Ede and Unku

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ede und Unku is a youth novel by the German author Grete Weiskopf (pseudonym Alex Wedding ). The first edition was published in 1931 by the Malik publishing house in Berlin .

Content and reception

The author's first work describes the friendship between the Berlin boy Ede and the gypsy girl Unku during the Weimar Republic . The photos for the original edition of the book are from John Heartfield . It was one of the works that were on the index when the books were burned in Germany in 1933 and that were destroyed and banned. In the GDR it became part of the official school literature and was therefore well known. In 1980 it was directed by Helmut Dziuba with the title Als Unku Ede's girlfriend was filmed by DEFA .

The book describes the authentic experiences of Erna Lauenburger that the author knew. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 . Of the Sinti mentioned in the book, only the Berliner "Kaula" Ansin, a cousin Unkus and the grandmother of the Berlin musician Janko Lauenberger survived .

In the post-war edition, Grete Weiskopf added a chapter in which she complained about the disappearance of her friends and assumed that they perished in the Third Reich. A letter confirming this based on the stories of relatives reached her on the day she died.

In 2005 a new edition of the book was published by Neues Leben .

On January 27, 2011, on the occasion of the commemoration day of the victims of National Socialism in Berlin-Friedrichshain, a path was named as Ede-und-Unku-Weg in memory of Erna Lauenburger and Grete Weiskopf.

In 2015 Heike Makatsch published an audio book with Alex Wedding's text.

In 2018 the Gütersloh publishing house Ede und Unku - the true story , a book by the authors Janko Lauenberger, himself a family member of Unku, and Juliane von Wedemeyer was published. In an extraordinary family portrait, it tells the story of Erna Lauenburger beyond the youth novel. Heribert Prantl , member of the editor-in-chief of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, writes about it: "... a touching, stirring and bitter story ..."

literature

  • Janko Lauenberger , Juliane von Wedemeyer: Ede and Unku - the true story. The fate of a Sinti family from the Weimar Republic to the present day. Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2018, ISBN 978-3-579-08694-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Janko Lauenberger, Juliane von Wedemeyer: Ede and Unku - the true story. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2018, ISBN 978-3-579-08694-1 , pp. 229, 230.
  2. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach : Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993, p. 176.
  3. ↑ Alex Wedding: Ede and Unku. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-355-01707-7 .
  4. ↑ Alex Wedding: Ede and Unku. Media Net-Edition, Kassel 2015, ISBN 978-3-939988-08-3 .
  5. ↑ Janko Lauenberger, Juliane von Wedemeyer: Ede and Unku - the true story. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2018, ISBN 978-3-579-08694-1 .