Franz Fuehmann

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Franz Antonia Josef Rudolf Maria Fühmann , according to the certificate of baptism Franz Antonie Josef , (born January 15, 1922 in Rochlitz an der Iser , Czechoslovakia ; † July 8, 1984 in East Berlin ) was a German writer and one of the most important authors of the GDR . He lived and worked as a narrator, essayist, poet and children's book author. In his youth he was influenced by National Socialism , after the war he became a supporter of socialism , but he was increasingly critical of the development of the GDR, of which he was bitterly disappointed in his later years.

Franz Fühmann (right) at the Berlin Peacebuilding Encounter in 1981

Life

Memorial plaque at Strausberger Platz 1 in Berlin-Friedrichshain

Franz Fühmann, the son of a pharmacist, was born in Rochlitz an der Iser (Rokytnice nad Jizerou) in the Giant Mountains.After primary school, he attended the Kalksburg Jesuit Convict near Vienna for four years , from which he fled in 1936. He then graduated from high school in Reichenberg ( Liberec ) in northern Bohemia, joined the German Gymnastics Association (later the Sudeten German Hitler Youth) and in 1937 became a member of the Hercynia fraternity . In the year of the annexation of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany , he joined the Reiter SA . After changing schools, he passed his Matura at the Reform Realgymnasium in Hohenelbe ( Vrchlabí ) in 1941 .

In 1941, she was briefly enrolled at the University of Prague (mathematics), became a member of the Reich Labor Service and finally joined the Wehrmacht . He served as an intelligence soldier in the Soviet Union and Greece . During the Second World War , some of his poems appeared in the weekly newspaper " Das Reich ". In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets and in 1946 was assigned to the Antifa school in Noginsk near Moscow .

In 1949 Fühmann came to the GDR from captivity , where he lived in Märkisch Buchholz (from 1958) and Berlin until his death . In the same year she joined the NDPD . Until 1958 he worked as a cultural and political employee in their party apparatus. Since 1952 he was also a board member of the German Writers' Association (DSV) . He was a member of the NDPD until 1972. From 1958 until his death he was a freelance writer. In 1952 his daughter Barbara was born.

In addition to his own writing activity, Fühmann was also active in cultural policy. He promoted many young authors and in later years stood up for writers who had to suffer from harassment and repression by the GDR leadership. In 1976 he was one of the first to sign a protest letter against Wolf Biermann's expatriation from the GDR.

Franz Fühmann received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze in 1955 and the Heinrich Mann Prize in 1956 ; He was awarded the National Prize of the GDR in 1957 and 1974 , the German Critics ' Prize in 1977 and the Geschwister Scholl Prize in 1982. He received other national and international awards and was a member of the Academy of Arts .

Fühmann died in 1984 of cancer. At his request, he was buried in Märkisch Buchholz, not in the unloved Berlin.

Create

Franz Fühmann, 1973

Franz Fühmann was a very versatile author who, in addition to his own early poems , adaptations from Czech and Hungarian, many books for children and young readers, essays and a rich narrative work, also made many unusual literary attempts. For example, he wrote a ballet ( Kirke and Odysseus ) and, together with the photographer Dietmar Riemann, published a book about people with intellectual disabilities ( What an island in what a sea ), with whom he had worked again and again for three years, and put together a volume of poems that he had not written (only the sometimes quite long headings were from him), but rather taken from Steputat's Reimlexikon ( Urworte. German ).

Writing literature for children and young people was an important concern of Fühmann's life. He wrote his first children's book at the request of his daughter Barbara. A large number of other books followed later, including fairy tales , Punch and Judy plays, books that dealt with language and played with it ( Funny Animal ABC , The Steaming Necks of Horses in the Tower of Babel ), and numerous retellings of classic literary subjects and sagas ( Reynard the fox , The Wooden horse ( Iliad and Odyssey ), Prometheus. The Titan battle , The song of the Nibelungs ). Fühmann also corresponded a lot with children, his readers. This is how “commissioned works” ( fairy tales made to order ) were created.

Fühmann left an extensive narrative work. His early stories are often autobiographical . In the story volume Das Judenauto he describes subjects from his childhood and youth. In further stories he deals intensively with the time of National Socialism and his own involvement with it. The concept of "change", for him personally from the supporter of National Socialism to the then still convinced socialist , the possibility of change in general, is extremely important for Fühmann. These topics, along with many others , play a major role in Twenty-Two Days or Half of Life , one of Fühmann's main works. In the form of a diary from a trip to Hungary, Fühmann reflects on various topics and also includes short stories.

Another focus of Fühmann's literary work was fairy tales, sagas and myths . The preoccupation with it permeates many of his works, from children's literature to many of his stories ( The Ear of Dionysius ) to his essayistic work. With his essays Fühmann also contributed to the publication of authors whose works hardly appeared or never appeared in the GDR ( Georg Trakl , Sigmund Freud ).

Starting with the twenty-two days , Fühmann dealt increasingly critically with the socialist society of the GDR. He tried - later also publicly - with a large number of letters to GDR politicians to convince them of changes in their policy, especially cultural policy. His work increasingly reflects this, in a special way Saiäns-fiktschen . He withdrew from cultural-political contexts in the GDR, such as the GDR Writers' Association and the Academy of Arts. In the last years of his life he began to despair of the political conditions in the GDR; his correspondence with Christa Wolf ( Monsieur - we will find each other again ) shows this particularly clearly. He was also unable to complete his long-planned main work, the “mine project” that recurs in his letters and notes. It was published posthumously , with the subtitle he himself added, “Fragment of a Failure”, under the title Im Berg . This book, published in 1991, which contains other texts in addition to the fragment, also shows that this late work was nevertheless successful from a literary point of view. The assessment that is not uniform among literary scholars is shown by the fact that some, like the literary scholar and very good connoisseur of the work Sigrid Damm , refer Fühmann's self-assessment directly to this work.

Quotation from his will, one year before his death:

I am in excruciating pain. The bitterest one is that of having failed: in literature and in the hope of a society as we all once dreamed of.

reception

The Akademie der Künste in Berlin maintains the literary estate of Fühmann, and its work library , which contains around 17,000 volumes and has been marked with many underlines and notes, is part of the historical collections of the Central and State Library in Berlin .

The fascination of Fühmann's work is shown, among other things, in the fact that young artists such as Barbara Gauger are still committed to his work today. The work of the Franz Fühmann Circle of Friends in Märkisch Buchholz / Berlin also testifies to the continued impact of Franz Fühmann's work. The International Franz Fühmann Circle of Friends is based in Berlin-Kreuzberg and has set itself the task of "... keeping the work of the prose writer, essayist, poet and retouch alive in people's minds and thus allowing it to continue to have an effect in the present and future". The edition of letters, which has been published by Hinstorff Verlag since 2016, makes a significant contribution to the reception of the work . a. the relationships with his editors Kurt Batt and Ingrid Prignitz, which are so important for Fühmann, are honored in separate volumes.

In the novel, The Tower of Uwe Tellkamp the figure of George Altberg contributes significantly fühmann'sche trains.

Works

Fühmann bust by Wieland Förster in Kiskőrös

Catalog raisonné

Works (selection)

  • The trip to Stalingrad. A seal. Berlin: construction 1953 (writings to the German nation)
  • From Moritz, who no longer wanted to be a dirty child . Narrative. Berlin: The children's book publisher 1959
  • Cable crane and Blue Peter. Rostock: Hinstorff 1961
  • The Jewish car . A fortnight out of two decades. [First edition] Berlin: Aufbau 1962. (first edition of the unabridged edition: Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 1979; new edition Rostock 2019)
  • The Nibelungenlied. Rostock: Hinstorff 1971.
  • Twenty-two days or half of life. Rostock: Hinstorff 1973.
  • Stories 1955–1975 . Rostock: Hinstorff 1977 a. 1993
  • The steaming necks of the horses in the Tower of Babel : a playbook about language; a non-fiction book on language games; a language book full of toys. Illustrations by Egbert Herfurth. Berlin: Children's book publisher 1978.
  • Poems and post-poems . Rostock: Hinstorff 1978 a. 1993
  • Odyssey and homecoming of Odysseus. Prometheus. The lover of the dawn and other tales. Rostock: Hinstorff 1980 a. 1993
  • Before fires. Experience with Georg Trakl's poem . Rostock: Hinstorff 1982
  • Essays, Talks, Articles 1964–1981 . Rostock: Hinstorff 1983 a. 1993
  • Among the paranyas. Dream narratives and notations . Rostock: Hinstorff 1988 a. 1993
  • Fairy tales to order . Edited by Ingrid Prignitz. Rostock: Hinstorff 1990
  • In the mountain. Texts and documents from the estate edited by Ingrid Prignitz. Rostock: Hinstorff 1991

Filmography

Films based on works by Franz Fühmann or for which he wrote the script:

literature

  • Marcel Reich-Ranicki : Comrade Fühmann. In: German literature in West and East . Munich: Piper Verlag 1963, 422-433. [Numerous reprints also under the title The faithful poet of his lords .]
  • Erich Loest : Brother Franz. 3 lectures on Franz Fühmann, go to d. Univ. Paderborn. Paderborn: Schöningh (publications from the University of Paderborn, Linguistics and Literature Studies, Vol. 7).    
  • Horst Simon (Ed.): Between storytelling and silence. A book of remembrance and commemoration. Franz Fühmann zum 65. Hinstorff, Rostock 1987, ISBN 3-356-00064-0 (contains an extensive bibliography that also includes articles in magazines and literature about Fühmann as well as reviews of his works).
  • Irmgard Wagner: Franz Fühmann. Thinking about literature . Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1989, ISBN 3-533-04087-9 .
  • Hartmut Mechtel : Franz Fühmann . In: Erik Simon , Olaf R. Spittel (ed.): The science fiction of the GDR. Authors and works. A lexicon. Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-360-00185-0 , pp. 139-141.
  • Uwe Wittstock : Franz Fühmann. Munich: Beck 1988 (Beck'sche series 610: authors' books). 
  • Hans Richter: Franz Fühmann. A German poet's life . Aufbau-Verlag , Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-7466-1743-X . | Updated paperback edition: Franz Fühmann. A German poet's life. Biography. Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag 2001, ISBN 3-7466-1743-X .
  • Fritz J. Raddatz : Volksgenosse, Comrade, Dissident. A portrait of Franz Fühmann: The GDR writer's path is exemplary for a German generation - on the occasion of an estate volume. In: The time. 48th vol. 16 v. April 10, 1992, 10–11 [Reprinted under the abbreviated title Volksgenosse, Comrade, Dissident. In: Ders .: Writing means washing your heart. Literary essays. Jump: Klampen 2006, 171–184. ISBN 3-934920-95-0 ]
  • Eberhard Sauermann: Fühmann's Trakl essay - the fate of a book. To authorize the issues in the GDR and the FRG. Bern u. a .: Peter Lang 1992 (work on edition science, vol. 3).    
  • Barbara Heinze: Franz Fühmann. Nothing remains but the work . Exhibition catalog. Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1993, ISBN 978-3-88331-139-5 .
  • Dennis Tate: Franz Fühmann. Innovation and Authenticity. A study of his prose-writing. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Editions Rodopi BV 1995.
  • Ihmku Kim: Franz Fühmann - poet of "life". On the potential historical change in his texts . Peter Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1996, ISBN 3-631-30298-3 .
  • Barbara Heinze (Hrsg.): Franz Fühmann: a biography in pictures, documents and letters. Preface by Sigrid Damm. Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 1998, ISBN 3-356-00716-5 .
  • Brigitte Krüger u. a. (Ed.): Everyone has his or her pilot. Origin - coinage - habitus. Access to poetology and the work of Franz Fühmann. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Peter Lang  1998.  
  • Arne Born: Fühmann's open letter from November 1977. A postulate and its suppression. With unpublished documents . In: Berliner Hefte zur Geschichte des literary Lebens 3 (2000), pp. 81–115. ISSN  0949-5371 .
  • Brigitte Krüger u. a. (Ed.): To be a poet means to strive for the whole. Approaches to poetology and the work of Franz Fühmann. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Peter Lang 2003.
  • Henk de Wild: Bibliography of secondary literature on Franz Fühmann. Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2003.    
  • Christian Sachse: The black stuff that truth is made of. Franz Fühmann in search of his truth. In: Journal of the SED State Research Association No. 15/2003, ISSN  0948-9878 .
  • Gunnar Decker : Franz Fühmann. The art of failure. A biography . Hinstorff-Verlag, Rostock 2009, ISBN 978-3-356-01294-1 .
  • Christian Schobeß: Technology stories. Franz Fühmann's double strategy of technology in his volume of stories "Saiäns-Fiktschen" . In: Walter Delabar, Frauke Schlieckau (Ed.): Bluescreen. Visions, dreams, nightmares and reflections of the fantastic and utopian. Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 978-3-89528-769-5 , pp. 132-143.
  • Short biography for:  Fühmann, Franz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Jürgen Krätzer (guest editor): Franz Fühmann. In: Text + Critique (H. 202/203, IV / 14). Munich: Boorberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86916-321-5
  • Roland Berbig, Stephan Krause and Volker Scharnefsky (eds.): Literary mine - the world of work and Franz Fühmann's library. Central and State Library Berlin, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-925516-44-3 .
  • Peter Braun and Martin Straub (eds.): Inside. Approaches to Franz Fühmann. With photographs by Dietmar Riemann . Göttingen: (Wallstein Verlag) 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-1971-4
  • Paul Alfred Kleinert, Irina Mohr and Franziska Richter (eds.): “Be out of it all”. Berlin (FES and iFFF) 2017, ISBN 978-3-95861-648-6 .
  • Uwe Buckendahl: Franz Fühmann: "Das Judenauto" - a case of censorship in the GDR literature business. A historical-critical exploration with a synopsis of all published text variants. With an MP3 CD. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2017 (contributions to literature and literary studies of the 20th and 21st centuries. Vol. 28). ISBN 978-3-631-66124-6 .

obituary

  • Christa Wolf: Franz Fühmann. Commemorative speech . In: Frankfurter Rundschau v. September 29, 1984, p. ZB 3.

Web links

Commons : Franz Fühmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara Heinze (Ed.): Franz Fühmann. A biography in pictures, documents and letters. Hinstorff, Rostock 1998, p. 8 f.
  2. ^ New Germany , October 6, 1955, p. 3.
  3. ↑ Circle of Friends - franz-fuehmann.de
personal data
SURNAME Fühmann, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fühmann, Franz Antonie Josef; Fühmann, Franz Antonia Josef Rudolf Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochlitz an der Iser , Czechoslovakia
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1984
Place of death East Berlin