Ernst Ottwalt

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Ernst Ottwalt (born November 13, 1901 in Zippnow , today Sypniewo, in the Deutsch Krone district in West Prussia ; † August 24, 1943 in a Soviet camp near Arkhangelsk ; actually Ernst Gottwalt Nicolas ) was a German writer .

Life

Ernst Ottwalt attended high school in Halle and studied in Jena rights . His political biography is marked by a radical change of sides: As a young man, after the First World War, he first joined the German National Freikorps fighters. He changed his political stance, became a communist and joined the KPD and the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers (BPRS). He described his experience of the Freikorps in the novel “ Peace and Order ” from 1929. In November 1930 Friedrich Neubauer staged Ottwalt's un-preserved miner's drama “Every day four” about a mine accident in the Silesian Neurode on the Piscator stage . Together with Bertolt Brecht , he wrote the screenplay for the workers' film “ Kuhle Wampe or: Whom does the world belong to? “(1932). In 1931 he wrote the justice novel "Because they know what they do", in which Ottwalt describes the social structure of the German judiciary. "The career of an average German lawyer is portrayed with the means of the early naturalistic novel" ( Kurt Tucholsky ).

A year later, in 1932, “Germany awake! History of National Socialism ”, an early and clairvoyant study of the danger and the triumph of the National Socialist movement. When the National Socialist book burning of May 10, 1933, his work was on the black list drawn up by Wolfgang Herrmann ; Ottwalt's name was also marked with a cross to identify him as one of the "real pests" - such as Egon Erwin Kisch , Alfred Kerr or Kurt Tucholsky - "that would also have to be eradicated for the book trade" (Wolfgang Herrmann).

In addition to the novels and the study on the NSDAP, Ottwalt wrote, according to his biographer Andreas W. Mytze, together with Hanns Eisler in 1932 a radio story entitled “Californian Ballad”. The original broadcast ran in 1934 on Flemish Radio ; Ernst Busch sang Eisler's songs. In 1968 it was broadcast in German for the first time on radio in the GDR . This early radio play tells the story of Johann August Sutter , a Swiss who emigrated to America in the 19th century.

Ottwalt left Germany in 1934 and went into exile to Denmark , then, via Czechoslovakia , to Moscow . There he came under suspicion of espionage in the course of the Stalinist purges and in the clutches of the Soviet secret police. He was arrested in 1936 and deported to a camp near Arkhangelsk for forced labor. Georg Lukács encouraged this with his verdict in a review of Ottwalt's novels: “It doesn't take long discussion to see clearly that such 'heroes', without being identical with their authors, faithfully reflect their class position.” His Mrs. Waltraut Nicolas, who was also arrested and sentenced to forced labor, did not find out about his death until many years later.

Works

The book "Germany awake!" Is considered to be one of the earliest analyzes of the rise of the National Socialists. Ernst Ottwalt's work was largely forgotten after the Second World War.

  • Silence and order. Novel from the life of the nationally minded youth. Malik-Verlag, Berlin 1929. New edition: Hasenverlag, Halle (Saale) [2014], ed. And vers. by Christian Eger, ISBN 978-3-945377-03-1 .
  • Because they know what they are doing. A German justice novel. Malik-Verlag, Berlin 1931. New edition: Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-945831-14-4 .
  • Germany awake! History of National Socialism. Hess, Vienna / Leipzig 1932 .
  • Californian ballad. Radio story, together with Hanns Eisler, 1932.

literature

  • Robert Cohen: The dangerous aesthetics of Ernst Ottwalt. In: The German Quarterly . Volume 61, issue 2/1988, pp. 229–248.
  • Robert Cohen: Man's World. Violence. Weimar Republic. Right-wing extremists in Joseph Roth's early work and in Ernst Ottwalt's “Peace and Order”. In: Modern Austrian Literature. 30. Vol. 1, 1997, pp. 48-68.
  • Walter Fähnders:  Ottwalt, Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 717 ( digitized version ).
  • Andreas W. Mytze: Ottwalt. Life and work of the forgotten revolutionary writer. European Ideas Publishing House, Berlin 1977.
  • Dieter Schiller: About Ottwalt, Herzfelde and the League of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers in Prague. Studies and documents (= Pankower lectures. Volume 44). Helle Panke, Berlin 2002.
  • Jürgen Serke : The burned poets. Life stories and documents. Beltz-Verlag, Weinheim 1992 (pp. 338-342).
  • Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books. Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 (on Ottwalt pp. 148-151).
  • Ottwalt, Ernst. In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( bundesstiftung-aufendung.de ).
  • Ursula El-Akramy: Transit Moscow - Margarete Steffin and Maria Osten. European Publishing House , Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-434-50446-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas W. Mytze: Ottwalt. Life and work of the forgotten revolutionary German writer. European Ideas, Berlin 1977, p. 71.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Hans Christoph Buch: Silent in many ways. Rediscovered: Ernst Ottwalt's novel “Peace and Order”. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. July 31, 2015, p. 14.
personal data
SURNAME Ottwalt, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nicolas, Ernst Gottwalt (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and radio play author
DATE OF BIRTH November 13, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Zippnow
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1943
Place of death at Arkhangelsk