Ernesto Cardenal

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Ernesto Cardenal (2009)

Ernesto Cardenal Martínez (born January 20, 1925 in Granada , Nicaragua , † March 1, 2020 in Managua , Nicaragua) was a Catholic priest , socialist politician and poet . During the successful revolution in Nicaragua through the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) he was the country's minister of culture between 1979 and 1987 . Along with Rubén Darío, Cardenal is one of the most important poets in Nicaragua.

Life

Origin and path to ordination

Ernesto Cardenal came from a wealthy upper class family in Nicaragua. His maternal great-grandfather Jakob Taifel was of Jewish origin. His brother Fernando Cardenal was a Jesuit . The publisher Pedro Chamorro , murdered in 1978, was a cousin. Ernesto first attended school in León , then he returned to Granada as a student of the Jesuit college. During this time his first attempts at writing - mostly elegiac love poems - took place .

From 1942 to 1946 he studied philosophy and literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico , then until 1949 at Columbia University in New York . In 1949 and 1950 he toured Italy, Spain and Switzerland. At the end of the 1950s he studied theology in Mexico and Colombia.

Cardenal had also continued his literary work as a student, being close to the circle of poets around Coronel Urtecho and Martinez Rivas. Politically engaged, he already took part in revolutionary movements during his studies. After a trip to Europe, he returned to Nicaragua in 1952, continued his literary work there, and in the same year he joined the opposition youth movement UNAP . In 1954 he took an active part in the April Revolution against the dictator Anastasio Somoza García , which was prematurely betrayed and ended with the deaths of many of his friends. Cardenal escaped a Somoza massacre only with difficulty, against which he had fought with literary means, including a humiliating poem.

In 1956 he had to leave the country. In 1957 he entered the Trappist Monastery of Gethsemani in Kentucky . There he was accompanied as a novice master by the poet monk Thomas Merton for two years . His book Vida en el amor (1959, German 1971, The Book of Love ) was written in the monastery . In 1959 he broke off his novitiate for health reasons and left Gethsemani.

Cardenal was then a guest of the Benedictine Abbey of Santa Maria de la Resurrección in Cuernavaca (Mexico) for two years . He studied Catholic theology there - among others with Ivan Illich . From 1961 he continued his studies in Medellín (Colombia), where he later worked as a teacher at the Seminario de Cristo Sacerdote of La Ceja . During this time he wrote the Salmos (1969; Ger . 1979, Psalms ), which are still considered a poetic expression of concerns in liberation theology and have later been translated into about 20 languages.

In 1965 Ernesto Cardenal was ordained a priest in Managua .

In Solentiname

Ernesto Cardenal in Frankfurt am Main (2012)

Half a year later, Cardenal and the writer William Agudelo founded a commune based on early Christian ideas on the island of Mancarrón in the Solentiname group of the Great Lake of Nicaragua. There he wrote his best-known book in Germany: The Gospel of the Peasants of Solentiname (1975; German 1977). In 1970 he went to Cuba for several months , where he wrote his Cuban Diary (1972; German 1980). In 1973 he visited the Federal Republic of Germany for the first time.

On October 13, 1977, he and a group of farmers from Solentiname occupied the barracks of the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua in San Carlos . The facilities in Solentiname were shortly afterwards destroyed by Somoza's soldiers. Cardenal went into exile in Costa Rica and joined the Sandinista Liberation Front, FSLN .

Back in Nicaragua until the end of his political career

On July 19, 1979, the day of the victory of the Nicaraguan Revolution over Anastasio Somoza Debayle , Cardenal returned to Nicaragua and was appointed Minister of Culture of the new Sandinista government. He campaigned for a “revolution without revenge” and initiated a comprehensive literacy campaign for the almost 70 percent illiterate in the country.

Before Cardenal returned to Nicaragua in 1979, he had visited the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in April ; he repeated this in 1989, when Khomeini was already dying. When Pope John Paul II visited Managua in March 1983, the latter publicly refused the blessing to Cardenal, who was kneeling in front of him, and instead exhorted him with a raised finger to "regulate his situation", thus referring to Cardenal's political commitment and his proximity to the Liberation Church alluded to. This public gesture was generally understood as exposure. During the Pope's visit to Nicaragua, Sandinista had loudly shouted the Pope down during his sermon. At the beginning of 1985 he was suspended from his office as a Catholic priest by John Paul II because of his political activities in the FSLN . Cardenal never tried to reverse these ecclesiastical sanctions. His brother, the Jesuit Father Fernando Cardenal , who had entered the Nicaraguan government as Minister of Education in July 1984, had already been expelled from the Jesuit order in December 1984. In February 2019, Cardenal's suspension from the priesthood was lifted by Pope Francis .

When the East Berlin magistrate was looking for a Nicaraguan artist to produce a mural in 1985, Cardenal - then Nicaragua's Minister of Culture - suggested the national prize winner for Nicaraguan naive art, Manuel García Moia .

Until 1987 Ernesto Cardenal held the office of Minister of Culture. Then the ministry was dissolved - allegedly for cost reasons. At the time of the FSLN rule, Cardenal was involved in the left-wing Volkskirche (iglesia popular) together with his brother Fernando and other Catholics and Protestants and represented its best-known leading figure abroad, mainly in Germany. In 1988 he founded international culture with Dietmar Schönherr - and development project Casa de los tres mundos in Granada. In 1990 the UN electoral alliance ( Unión Nacional Opositora ), led by Violeta Chamorro, won the parliamentary elections. In the new government, the moderate forces on both sides cooperated. In 1994 Ernesto Cardenal left the FSLN of Daniel Ortega in protest against what he believed to be authoritarian leadership . At the same time, however, he made it clear that he continued to see himself as “Sandinista, Marxist and Christian”.

After the end of the political career

Cardenal at a reading in March 2010 in the Kreuzkirche (Munich)

In January 1998 an arrest warrant for breach of the peace, theft, damage to property and membership in a criminal organization was issued against him, but was soon revoked. The reason for this was the alleged "occupation" of a property by members of the Cardenal-led foundation "Association for the Development of Solentiname".

After retiring from active party work, Cardenal concentrated again on his lyrical work. In addition to the USA, he was also on the road in Germany to present his work. In the early 1990s he presented a large fragmentary cycle of poems with the work Cántico Cósmico , which was published in German in 1995 under the title Gesänge des Universum . Just a few years after its publication, the work was recognized as a milestone in Latin American literature.

After a European tour in 2008, Cardenal had to cancel his return to his home country because he was threatened with a penalty there. He had publicly criticized the administration and lifestyle of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega . He was then sentenced to pay a fine for defamation at the resumption of a trial suspended in 2005, but he refused to pay the fine, which resulted in his accounts being blocked. Since then, Cardenal has not let up in denouncing the abuse of power by Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo and the extent of their corruption . In 2018 he said: "Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo have appropriated the entire country, including the judiciary, the police and the military, their power is unlimited."

Cardenal was involved in various social initiatives. With his friend Dietmar Schönherr he continued to support Casa de los tres mundos . He maintained friendly relations with the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez . In Germany, his fame grew through his reading trips with the musicians of the Grupo Sal .

Cardenal was treated for kidney failure in a hospital in Managua in February 2020 and died there on March 1.

Awards and honors

Ernesto Cardenal in November 2014

Works (selection)

Ernesto Cardenal's autograph
  • Cut the barbed wire. South American psalms. With an afterword by Dorothee Sölle . Wuppertal 1967.
  • The book of love. Latin American psalms. Gütersloh 1971.
  • Prayer for Marilyn Monroe and other poems. Epilogue: Kurt Marti . Wuppertal 1972.
  • In Cuba. Report from a trip. Wuppertal 1972.
  • The gospel of the peasants of Solentiname. 2 volumes. Wuppertal 1976/1978; New edition 1991, ISBN 3-87294-163-1 .
  • Meditation and resistance. Documentary texts and new poems. Preface by Helmut Gollwitzer . Gütersloh 1977.
  • In the night the words shine. Poems. Berlin 1979.
  • Poems. Spanish and German (= BS . Volume 705). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-518-01705-5 .
  • The poetic work. 9 volumes. Wuppertal 1985–1989.
  • We are stardust. New poems and selections from the work. Wuppertal 1993, ISBN 3-87294-537-8 .
  • Songs of the Universe - Cantico Cosmico. 2 volumes. Wuppertal 1995, ISBN 3-87294-549-1 .
  • Fill this blue planet with love. Wuppertal 1998, ISBN 3-87294-804-0 .
  • Memories. 3 volumes:
  • Born of stars. The poetic work. 2 volumes. Wuppertal 2012, ISBN 978-3-7795-0416-0 .

See also

literature

  • Helmut H. Koch : Ernesto Cardenal (=  writing elsewhere ). edition text + kritik, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-88377-417-0 .
  • Guido Heinen: "With Christ and the Revolution". History and work of the “iglesia popular” in Sandinista Nicaragua (1979–1990) (=  Munich Church History Studies . Volume 7 ). Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-17-013778-6 , p. 344 ( Munich University Writings ).
  • Carl-Jürgen Kaltenborn : Resurrection for the Nations. Prose and poetry by Ernesto Cardenal . With an introduction. Union Verlag, Berlin 1981, DNB  821111531 .
  • William Rowe: Ernesto Cardenal. Eros, Faith and the Consistency of the Epic. In: Nana Badenberg, Florian Nelle, Ellen Spielmann (eds.): Eccentric spaces. Festschrift for Carlos Rincón . Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-88099-678-4 , pp. 209-228.

Web links

Commons : Ernesto Cardenal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nicaragua investiga: Muere el poeta Ernesto Cardenal. March 1, 2020 ( nicaraguainvestiga.com [accessed March 2, 2020]).
  2. ^ Biography of Ernesto Cardenal [1] [accessed March 8, 2020].
  3. ^ Ernesto Cardenal: La revolución perdida. Memorias. 2nd Edition. Volume 3. Anamá, Managua 2004, p. 65.
  4. ^ Trappist Monastery of Gethsemani, accessed on November 27, 2011
  5. ↑ Humberto Ortega : On the uprising. Zabon, Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 39.
  6. ^ Ernesto Cardenal 80. In: Berliner Morgenpost . January 20, 2005, accessed January 23, 2013.
  7. ↑ Cf. Once, he says, he was received personally by Ayatollah Khomeini. In: Ernesto Cardenal, poet and Catholic priest, still causes controversy at age 86. In: The Washington Post . May 30, 2011 ( washingtonpost.com ); and the note: By the time, Cardenal returned to Iran in 1989… The dying Khomeini's exceptional gesture of granting Cardenal an interview… In: Stephen Henighan: Sandino's Nation: Ernesto Cardenal and Sergio Ramírez Writing Nicaragua, 1940–2012. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 2014, ISBN 978-0-7735-8243-9 ( scan in Google book search).
  8. ↑ A merciful act / What is behind the lifting of the sanctions against Cardenal. Focus Online , February 19, 2019. Retrieved March 3, 2020.
  9. ↑ Photo of the scene.
  10. ^ A b Arturo Wallace: Muere Ernesto Cardenal, el "poeta, sacerdote y revolucionario" símbolo de la poesía y la rebeldía de Nicaragua . In: BBC News Mundo . March 1, 2020 (Spanish, bbc.com [accessed March 2, 2020]).
  11. ↑ a b Asier Vera: The Ernesto Cardenal, el pilar de la Teología de la Liberación al que Juan Pablo II expulsó por sandinista. March 1, 2020, accessed March 2, 2020 (Spanish).
  12. ^ Revolt in the heart. In: Augsburger Allgemeine . January 20, 2005.
  13. ↑ Oscar Chavarría: La postura de la Iglesia Católica ante de la dictatura Somocista, la revolución Sandinista y el proceso democrático a partir de los documentos del episcopado (1970-1999). Pontificia Università Lateranense, Rome 2001, p. 67.
  14. ↑ Murals Berlin | Skandinavische Straße 26 ( Memento from October 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: wandbilder-berlin.de, accessed on November 27, 2011. Updated and expanded under: Wall paintings - Nicaragua - Wall paintings Berlin. In: wandbilderberlin.de, accessed on March 2, 2020.
  15. ↑ See taz . 19./20. October 1996.
  16. ↑ See Uwe Stolzmann in: Süddeutsche Zeitung . December 20, 2002
  17. ↑ Quoted from Peter Gaupp: An outcast back in the lap of the church. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . February 22, 2019, p. 2.
  18. ↑ Certificate (PDF; 210 kB) of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels with the laudation by Johann Baptist Metz , Frankfurt am Main 1980.
  19. ↑ GLOBArt Award 2009 ( Memento from February 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). In: globart.at, accessed on March 2, 2020.
  20. ^ Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art ( Memento from June 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). In: Small newspaper . June 20, 2010, accessed March 2, 2020.
  21. ↑ Ernesto Cardenal se merecía el premio desde hace años, dice Ramírez. In: La Prensa of May 3, 2012.
  22. ↑ Honorary doctorate from the University of Huelva , accessed on February 3, 2013.
  23. ↑ Awarding of the Theodor Wanner Prize 2014 to Ernesto Cardenal - Berlin, June 25, 2014
  24. ^ Honorary doctorate for Ernesto Cardenal , accessed on February 17, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Cardenal, Ernesto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cardenal Martínez, Ernesto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Nicaraguan priest, poet and politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Granada
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 2020
Place of death Managua