Erich Knauf

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Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Am Feldberg 3, in Berlin-Kaulsdorf
Stumbling block at the house, Dudenstrasse 10, in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Erich Knauf (born February 21, 1895 in Meerane , Amtshauptmannschaft Glauchau , Kingdom of Saxony ; † May 2, 1944 in Brandenburg an der Havel ) was a German journalist , writer and songwriter. He was executed because of his dissident attitude under National Socialism .

Life

Knauf was born in 1895 as the son of the tailor and honorary party secretary of the SPD Heinrich Knauf and his wife and grew up in Gera . At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a typesetter. In 1914 he traveled through Italy , Greece and Turkey . From 1915 to 1918 he took part in the First World War as a soldier .

After returning home, Knauf studied at the socialist folk high school in Tinz . During the Kapp Putsch , the USPD member joined the workers' armed forces in Gera and took over the leadership of a shock troop. He also took part in anarchist actions in the Ore Mountains . In 1930 he published the "reportage novel" Ça ira! .

After he had already written theater reviews for the Gera tribune , Knauf got a job as an editor for local things and culture at the people's newspaper in Plauen in the summer of 1921 . He discovered the draftsman Erich Ohser (alias eoplauen ) and also became a close friend of Erich Kästner . In 1928 Knauf switched to the Gutenberg Book Guild in Berlin as literary director . Socially committed, proletarian novels appeared under his editing. He promoted the writer B. Traven , took care of the publication of Upton Sinclair's novels and had more books on Soviet literature and history published.

After the seizure of power and the DC circuit of Büchergilde 1933 Knauf worked as a freelance writer, features editor and successor Walther Victors at 8 o'clock Abendblatt . After criticizing an opera performance sponsored by Hermann Göring , he was arrested in 1934 and imprisoned for a few weeks in the Oranienburg and Lichtenburg concentration camps and excluded from the Reich Association of the German Press .

Knauf then worked freelance in advertising and in 1936 first became second press spokesman, then press chief of the film production company Terra Film . Here he was mainly responsible for productions with Heinz Rühmann . He was able to be exempt from military service and from 1941 wrote texts for Schlager by Werner Bochmann . The best known are “Heimat, your stars” from the film Quax, the Bruchpilot and “Everything goes better with music” from Sophienlund . Knauf also wrote the canon "Spring loves playing the flute" in the film Die Feuerzangenbowle . In the 1930s he wrote a biography about the Berlin illustrator Heinrich Zille , which was only published in 2015.

In November 1943, the bombed-out knob was housed with a doctor in Berlin-Kaulsdorf together with Erich Ohser. In an air raid shelter during a night of bombing, they were denounced by Bruno Schultz , a neighbor and captain in the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department at the Wehrmacht High Command , for political jokes on February 22, 1944. Knauf was arrested on March 28, 1944 and sentenced to death on April 6, 1944 by judge Roland Freisler at the People's Court “for defeatist statements in the air raid shelter” . Heinz Rühmann stood up for him with Joseph Goebbels without success . Knauf was beheaded on May 2, 1944 in the Brandenburg penitentiary . The procedural costs invoiced to the widow Erna Knauf, including the execution, amounted to 585.74 Reichsmarks . Erich Kästner wrote the short prose text An unpaid bill about this bill . Ohser took his own life the night before the trial.

Honors

In 1999 Erich Knauf was honored with a Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Am Feldberg 3, in Berlin-Kaulsdorf.

In the north part of Brandenburg an der Havel there is the "Erich-Knauf-Straße".

On October 15, 2014 , a stumbling block was laid in front of his former workplace, Berlin-Kreuzberg , Dudenstrasse 10 .

Since August 2015 there has been the "Erich-Knauf-Weg" in Berlin-Kaulsdorf.

Works

  • The lonely. Ernst Barlach, the sculptor, graphic artist and playwright. In: Schwerin Muses Almanac: on d. Year ... 1928, pp. 85–91.
  • Outrage and design. Artist profiles from Daumier to Kollwitz. Gutenberg Book Guild, Berlin 1929.
  • (Ed.): World will be happy! A Kurt Eisner book; on the 10th anniversary of the murder of Kurt Eisner. Gutenberg Book Guild, Berlin 1929.
  • Ça ira! Reportage novel from the Kapp Putsch. Gutenberg Book Guild, Berlin 1930.
  • and Alfred Kubin (ed.): The blue eye. Humor, satire, tragic-comic and other raisins of world literature. Gutenberg Book Guild, Berlin 1930.
  • Daumier. Gutenberg Book Guild, Berlin 1931.
  • with Werner Bochmann: Bells of the homeland. Song. Hochstein [u. a.], Heidelberg [u. a.] 1942.
  • with Werner Bochmann: Home, your stars. Song. Musikverlag Hochstein & Co, Heidelberg 1942.
  • with Werner Bochmann: Everything goes better with music. Foxtrot from the sound film "Sophienlund". Schott's Sons, Mainz 1943.

literature

  • Knauf, Erich. In: Lexicon of socialist German literature. From the beginning to 1945. Monographic-biographical presentations. 2nd Edition. Bibliografisches Institut, Leipzig 1964, pp. 292–293, with bibliography p. 293.
  • Jürgen Dragowski: The history of the book guild Gutenberg in the Weimar Republic, 1924-1933 . Klartext, Essen 1992.
  • Wolfgang Eckert : Home, your stars ... life and death of Erich Knauf. A biography. Chemnitzer Verlag, Chemnitz 1998, ISBN 3-928678-40-X . The same with: Historischeverlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86408-242-9 .
  • Erich Kästner: An unpaid bill. In: The daily stuff. Chansons and prose. 1945-1948. Atrium Verlag, Zurich 1948, pp. 26–28.
  • Lothar Lang: Erich Knauf - life and work. Attempt at a biography; [Exhibition from September 14th to November 1st, 1985]. , Burgk 1985.

Web links

Commons : Erich Knauf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erich Knauf: The unknown Zille . Past Publishing, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3864081880 .
  2. ↑ Two critical minds. In: Berliner Woche , Hellersdorf, Kaulsdorf and Mahlsdorf edition, March 20, 2019, p. 3.
  3. ↑ Torsten Körner: The little man as a star. Heinz Rühmann and his films from the 1950s . Campus, Frankfurt / M. 2001, p. 46.
personal data
SURNAME Knauf, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, writer and songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Meerane , Kingdom of Saxony
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1944
Place of death Brandenburg on the Havel