Ferdynand Goetel

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Ferdynand Goetel (1936)
Grave in Zakopane

Ferdynand Goetel (born May 15, 1890 in Sucha Beskidzka , Austria-Hungary ; died November 24, 1960 in London ) was a Polish writer and emigrant.

Life

Ferdynand Goetel attended various schools and began studying architecture at the Vienna University of Technology in 1909 . When the First World War broke out , he stayed in Warsaw in the Russian Empire and was interned as an enemy alien in the interior of the country to Tashkent . After the Bolsheviks seized power ("October Revolution"), he joined the Red Army in the Caucasus in 1918, and worked through his experiences in the novel "Kar Chat" (1922).

But he deserted from the Red Army in 1919 to return to the re-established Poland. His journey through Iran, Afghanistan, India and Great Britain lasted fourteen months.

Goetel wrote novels and travel books that were well received. He also wrote for the theater. His novel Z dnia na dzień ("From day to day"), which is based on his experiences in the tsarist internment camp, was filmed by Józef Lejtes in 1929, Goetel also provided the script. By 1939 he worked on a total of nine films as a screenwriter.

He was from 1932 Chairman of the Polish Writers' Association and from 1926 to 1933 President of the Polish PEN 1936 he was at the suggestion of Karol Irzykowski among the fifteen members of the Polish Academy of Literature selected. In his volume of essays “Pod znakiem faszyzmu” (Under the Sign of Fascism, 1938) Goetel expressed his sympathy for Italian fascism and spoke out in favor of a camp of national unity. However, there was no place for the Polish Jews in it, so they had to be urged to emigrate. However, Goetel firmly rejected German National Socialism as "primitive and brutal".

After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, he worked in the Polish resistance. During the German occupation he was initially suspected of sympathy for the Nazi regime; because of his alleged cooperation with the German Propaganda Office in Warsaw, he was warned by the Polish resistance . However, Goetel was repeatedly arrested by the Gestapo and beaten during interrogation in the Gestapo prison in Pawiak . He also did not publish during the German occupation.

Goetel and his wife Jadwiga helped Jewish citizens to escape persecution by the German occupiers. Jadwiga Goetel was posthumously honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 2004.

In 1943, Goetel was a prominent writer among the Poles who were requested by the occupiers to visit the exhumation of the victims of the Katyn massacre on site. He informed members of the Polish resistance movement about the invitation from the Germans to Katyn, he was advised to accept it, as this would clarify the fate of the missing Polish officers who had become prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. He was flown to Smolensk in a small group that included the writer Jan Emil Skiwski and the Director of Polish Welfare (RGO) Edmund Seyfried .

After his return from Katyn he wrote a report for the Polish underground, which was also forwarded to the Polish government- in- exile in London. Goetel also reported on the trip at secret meetings of AK leaders. The commander in chief of the AK, General Stefan Rowecki , certified that he had “rendered outstanding services to Poland”. The reports forwarded to London reinforced the government-in-exile in its suspicion that the officers of the Polish armed forces had been murdered by the Soviet Union.

After the establishment of a communist regime in Poland, Soviet responsibility for this mass murder was denied in the entire Eastern Bloc, and dissenters were persecuted, also on charges of collaboration with the Nazi regime. Goetel initially hid in a Krakow monastery. With a forged Dutch passport, he was able to flee to Bavaria via Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1946. From there he traveled on to the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, which had fought against the Wehrmacht on the side of the Allies under the command of General Władysław Anders , in Ancona, Italy . After a review showed that the allegations that Goetel had collaborated with the German occupiers during the war were irrelevant, he was assigned to the press staff of the Anders Army .

With thousands of demobilized soldiers from the Anders Army, Goetel and his wife settled in London, where he lived for the next fifteen years under poor conditions in political exile and worked for organizations in exile. In 1952 he testified before the American Congress of Inquiry into Katyn ( Madden Commission ).

Goetel's remains were transferred to Zakopane in 2003.

Works (selection)

  • Kar Chat . Novel. 1922
  • Przez płonący Wschód: wrażenia z podróży . Warsaw, 1922
  • Pątnik Karapeta . Stories. 1923
  • Ludzkość: dwa opowiadania . Warsaw, 1925
  • Z dnia na dzień . Warsaw, 1926 (German edition: Von Tag zu Tag . Roman. Transl. By JM Schubert. Berlin: Zsolnay, 1931)
  • Egipt . Lwów, 1927
  • Humoreski . 1927
  • The refugee from Tashkent . Translated by JM Schubert. Berlin: Neufeld & Henius, 1927
  • Wyspa na chmurnej północy . Warsaw, 1928
  • Humanity . Two stories. Transfer from A. von Guttry. Berlin: Die Horen, 1928
  • Samuel Zborowski: Rycerz na podolu: sztuka historyczna . 1929
  • Serce lodów . Novel. 1930
  • Dziesięciu z Pawiaka . Drama. 1931
  • Podróż do Indii . Warsaw, 1933
  • Dzień wielkiej przygody . Drama. 1935. film
  • Foreman Czyż . From d. Polish. transfer by Heinrich Koitz. Breslau: Paul Kupfer, 1935
  • Pod znakiem faszyzmu . Warsaw: Rój, 1938
  • Cyclone . Warsaw, 1939
  • Czasy wojny . Autobiography. London, 1955
  • Never wait być małym . 1959
  • Anaconda . Novel. 1964 (posthumous)
  • Patrząc wstecz . Diary. London: Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1966 (posthumous)

literature

  • Thomas Urban : Katyn 1940. History of a crime Munich: CH Beck, 2015
  • Krzysztof Polechoński: Pisarz w czasach wojny i emigracji: Ferdynand Goetel i jego twórczość w latach 1939–1960 Breslau: Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2012 (contains a summary in German: The writer in the exile of Goetel and his work in the times of war in the years 1939–1960 )
  • Article Ferdynand Goetel in: Stanley S. Sokol, Sharon F. Mrotek Kissane, Alfred L. Abramowicz: The Polish biographical dictionary . Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1992, p. 129. ISBN 0-86516-245-X Google Books (en)
  • Klaus-Peter Friedrich: The "Case Józef Mackiewicz" and Polish contemporary history , in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , 2000, pp. 697–717

Web links

Commons : Ferdynand Goetel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Czesław Miłosz : The history of Polish literature. Stanford 1983, p. 423.
  2. ↑ Tomasz Zbigniew Zapert, Ferdynand Goetel - ostatnia ofiara Katynia , in: Rzeczpospolita , February 29, 2008, p. 8.
  3. ^ Entry Goetel, Ferdynand , in: Stanley S. Sokol, Sharon F. Mrotek Kissane, Alfred L. Abramowicz: The Polish biographical dictionary . Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. P. 129. ISBN 0-86516-245-X .
  4. ↑ a b c Thomas Urban: Katyn 1940 , 2015, pp. 92–94
  5. ↑ a b John P. Fox: The Katyn case and the propaganda of the Nazi regime. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Volume 30, 1982, Issue 3, pp. 462–499 ( PDF )
  6. ↑ Tomasz Wolsza: “To co wiedziałem przekracza swą grozą najśmielsze fantazje.” Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, p. 30.
  7. ↑ More Righteous Honored in Kraków , at sprawiedliwi, April 30, 2015
  8. ↑ Tomasz Wolsza: “To co wiedziałem przekracza swą grozą najśmielsze fantazje.” Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, p. 150.
  9. ↑ Tomasz Wolsza: “To co wiedziałem przekracza swą grozą najśmielsze fantazje.” Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, p. 230.
  10. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre . US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, vol. IV, p. 847.
  11. ↑ Ferdynand Goetel: Czasy wojny. Kraków 2005, pp. 99-101.
  12. ↑ Ferdynand Goetel: Czasy wojny. Kraków 2005, pp. 145–147.
  13. ↑ Tomasz Wolsza: “To co wiedziałem przekracza swą grozą najśmielsze fantazje.” Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, p. 98.
  14. ↑ The Katyn Forrest Massacre, vol. IV, pp. 760-768.
personal data
SURNAME Goetel, Ferdynand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish writer and emigrant
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Sucha Beskidzka , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1960
Place of death London