Erich Arendt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erich Arendt (born April 15, 1903 in Neuruppin , † September 25, 1984 in Wilhelmshorst ) was a German poet and translator ( Pablo Neruda ) in the German Democratic Republic .

Life

1903 to 1933

Erich Otto Reinhold Arendt was the son of a school janitor and a laundress. The family's living conditions were poor, and for a while they lived in a damp basement apartment. As a teenager, Arendt sought contact with artists, for example in the Gildenhall artisans' settlement . Arendt graduated from high school and attended the teachers' college in Neuruppin until 1923. He then worked as a theater painter, flag sewer, bank clerk and assistant journalist. He undertook extensive hikes and trips through Germany, Switzerland and Spain .

In 1925 his first poems appeared in Herwarth Walden's magazine Der Sturm . Arendt's role model was August Stramm . In 1926 Arendt joined the KPD and in 1928 the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers (BPRS). From 1928 to 1933 he was a teacher at the educational reformist Karl Marx School in Berlin-Neukölln , where he lived in Truseweg 8 with Käthe Hayek. In 1929 Johannes R. Becher publicly criticized Arendt's poems as too bourgeois, which prevented Arendt from writing new texts for months.

1933 to 1950

Erich Arendt, communist and husband of a so-called "half-Jewish" woman, fled early from Nazi Germany. In 1933 he emigrated to Switzerland with his wife Käthe (Katja) née Hayek and lived with her on Mallorca from 1934 to 1936 , where he worked as a tutor. After the Franco Putsch, he fled to the mainland and initially worked as a translator for the German information press of the International Brigades , before fighting in their 27th Division from 1937.

In 1939 he went to France , where he was interned in various camps as an "enemy alien". Arendt fled from the last camp near Bordeaux . The couple had to flee from the victorious German troops via Paris in 1941. They managed to get visas for Colombia . On the journey there, the English interned Arendt for a short time because they believed him to be a spy. Arendt continued to be politically active in Colombia, wrote his first book, sold homemade pralines and marzipan with his wife and traveled to the Caribbean . The then still tranquil fishing village of Tolú on the Gulf of Morrosquillo (northwest of Sincelejo ) and its inhabitants made a deep impression . But the political situation in Colombia changed: after an attack on a liberal politician, a wave of persecution swept through the country, also directed against political emigrants.

1950 to 1984

Gravestone Erich Arendt in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, Berlin-Mitte

In 1950 Arendt moved to the GDR , where he lived as a freelance writer. He was refused entry into the SED and had been monitored by the State Security since 1957 . He took part in reform socialist circles and prepared an anthology of expressionist poetry that was banned by the censors. The sword over the old people who do not want to grow young! , he wrote in 1960 to Johannes Bobrowski out of anger about the restrictive cultural policy in the GDR. Arendt later reacted to the suppression of the Prague Spring with resigned poems.

Arendt continued to travel a lot, often to the Mediterranean , especially to Greece . In 1959 he visited the poet Paul Celan in Paris . Celan then asked Karl Krolow to discuss the flight odes . Celan wrote to Krolow that he was "most joyfully surprised both by the poems and by the author." The Cold War and the building of the Berlin Wall under Walter Ulbricht were traumatic experiences for the author. When he wanted to go to Brazil in 1963 , the authorities forbade him. The only retreat for him and his wife Käthe became a house on Hiddensee and travel to Nessebar in Bulgaria . Only after Arendt received his retirement did he travel more frequently to the West, including West Germany, reading in front of a large audience, where he became increasingly popular as an intellectual who distanced himself from the SED regime.

In 1976 Arendt signed the protest against Wolf Biermann's expatriation . In 1983, the Akademie der Künste dedicated the exhibition Poetry to Arendt . Poetry and Landscape in the Life of Erich Arendt .

Erich Arendt, tied to his house after a stroke , died on September 25, 1984. His last life was in Wilhelmshorst; his friend Peter Huchel , who moved to the west in 1971 , had left his house there to Arendt. Arendt was buried in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery in Berlin. In his funeral address, Richard Pietraß said about Arendt:

The childless did not get bogged down in the possibilities of his duration, he devoted himself entirely to transforming his life into poetry. So he only passes on his experience in poetry, which is only his widow, his heiress.

plant

Arendt's interest in foreign countries shapes his work: his poems reflect his impressions of the Spanish civil war, of the post-colonial society of Colombia and the natural force of the tropics , and finally his enthusiasm for myths and the landscape of the Aegean . The idiosyncratic author, who could not be assigned to any school, saw his ideal of society and literature embodied in the basically self-organizing population of the Greek islands, which has defied foreign rule for thousands of years. Alien landscapes, alien myths and alien literature together formed an indispensable source of inspiration for Arendt, which must flow from all sides, from east, west, south and north, in order to remain productive.

Erich Arendt found his own lyrical expression relatively late, in the last third of his life. The difficulty of finding an adequate lyrical form and sticking to it - from the late Expressionist beginnings to the socialist-realistic texts trained in the Weimar Classics to the free, often dark poems of the late work - became an aporia of the traditional work concept with the Refusal to let the individual texts come to an end. It is fitting that Arendt wrote around forty different versions of individual poems. The specialist critics have noted the influences of Friedrich Hölderlin , Saint-John Perse and Paul Celan in Arendt and described his poems as sensually vital, at the same time intellectually distant, surrealistic, rich in metaphors and at the same time profoundly classic in their design.

Manfred Schlösser describes his poetics as

Unleashing the associative fantasy, the visual implementation of rhythmic-musical ideas, the thought of dismemberment, the shattering of connected images or sentence structures, lines, even words, the absolute setting of the individual word.

Quote

Poetry demands participation. It is not a frivolous, easily made game to pass the time. There always remains something that is difficult to rationally grasp and not consciously create, something mysterious that comes from the unconscious and creates with it.

Awards

Works

Poetry

  • The night carried the albatross. Rütten & Loening , Berlin 1951
  • Mountain wind ballad. Poems from the Spanish struggle for freedom. Dietz, Berlin 1952
  • Tolu. Poems from Colombia. Insel, Leipzig 1956 (2nd, common edition Insel, Leipzig, 1973)
  • About ashes and time ... people and world, Berlin 1957
  • Song of the Seven Islands. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1957
  • Flight Odes. Insel, Leipzig, 1959
  • Under the hooves of the wind. Selected poems 1926–1965. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1966
  • Aegean. Insel, Leipzig, 1967
  • From five decades. Selection by Heinz Czechowski . Hinstorff, Rostock, 1968
  • Poems. Selected by Gerhard Wolf . Reclam, Leipzig 1973
  • Fire straw. Insel, Leipzig 1973
  • Memento and image. Insel, Leipzig 1976
  • Time line. Insel, Leipzig 1978
  • Staring at time and light. Poems of the Aegean. Reclam, Leipzig 1980
  • The two-fingered laugh. Selected poems 1921–1980. Selection of Gregor Laschen . Claassen, Düsseldorf 1981
  • Unbound. Insel, Leipzig 1981

prose

  • Tropical country Colombia. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1954
  • Islands of the Mediterranean. From Sicily to Mallorca. With Katja Hayek-Arendt. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1959
  • Greek islands. With Katja Hayek-Arendt. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1962
  • Column, cube, face. Building and designing on Mediterranean islands. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, 1966
  • Greek temples. Insel, Leipzig, 1970
  • Trip to Provence. Diary notes from 1929. Agora, Berlin and Darmstadt, 1983
  • Spain Arendt Files. Found texts of Erich Arendt from the war in Spain. Hinstorff, Rostock, 1986

Translations

Pablo Neruda

  • The great song. People and World, Berlin, 1953
  • Lumberjack, wake up! Hymn to Peace. Insel, Leipzig, 1955
  • The grapes and the wind. People and World, Berlin, 1955
  • Spain in heart. With Stephan Hermlin . People and World, Berlin, 1956
  • Twenty love poems and a song of despair. Insel, Leipzig, 1958
  • Elemental odes. People and World, Berlin, 1959
  • Stay on earth. Claassen, Hamburg, 1960
  • Poems. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M., 1963
  • Ode to typography. Institute for Book Design, Leipzig, 1964
  • The cruel fire. University of Graphics and Book Art, Leipzig, 1966
  • Explanations of some things. Seals. dtv, Munich, 1971

Other authors

  • The Indios descend from Mixco. South American freedom seals. People and the world, Berlin, 1951
  • Mourning color gray - Name GmbH. Satire from Latin America. Rütten & Loening, Berlin, 1984
  • Rafael Alberti : voice made of nettle earth and guitar. Selected poetry. With Katja Hayek-Arendt. Rütten & Loening, Berlin, 1959
  • Rafael Alberti: Night of War in the Prado Museum. Etching in a prologue and an act. Henschel, Berlin, 1969
  • Vicente Aleixandre : naked as a glowing stone. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg, 1963
  • Luis Cernuda : The real and the desire. Poems. With Katja Hayek-Arendt. Reclam, Leipzig, 1978
  • Luis de Góngora y Argote : Soledades. Reclam, Leipzig, 1973
  • Nicolás Guillén : Sugar cane tastes bitter. People and World, Berlin, 1952
  • Nicolás Guillén: Don't pay me for singing. People and World, Berlin, 1961
  • Miguel Hernández : Poems. Poemas. With Katja Hayek-Arendt. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne and Berlin, 1965
  • Walt Whitman : Poetry and Prose. With Helmut Heinrich. People and World, Berlin, 1966
  • Jorge Zalamea: The great Burundun-Burunda is dead. Verlag der Nation, Berlin, 1957

literature

  • Arendt, Erich. In: Lexicon of socialist German literature. Leipzig 1964, pp. 72-74
  • The fragmented dream - for Erich Arendt. Published by Gregor Laschen and Manfred Schlösser for their 75th birthday. Agora, Berlin and Darmstadt, 1978
  • Hendrik Röder (Ed.): Vagant, who I am. Erich Arendt on his 90th birthday. Texts and contributions to his work. Janus, Berlin, 1993 ISBN 3-928942-04-2
  • Humans are word animals. Erich Arendt 1903–1984 . Texts and pictures on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birthday. Booklet accompanying the exhibition of the Kurt Tucholsky Memorial at Rheinsberg Castle (April 15– June 1, 2003) and Peter Huchel House Wilhelmshorst (June 4–28, 2003). Editor Peter Böthig , collaboration with Tilo Köhler. Vacat, Potsdam, 2003 ISBN 3-930752-25-5
  • Leonore Krenzlin , Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Arendt, Erich . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Self-testimony by Arendt. http://www.literaturport.de/index.php?id=26&no_cache=1&user_autorenlexikonfrontend_pi1%5Bal_opt%5D=1&user_autorenlexikonfrontend_pi1%5Bal_aid%5D=174
  2. ↑ Marcel Vejmelka: Erich Arendt in UeLEX (Germersheimer Translators' Lexicon).
  3. ↑ Lothar Jordan (Red.): Poets meet Münster / Meeting of Poets, 18. – 27. May 1979 . City of Munster, Munster 1979, p. 10 (program booklet for the Munster Lyric Meeting ).
  4. ↑ Paul Celan: “something entirely personal”. Letters 1934–1970. Selected, edited and commented by Barbara Wiedemann. Berlin 2019. p. 394.
  5. ↑ Paul Celan: “something entirely personal”. Letters 1934–1970. Selected, edited and commented by Barbara Wiedemann. Berlin 2019. p. 398.
  6. ↑ Paul Celan: “something entirely personal”. Letters 1934–1970. Selected, edited and commented by Barbara Wiedemann. Berlin 2019. p. 398.
  7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 9, 2011 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.historischer-verein-ruppin.de
  8. ↑ In conversation with Manfred Schlösser. http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/forschung/projekte/arendt.html
  9. ↑ http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/forschung/projekte/arendt.html
  10. ↑ http://www.agora-verlag.de/index.php?site=person&id=30
  11. ↑ http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/forschung/projekte/arendt.html
  12. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 9, 2011 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.historischer-verein-ruppin.de
  13. ↑ partly preprinted in ... but the world has changed. Almanach 1959. Ed. PEN-Zentrum Ost und West, Verlag der Nation 1959, p. 273: Nachtflug, Elegie 1, 2
personal data
SURNAME Arendt, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet and literary translator
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuruppin
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1984
Place of death Wilhelmshorst