Erich Kriemer

Erich Kriemer (born November 5, 1926 in Schwindschitz / Böhmen , † November 30, 1998 in Gera ) was a German writer . The functionary of the GDR writers' band was also an unofficial employee of the State Security and was entrusted with the supervision of the literary business in the Gera district .

life and work

Erich Kriemer was born in 1926 in the north Bohemian village of Schwindschitz, which is now part of the Czech Republic . His father was a bricklayer and farmer, his mother also worked in agriculture. After village and middle school he attended a business school. First, followers of Nazism , came to him in 1944, the year of its convening in the armed forces , allegedly kept secret doubts.

He experienced the end of the war in 1945 on the Eastern Front , where he was taken prisoner by the Soviets . A return to his homeland was later ruled out due to the expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia .

In Erfurt he temporarily found work in a carpentry shop . He completed a new teacher training course , then he entered his new profession. From 1964 he gave classes in history and civics at the Steinbach-Hallenberg Oberschule . Later he was employed full-time in the school administration. During this time he also worked full-time in the party apparatus in the field of popular education for six years .

Around 1964, when he started working, he began to write the novel Where the Vltava Flows . The last version was available eight years later, in 1972. Meanwhile, Klaus Steinhaußen was his mentor and from 1971 his lecturer . In 1973 the novel was published by Mitteldeutscher Verlag . In it, Kriemer processed childhood experiences from everyday life in a village on the North Bohemian border region around 1938/1939. "[I] n a simple, straightforward way [...] Kriemer deals with ethical and moral questions that arose in the coexistence of Czechs and Germans in such complicated times", it says in a GDR review .

From 1975 he was based in Gera-Lusan . From 1977 to 1990 he held the office of chairman of the GDR writers' association in the Gera district. In this role, the party-loyal socialist issued, among other things, admission refusals with flimsy justifications. As an unofficial employee of the Ministry for State Security (his code name was “beech”) his task was to “keep literary life in the Gera district politically and ideologically under control and to stifle politically unpleasant developments in advance.” During a stay in Romania in the spring of 1982 he listened to German-speaking authors - authors, editors and editors - on behalf of the State Security. They frankly told their supposedly understanding friend about their needs in the “ brother state ” and expressed their critical opinions on the GDR literature business. The people denounced by Kriemer included the members of the Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn literary circle , including Herta Müller , who received the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature .

Kriemer also headed the circle of writing workers in the Hermsdorf ceramic works . This was recognized as an " excellent folk art collective ". He himself received the art prize of the city of Gera. It was not until 1989 that Kriemer presented his second novel, titled Bohemian Love . In reunified Germany , he only devoted himself to Gera-related projects.

He died on November 30, 1998 after a long illness.

Works

• Where the Vltava flows. Novel. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1973.
• Memories of an old woman. In: Sense and Form. Contributions to literature , vol. 37, issue 3 1985, pp. 517-521.
• Gera 1987 (= pictures of a city ). Bild und Heimat Verlag for postcards and calendars, Reichenbach 1987 (calendar with photos and reproductions by Frank Schenke and text on the back by Erich Kriemer).
• Bohemian love. Novel. Greifenverlag zu Rudolstadt, Rudolstadt 1989, ISBN 3-7352-0160-1 .
• The father and his son (short stories 1988–1990, unpublished).
• together with Siegfried Mues, Christel Russe: Gera (= Thuringia - landscapes, cities, hikes ). Justus Perthes Verlag, Gotha 1996, ISBN 3-623-00973-3 .

Awards

• Art award of the Gera district

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Brigitte Böttcher (Ed.): Inventory. Literary profiles . Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1976, Erich Kriemer, p. 54 f .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Brigitte Schmidt-Schaller: Participate in a narrative. Conversation with the author Erich Kriemer, district chairman of the Association of Writers of the GDR . In: People's Watch . Gera November 26th 1976.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Dieter Fechner , Hedwig Völkerling: Thuringian authors of the present. A lexicon . 1st edition. Quartus-Verlag, Bucha bei Jena 2003, ISBN 3-931505-47-2 , Kriemer, Erich, p. 114 .
4. ↑ Blurb to Where the Vltava flows .
5. ↑ Swetlana Ritscher: Everyday stories from yesterday and today . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung . September 8, 1975.
6. ↑ Marius Koity: insulted liver sausage. The surveillance paranoia during the Cold War using the example of the brother states of the GDR and Romania . In: Thuringian General . Independent newspaper for politics, business, culture and sport. December 2, 2017, media, p. 29 .
7. ↑ jurgko: I am your ice cream man. How I was put on hold In: pageballs.com. Pageballs GmbH, accessed June 30, 2019 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} Georg Herbstritt : Double surveillance: Why, in addition to the Securitate, the GDR State Security also dealt with Romanian German writers and Germanists . In: Gerhardt Csejka , Stefan Sienerth (Ed.): Vexierspiegel Securitate. Romanian-German authors in the sights of the communist secret service (=  publications of the Institute for German Culture and History of Southeast Europe at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München . Volume 129 ). Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-7917-2679-3 , Chapter 4. Against the ruling order: writers in the Banat . An MfS report from 1982, p. 31–47 , here pp. 38–42 .
9. ↑ Folk art collectives and circles in the “Völkerfreundschaft” cultural center, ceramic works Hermsdorf. Circle of writing workers. In: hermsdorf-regional.de. Stefan Lechner, Mike Enke, accessed on June 30, 2019 .