Erich Weinert

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Memorial plaque on the house at Kreuznacher Strasse 34 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf
Erich Weinert Monument in Frankfurt (Oder)

Erich Bernhard Gustav Weinert (born August 4, 1890 in Magdeburg , † April 20, 1953 in Berlin ) was a German writer and from 1943 president of the National Committee Free Germany .

Life

Weinert was influenced by his social-democratic father early on in politics. After attending the boys' bourgeois school in Magdeburg, Weinert became an apprentice in locomobile construction in the Buckauer machine factory Rudolf Wolf . His father had refused him the Abitur because he feared classiness. Weinert received the youth consecration in 1904 . From 1908 to 1910 he attended the Magdeburg School of Applied Arts and Crafts . In 1912 he completed his studies at the Royal Art School in Berlin with a state examination as an academic drawing teacher. After a short freelance work, Weinert was drafted into the military, where he took part in the First World War as an officer .

Together with other young artists, Weinert founded the artist community Die Kugel . In 1919 and 1920 he worked as a teacher at the Magdeburg School of Applied Arts, which he attended as a pupil. In early 1920 he published his first poems in the magazine of the community. In Leipzig he worked as an actor and lecturer. From May 1921 he had great success with his cabaret texts in the Leipzig cabaret “Retorte”. The texts were published under the title Der bent Zeitspiegel and Der Gottesgnadenhecht and other waste . From 1923 Weinert appeared in the artist café "Küka" in Berlin. Weinert published his texts in many communist and left-wing bourgeois magazines, but was banned from speaking in Prussia . Weinert was one of the founding members of the League of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers . In 1929 he joined the KPD . He was an employee of the Red Flag . In 1930 he started working with Hanns Eisler and Ernst Busch .

From 1933 to 1935 Weinert went with his second wife Elisabeth and his daughter from his first marriage into exile in the Saar region , via Switzerland and Paris , where he was wanted in 1934. After the Saar plebiscite in 1935, he returned to Paris in order to travel straight back to the Soviet Union , where he worked for Radio Moscow , among others . Here he belonged to the Moscow party group of the KPD, which was affected by Stalinist purges, and was involved in the closed party meeting of the German Commission of the Writers' Union of the USSR in September 1936 with its "revealing self-criticism and mutual denunciation" ( Reinhard Müller ). His devastating criticism of his young colleague Samuel Glesel in the Deutsche Zentralzeitung was one of the reasons for his exclusion from the writers' association and the party in 1936. Glesel was arrested in 1937 and shot as part of the " German Operation ". Weinert knew that the Erfurt communist Paul Schäfer, who was living in exile in Moscow , had also been shot there by the Soviet secret police in 1938, but shared the legend that he was killed in Spain in 1937. Weinert was a member of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War from 1937 to 1939 , where he worked as a front-line reporter and wrote the song of the International Brigades . He was then interned in the Saint-Cyprien camp (Pyrénées-Orientales) from February to autumn 1939 , where he became seriously ill.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union , Weinert worked as a propagandist on the Soviet side . Leaflets printed with his poems were dropped in large numbers behind the German lines. In 1943 he was elected President of the National Committee Free Germany.

The grave slab for Erich Weinert in the memorial of the socialists in Berlin

In 1946 Weinert returned to Germany and, already seriously ill, worked as Vice President of the Central Administration for National Education in the Soviet Zone of Occupation ( SBZ ). Like many artists and scientists, he lived at 201 Street . Shortly before his death, he published a memory book by the painter Heinrich Vogeler, who was friends with him in Soviet exile .

Volker Koepp portrayed his life and work in 1975 in the DEFA documentary film He couldn't be silent today .

Others

In 1958, his daughter Marianne Lange-Weinert published a novel-like autobiography about her childhood and life with her father and stepmother in the children's book publisher Berlin under the title Girl Years .

Fonts (selection)

  • Monkey theater. Poems. Leon Hirsch Verlag, Berlin 1925
  • Call into the night. Poems from abroad 1933–1943. People and the world, Berlin 1950.
  • Memento Stalingrad. A front notebook. People and the world, Berlin 1951.
  • Camaradas. A book of Spain. People and the world, Berlin 1952
  • Collected Works. (9 volumes), published 1955–1960.
  • Collected poems. (7 volumes), published 1970–1987.
  • The bent time mirror.
  • The mercy pike and other waste.
  • The secret march .
  • The lewd Zille.
  • Rich man's spring day.
  • John Schehr and comrades.
  • The National Committee for Free Germany 1943–1945. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1957.
  • Poetry album 5th Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1968.

Honors

Renaming of the House of Culture to "Erich-Weinert-House of German-Soviet Friendship" in Magdeburg on June 25, 1953
Memorial plaque for Erich Weinert on the facade of the former arts and crafts school in Magdeburg

literature

Sound carrier

  • Erich Weinert - Thoughts, Light, Hearts Fire, Fists, Power. Litera, VEB DSB, 1965.
  • Erich Weinert speaks! Audio documents. Litera , 1989.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Valentina Choschewa: "VOICE OF RUSSIA celebrates 85th anniversary" . In: “Voice of Russia, October 28, 2014”, accessed October 29, 2014.
  2. ^ Hanno Müller: Paul Schäfer's death in Spain was an infamous lie of the GDR leadership. An exhibition in the Erfurt learning center, Topf and Sons, recapitulates the murder of the communist shoe worker in Moscow in 1938 . Thuringian regional newspaper, August 29, 2018
  3. ↑ max-lingner-stiftung.de
  4. ↑ Poetry album 5 .
  5. ↑ Super User: The Paritätische | Integral GmbH - Recreation Education Experience in Saxony-Anhalt - History. In: www.integral-ggmbh.de. Retrieved December 22, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Anna F. Schwarzbach with information on her works ( Memento from March 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Note at Defa-Sternstunden
  8. ^ Fritz Spalink: Heringsdorf stories . Ed .: Werner Molik. 2nd Edition. Ostseebad Heringsdorf March 2017, p. 84 .
personal data
SURNAME Weeping, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weinert, Erich Bernhard Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH April 20, 1953
Place of death Berlin