Ernst Herbeck

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Ernst Herbeck (born October 9, 1920 in Stockerau ; † September 11, 1991 in Maria Gugging ) was a patient in the Lower Austrian State Psychiatric Clinic Gugging for 45 years . Herbeck began to write poetry under the guidance of his doctor Leo Navratil .

Life

Ernst Herbeck was born with a cleft lip and palate and had an associated speech disorder. He graduated from secondary school and then attended business school for a year. At the age of 20 he was admitted to the Vienna Psychiatric University Clinic for the first time. Two years later there was a second stay in hospital. After his discharge from the clinic, Herbeck worked again as an unskilled worker in an armaments factory. In autumn 1944 he was drafted into the German military and released in March 1945 as unfit for military service. The third admission to the clinic took place in September of the same year. Herbeck was admitted for the fourth time in May 1946. He was transferred to hospital and has been hospitalized with a one-year hiatus since then.

He became known from 1966, initially in publications by Navratil, under the pseudonym "Alexander". Some of his poems were taken over by Heinar Kipphardt for his fictional character Alexander March , some were also changed and updated, which led to a controversy between Kipphardt and Navratil. Wolf Biermann set and sang three March poems and thus ensured that they were spread more widely. Herbeck's poems were only published in two collections under his own name after his death.

Unlike his fellow artists in Gugging Johann Hauser , August Walla and Oswald Tschirtner , who became central artists of Art brut with their painting , Ernst Herbeck always looked for artistic expression in poems. “Herbeck only wrote when requested and usually only after giving a title. He only made changes and corrections to his texts while they were being written, not afterwards, ”wrote Navratil about his way of working.

The writer and literary scholar WG Sebald describes a 1980 visit to Ernst Herbeck in his prose volume Schwindel (which, however, mixes real experiences and fictions) . Feelings. from 1990. Sebald has also dealt with Herbeck's texts in several essays.

In 2014 the composer Karlheinz Essl junior created the sound performance Herbeck's Promise on the basis of a sound recording of Herbeck's voice.

Publications

  • Alexander's poetic texts. Ed. Leo Navratil. dtv, Munich 1977. ISBN 3-423-01304-4 .
  • Quaking hearts in the body of dogs - Ernst Herbeck / Oswald Tschirtner. Ed. Leo Navratil. Rogner and Bernhard, Munich 1979. ISBN 3-8077-0128-1 .
  • Alexander. Selected texts. 1961-1981. Residence, Salzburg 1982. ISBN 3-7017-0319-1 .
  • Ernst Herbeck: In autumn the fairy wind comes in line. Collected texts 1960 - 1991. Residenz, Salzburg 1992. ISBN 3-7017-0762-6 .
  • Ernst Herbeck. The past is clearly over. Ed. by Carl Aigner and Leo Navratil. Brandstätter, Vienna 2002. ISBN 3-85498-164-3 .
  • Ernst Herbeck: The rabbit !!!! Selected poems . Edited and with an afterword by Gisela Steinlechner. Jung and Jung, Salzburg and Vienna 2013.

literature

  • Gisela Steinlechner: About the displacement of language. Analytical studies on the texts of Alexander. Viennese works on German literature 14. Braumüller, Vienna 1989. ISBN 3-7003-0827-2
  • Correspondence between Heinar Kipphardt and Leo Navratil. In: Heinar Kipphardt: March. Novel and materials. Reinbek 1984, 239-256.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Heinar Kipphardt: Life of the schizophrenic poet Alexander M, Berlin 1976; March. Novel. Hamburg 1976; March. An artist's life. Play. Cologne 1980; March poems, in: Angelsbrucker Notes. Hamburg 1985, pp. 105-202
  2. See the correspondence between Kipphardt and Navratil
  3. Wolf Biermann: Half of Life, 1979
  4. In autumn there is the fairy wind , 1992 and the rabbit !!!! , 2013
  5. pp. 44–57 of the paperback edition
  6. see in the exhibition volume Krems
  7. http://www.essl.at/works/herbeck.html
  8. ^ Accompanying publication to the exhibition in the Kunsthalle Krems 2002. Selection from Herbeck's poetry, supplemented by autographs, Oswald Tschirtner's illustrations for the poems and texts that Herbeck wrote for pictures by August Walla . 2nd part of the volume: Texts by authors friend, Ernst Jandl , Friederike Mayröcker , Gerhard Roth , Sebald, and others