitz-Köster grew up in a large Catholic family in the Rhineland . She passed the Abitur in 1969 and then studied German , philosophy and social sciences at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn . During her studies she got involved in student politics. In 1976 she passed the first state examination for teaching at grammar schools. Then she worked as an editor for a magazine for traffic and technology in Bonn.

She received a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and did her doctorate in 1983 at the University of Bonn with a thesis on GDR literature. Schmitz-Köster then moved to Bremen , where she completed her legal clerkship. She then decided to pursue a career in journalism and worked in particular for radio . Since 1985 she has been writing and producing as a freelance radio journalist , primarily for Radio Bremen , but also for BR , SWR and WDR . She also worked as a freelance writer and journalist . She held various teaching positions at the University of Bremen and was a lecturer in journalism at the University of Bremen for three years . From 1997 to 2008 she was a member of the Bremen media office . At the end of the 2000s, she moved her main residence to Berlin .

Schmitz-Köster wrote numerous non-fiction books , initially on sociological issues and now mainly on topics from the National Socialist context. Since 1995 she has focused on the former SS organization Lebensborn e. V. In this context, Schmitz-Köster interviewed numerous contemporary witnesses and other affected persons, researched archives etc. at home and abroad, curated several exhibitions and published about the “Lebensborn” and gave numerous lectures, workshops and book readings. She is now considered an expert on the subject of "Lebensborn".

In July 2012, Schmitz-Köster received a cross-border commuter grant from the Robert Bosch Foundation for the Radio Bremen feature Der Weinberg des neue Herr , which deals with a Bremen entrepreneur's wine-growing project in Romania in the former Transylvania .

Dorothee Schmitz-Köster lives and works in Bremen and Berlin.

Publications

Non-fiction

  • Female self-designs and male images. On the representation of women in GDR novels of the seventies. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983.
  • Women without children. Motives, conflicts, arguments. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1987.
  • Trobadora and Kassandra and… Female writing in the GDR. Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Cologne 1989.
  • Love at a distance. Live together separately. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1990.
  • Female solo. A confident way of life. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1993.
  • "German mother, are you ready ..." Everyday life in Lebensborn. Structure Verlag, Berlin 1997.
  • My father's war. As a German soldier in Norway. Construction Publishing House, Berlin 2003.
  • Child L 364. A Lebensborn family story. Rowohlt Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2007.
  • "German mother, are you ready ..." The Lebensborn and his children. Construction Publishing House, Berlin 2010.
  • Lifelong Lebensborn. The desired children of the SS and what became of them. Piper Verlag, Munich 2012 (with 19 portraits by Tristan Vankann).
  • Predatory child - kidnapped by the SS to Germany Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2018, ISBN 978-3-451-81306-1

Radio features

  • From the sky to the desert. By bus across the Tibetan highlands. 1988.
  • Love is broken - marriage is broken. Divorce in the GDR. 1990.
  • One speaks German again. The German minority in Upper Silesia. 1991.
  • In the sky above the Teufelsmoor. A glider premiere. 1993.
  • "If you're up to your neck in the dirt, you don't have to chirp." The cabaret in the Westerbork camp . 1994.
  • After the toil of the plain. Greifswald - a difficult recovery. 1994.
  • Caviar and water soup. Coco Schumann - a German musician's life. 1996.
  • The secret of Hohehorst. A Lebensborn home at the gates of Bremen. 1996.
  • Meseritz terminus. How Bremen Psychiatric Patients Were Sent to Their Deaths in 1943. 1998.
  • Schröder's lazy sacks. Everyday Teacher Today. A practice test. 1998.
  • Cashed in and Germanized. How the Nazis wanted to make good Germans out of Russian children. 2000.
  • When I was 32 years old, I became famous. Günter Grass - an acoustic collage. 2000.
  • "Dear mother, it's beautiful here." As a German soldier in Norway. 2001.
  • Lebensborn - for life. The denied children. 2001.
  • At the cold end of the world. With the Polarstern off Spitsbergen. 2003.
  • Already here, but still there. Anna from Moscow comes to Germany. 2005.
  • Child L 364. Scenes from a biography of Lebensborn. 2006.
  • Man, you monkey. A visit from relatives. 2007.
  • The mountain farmer and the city dweller. A love story from the Swiss Alps. 2008.
  • The ghosts of Pankow. A literary foray through my new neighborhood. 2010.
  • “The poetry? I don't give a damn about them. ”A review for Walter Mehring. 2011 (together with Walter Weber).
  • The new master's vineyard. How a Transylvanian Saxon invests on old royal soil. 2013.
  • Heavenly sounds. A journey through Arp Schnitger's organ landscape. 2013 (together with Walter Weber).

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harro Zimmermann : Lebenslang Lebensborn. Conversation with Dorothee Schmitz-Köster. In: Series Literaturzeit. Nordwestradio , September 16, 2012, accessed on October 5, 2012 (with audio stream of the radio report, 8:36 minutes).
  2. ↑ Dorothee Schmitz-Koester receives a grant for the Radio Bremen feature “The New Lord's Vineyard”. Radio Bremen , July 24, 2012, accessed on March 9, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Schmitz-Köster, Dorothee
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmitz, Dorothee (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Bergisch Gladbach