Franz Kurowski

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Franz Kurowski (born November 17, 1923 in Hombruch ; † May 28, 2011 in Dortmund ) was a German author . His first publications came from the time of National Socialism . From 1958 until his death he worked as a freelance writer . According to the German National Library, he has written 400 books for children and adults.

One focus is the Second World War , here he wrote, among other things, for the series Der Landser . Kurowski's books show various historical revisionist tendencies. A number of the books were published by right-wing extremist publishers such as Druffel-Verlag , Türmer-Verlag , Arndt-Verlag or Verlag Siegfried Bublies .

Life and education

Kurowski grew up in Dortmund, learned after the elementary school in the occupation of lathe operator and worked as a skilled worker. From 1942 he was deployed as a soldier in Southeast Europe and North Africa, he completed training as a radio operator, parachutist and interpreter for modern Greek. In 1942 he was awarded the Narrator Prize of the Watch in the Southeast . The watch in the southeast was one of around 100 printed matter published by the army's propaganda troops.

After 1945 he returned to his job and became a foreman, shift supervisor, and chairman of the supervisory board and works council in a machine factory. From 1958 he worked as a freelance writer and from 1968 to 1978 editor of Die Oase, the field newspaper of the German Africa Corps eV From 1989 to 1996 Kurowski was editor of the Deutsche Monatshefte . He lived in the Oespel district of Dortmund .

reception

So World War II was in seven volumes

In 1989 the right-wing extremist publisher Gert Sudholt initiated the project of a seven-volume story of the Second World War for the Berg publishing house . In the book right-wing extremism in Germany published by Wolfgang Benz in 1994 , Hans Sarkowicz cited the book project as an example of his portrayal of “journalism in the gray and brown zones”.

The seven-volume work should be designed from the "point of view of the military leaders and major operations, but also from the point of view of the soldiers". Kurowski, who was known for his "German national battle paintings" (Hans Sarkowicz), took over the editing of the work advertised as an "authentic non-fiction compendium", in which more than a thousand highly decorated soldiers should have their say. So was the Second World War in the far-right Druffel-Verlag from 1989 to 1995 appeared with the publisher Sudholt. It was re -published in 2007 and 2008 by Flechsig Verlag as a special edition and under the author's name of Franz Kurowski .

Air raid on Dresden

Kurowski wrote several books in which the air raids on Dresden from February 13-15, 1945 are discussed. In 1996 his The Massacre of Dresden and the Anglo-American Bomb Terror 1944/45 was published by Druffel-Verlag. 2001 Bombs over Dresden followed in the Vienna Tosa publishing company, which in 2003 also published Dresden February 1945 (a new edition of the book from 1996).

These books show historical revisionist tendencies and some of them use figures and factual assertions that have long been disproved by specialist science, some of which go back to statements by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry :

  • Keil and Kellerhoff continue to criticize his handling of a number of 60,000 fatalities, which the Federal Statistical Office allegedly calculated. Such a calculation by the Federal Office as claimed by Kurowski does not exist.
  • Kellerhoff criticized in the daily newspaper Die Welt 2005 the inflated number of 275,000 dead spread by Kurowski. The number goes back to an unchecked report launched by Nazi authorities.

In an anthology edited by the historians Andreas Ranft and Stephan Selzer , the historian Matthias Meinhardt describes Kurowski's strategy of "relativising German guilt through German suffering" as a historical revisionist, and Kurowski's attempts to downplay the guilt of the German air raids on Warsaw and Dresden are also used for this to make the "German Hiroshima ".

Bastiaan Robert von Benda-Beckmann counts Kurowski in the history of the Allied bombing in World War II among the German authors who were inspired by the British Holocaust denier David Irving . In this context, he names Kurowski's 1977 book Der Luftkrieg über Deutschland and The Dresden Massacre and the Anglo-American Bomb Terror 1944–1945 from 1995 and Kurowski's attacks on German historians who, in his opinion, would remain silent for reasons of German guilt. Kurowski is not the only German author for whom statements by British Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller served as a source for the thesis that the air raid on Dresden was a planned mass murder or genocide. The 'key witness' Fuller, retired in 1933, was a supporter of Oswald Mosley , founder of the British Union of Fascists .

Stalingrad

The book of Stalingrad. The battle that destroyed Hitler's myth , published in 1992 by Bastei Lübbe , serves, according to Insa Eschebach, “primarily to rehabilitate the decent, capable German soldiers”. “The term ' war crimes ' appears only in quotation marks, there is talk of 'brilliant successes' by the Wehrmacht and, finally, of the 'sacrifice' and 'downfall' of German soldiers. Kurowski describes Stalingrad as the ' Golgotha ​​of the 6th Army', without pointing out that this religious metaphor comes from the volume Stalingrad published in 1953 - up to the last patron of the former war reporter Heinz Schröter, a member of a propaganda company […] Where Stalingrad is stylized as 'Golgotha ​​of the 6th Army', the question of why a German army was there at all takes a back seat. "

Kurt Damerau reviewed Kurowski's Stalingrad Airlift in 1984 in the Ostpreußenblatt : The tragedy of the Air Force and the 6th Army , published by the right-wing extremist Kurt-Vowinckel-Verlag , said: “[…] Franz Kurowski [puts] a shocking, authentic report with 'Stalingrad Airlift' of the use of the German Air Force and of the great deaths of German soldiers in that Russian city. The tragedy of the desperate operation for an air supply to Stalingrad is in no way inferior to the tragedy of the downfall of the 6th Army in Stalingrad. Stalingrad also became a warning sign for the German Air Force, which to this day is a warning to nip any madness of war in the bud. The grandiose assurance of Reichsmarschall Göring that the enclosed army in Stalingrad would be supplied from the air was opposed to a reality that hit every requirement in the face. "

End of war

Keith Stimely reviewed Kurowki's book Unconditional surrender: Inferno in Deutschland 1945 , which was published in 1983 by right-wing extremist Druffel Verlag, in the historical revisionist Journal of Historical Review of the Institute for Historical Review , the world's leading organization for Holocaust denial . He certified the work that it operates "General history, from a revisionist perspective".

Submarine war

Hans Wagener classifies Kurowski's book Günther Prien , the Wolf and his Admiral , published in 1981 under the pseudonym Karl Alman in the right-wing extremist Druffel-Verlag, as "a prime example of a skilful handing down of National Socialist understanding of the Second World War".

Dirk Wilking , Managing Director of the Mobile Advisory Team at the Brandenburg Institute for Community Advice, uses Kurowski's Landser large volume hunt for "gray wolves" - 1943 - the submarine in a paper examining the function of Landser magazines for East German neo-Nazis Die im Atlantik from 1982 to describe the ideological content of the Landserhefte: “War is then also described as a 'fateful interplay', which consists of 'chance fortunes' and makes any question of guilt and consequences irrelevant. The close amalgamation of the terms war, fate (a phrase often used by Hitler's propaganda during the Second World War) and play ("interplay", "drama", "tragedy") [quotations from "gray wolves"] not only causes, like Antoni notices that it has an effect that harms the war, but makes the war appear to be something worth striving for. The 'divine' principle of the phenomenon of war is the fulfillment of duty for the 'Landser' authors: the natural event cannot take place without it. "Wilking also points out that no German soldier dies in the Landser ; instead, he" falls "and stumbles, so to speak about his "fate". Wilking again demonstrates this with numerous examples from hunting “gray wolves” .

The military historian Jürgen Rohwer began in 1957 with the critical investigation of the commander successes (sunk tonnage) of submarine commanders published under National Socialism. Kurowski was one of the authors who, regardless of Rohwer's research results, stuck to the information from Nazi propaganda (see also Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross ).

Usage in the USA

Historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies count Kurowski in their book The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture among the masters (English: "gurus") of American authors (English: "romancers") = Aufschneider or dreamers) who serve the local market with tendentious illustrated books about the Waffen-SS and the Wehrmacht and for whom the German war crimes are a taboo subject.

Pseudonyms A – Z, with book examples

Kurowski wrote many of his books under pseudonyms , each with a different focus. The pseudonyms also had the purpose of not damaging his reputation for less serious work.

  • Karl Alman
  • Panzer vor: The dramatic story of the German tank weapon and its brave soldiers. Flechsig, unchanged reprint of the new edition 2006.
  • Wolfgang Lüth : The successful submarine commander of World War II.
  • Heinrich H. Bernig
  • Rudiger Greif
  • Franz K. Kaufmann
  • Malta must fall: a histor. Narrative. Engelbert-Verlag 1960.
  • Uprising in Hellas. Engelbert 1960.
  • Volkmar Kühn
  • With Rommel in the desert. Battle and fall of the German Africa Corps 1941–1943. Sinewy.
  • Torpedo boats and destroyers in use 1939–1945. The fight and destruction of a weapon. Motorbuch-Verlag (1974).
  • The sea emergency service of the German Air Force. 1939-1945. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart (1978).
  • German paratroopers in World War II. Green devils in action and ground combat 1939–1945. Flechsig (July 1, 2006).
  • Jason Meeker (thrillers partly with exotic locations)
  • Miss Brasilia. Wine press (1969).
  • Between Tangier and Maipures. Wine press (1969).
  • The three million dollar party. Record-Verlag Viersen (1960).
  • Gloria Mellina
  • Saunders, Hrowe H.
  • The watch on the Rhine. Hitler's last battle in the Ardennes 1944/45. Kurt-Vowinckel-Verlag, 1984.
  • Johanna Schulz
  • Four are going to Greece
  • Journey to Doom: Use d. One-man torpedoes. Zimmermann, 1960, 272 pages.
  • Heinrich Schulze-Dirschau
  • Oder-Neisse: does Germany have to do without? Verlagsgemeinschaft Berg, Dept. Türmer-Verlag, 1991, 359 pages (right-wing publisher).
  • The German East: from the Order of Prussia to the core state of the German Empire. Türmer-Verlag, 1989, 511 pages (right-wing extremist publisher).

Awards

Memberships

Fonts

Non-fiction

  • German officers in government, business and science. Proof in the new job. Maximilian Verlag, Herford 1967.
  • Knight's cross bearers from East and West Prussia. Arndt publishing house
  • The Teutonic Order - 800 years of knightly community. Nikol Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, 1997, ISBN 3-933203-27-9 .
  • Gray wolves in a blue sea - the use of the German submarines in the Mediterranean. (ud pseudonym Karl Alman). Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-01193-7 .
  • Underwater War - Submarines on the Seven Seas 1939–1945. Econ Verlag, 1979, ISBN 3-7043-4062-6 .
  • The Dresden massacre and the Anglo-American bomb terror 1944–1945. Druffel, Berg 1995.
  • Or-Neisse. Does Germany have to do without? Türmer, Berg 1991.
  • Courland death kettle. Battle and fall of Army Group North 1944/1945. Podzun-Pallas 2000.
  • Assault guns - The tanks of the infantry. The dramatic history of a branch of arms 1939–1945. Co-author: Gottfried Tornau . Flechsig publishing house .
  • At the focal points of the Second World War. Career and military service of a field marshal. Memories of Erich von Manstein and Franz Kurowski. Verlag Siegfried Bublies , Schnellbach 2004, ISBN 3-926584-87-4 .
  • Sergeant Kurt Knispel. Flechsig Verlag, 2007.
  • The Frisians. The people by the sea. Türmer-Verlag , Berg am Starnberger See 1984, ISBN 3-88199-356-8 .
  • The Saxons. Fellow swords of Sahsnota. Weltbild publishing group , Augsburg 1991, ISBN 3-89350-336-6 .
  • The Brandenburg commandos. Germany's elite warrior spies in World War II . Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg PA 2005, ISBN 978-0-8117-3250-5 ( Stackpole military history series ), full text online at Google Books .

literature

  • R. Töppel: The whole war as an adventure: the writer and "historian" Franz Kurowski. In: Portal Military History, February 12, 2018
  • S. Schreurs: Franz Kurowski. A directory of his books. Dortmund 1973.
  • Authors' circle Ruhr-Mark (ed.): Franz Kurowski. 60 years of life, 30 years of the demonic of creative ideas. 1983.
  • A. Lenhard: On the text production of Franz Kurowski. The writer as the “chameleon” of the literary world? In: The good book for young people. 27, 1977, pp. 132-139.
  • G. Holtz: Franz Kurowski. Creator of the non-fiction book about war. Authors' circle Ruhr-Mark, 1983.
  • Alois Klotzbücher (ed.): Literary life in Dortmund. Association of Friends of the Dortmund City and State Library, Dortmund 1984, pp. 214 f., 226 f. (without ISBN).
  • A. Müller-Felsenburg: Franz Kurowski: chronicler, historian, narrator. In: youth book magazine. 3, 1993.

estate

A partial estate with a volume of approx. One running meter is in the Dortmund City and State Library, including two letters each to Walter Vollmer and Fritz Hüser .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice in the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung from June 8, 2011
  2. ^ A b c d e Hugo Ernst Buyer, Horst Wolff (Ed.): You write between Moers and Hamm . Hammer, Wuppertal 1974.
  3. ↑ a b c d Walter Gödden, Iris Nölle-Hornkamp, ​​Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (Hrsg.): Westphalian author lexicon. Schöningh, Paderborn 2002, ISBN 3-506-79744-1 , pp. 467-473; Online: Franz Kurowski in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
  4. ↑ Federal Archives: Official publications of the associations and units of the propaganda troops, introduction ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / startext.net-build.de
  5. ↑ a b Kürschner's German Literature Calendar 1988 . Gruyter, Berlin 1988.
  6. ^ Hans Sarkowicz: Journalism of the gray and brown zone. In: Wolfgang Benz Hrsg .: Right-wing extremism in Germany. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt Main 1994, p. 78.
  7. ↑ Every volume “So War der 2.Warden” deals with a “war year” from 1939. In 2007, volumes 1–4 were published as special editions by Flechsig Verlag. 1939: the year of the decision ; 1940: Blitzkrieg ; 1941: The road to world war ; 1942: The world at war ; Volumes 5–7 followed in 2008 by the same publisher. 1943: Die Wende ; 1944: The withdrawals ; 1945: The collapse. (Entries from DNB )
  8. ↑ The publisher specifies its focus as follows: "Above all, to focus on esotericism, history, illustrated books and gift books and to produce books for" everyone "." [1]
  9. ↑ Lars-Broder Keil, Sven Felix Kellerhoff: German legends: from the "dagger stab" and other myths of history . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2002, p. 136 Review by Perlentaucher
  10. ↑ Lars-Broder Keil, Sven Felix Kellerhoff: German legends: from the "dagger stab" and other myths of history. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2002, p. 146.
  11. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Append a zero. How many people died in the Dresden firestorm in 1945? In: The world. January 25, 2005.
  12. ↑ Richard Evans: David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial: (D) Unreliable testimony: the Red Cross, Walter Kleiner, and Karl Mehnert.
  13. ↑ www.geschichte.uni-halle.de ( Memento of the original from November 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschichte.uni-halle.de
  14. ^ Matthias Meinhardt: The myth of the 'Old Dresden' as a blueprint. In: Andreas Ranft, Stephan Selzer (Hrsg.): Cities from rubble: Disaster management between ancient and modern. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004, p. 175 ( online in the Google book search)
  15. ^ Bastiaan Robert von Benda-Beckmann (2010): A German catastrophe? German historians and the Allied bombings. 1945 Chapter 3: A Past becomes History. The professionalizing of military historiography of the air war in the Federal Republic since the 1970s. accessed online on March 18, 2012, here pp. 173, 174, 204, 206.
  16. ^ Bastiaan Robert von Benda-Beckmann (2010): A German catastrophe? German historians and the Allied bombings, 1945. Chapter 1: Putting the Allies on trial. Historical accounts of the Allied air war in the early Federal Republic, 1945-1970. accessed online on March 19, 2012, pp. 87f. (Presentation of Fuller's function for these German authors), p. 90 (Presentation of Fuller's political affiliation), p. 91 (Reference to the use of Fuller's statements by Kurowski).
  17. ↑ Insa Eschebach: Myth. Victim. Symbol. A review of the jubilee literature “50 Years of Stalingrad” . In: WerkstattGeschichte . 7, Hamburg 1994, pp. 87-91 here p. 89.
  18. ↑ http://archiv.preussische-allgemeine.de/1984/1984_06_09_23.pdf p. 11.
  19. ↑ Keith Stimely is a notable staff member of IHR until 1984. Website of the Anti-Defamation League via the IHR http://www.adl.org/ ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on March 14, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.adl.org
  20. ↑ Reviewed by Keith Stimely. In: Journal of Historical Review. volume 5 no. 2, 3, 4 (Winter 1984), p. 420. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v05/v05p415_Stimely.html accessed on March 12, 2012.
  21. ^ Hans Wagener: Günther Prien, the "bull of Scapa Flow". Self-stylization, hero cult and legend formation about a submarine commander. In: War and Literature / War and Literature Jahrbuch / Yearbook. III / IV (1997/1998) [2] p. 664 after Andreas Lehmann: Lothar-Günther Buchheim's “Das Boot” in the context of war literature after 1945. GRIN Verlag, 2010, p. 65.
  22. ↑ Dirk Wilking: "Der Landser" - How a man becomes a man (pdf; 2.3 MB) . In Wolfram Hülsemann, Michael Kohlstruck (Hrsg.): Mobile Consulting Team - Insights . Brandenburgische Universitätsdruckerei 2004, ISBN 3-00-015288-1 , p. 79
  23. ↑ Wilking, pp. 84f.
  24. ↑ Bodo Herzog: Knight's Cross and submarine weapon. P. 260 with reference to: Franz Kurowski: The bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross of the U-Bootwaffe 1939–1945. The holders of the highest award of the Second World War for the submarine weapon. Podzun-Pallas, Friedberg / Hessen 1987, ISBN 3-7909-0321-3 .
  25. ↑ Ronald M. Smelser, Edward J. Davies II .: The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-71231-6 . after the review by Joseph Robert White for http://www.h-net.org/
  26. ↑ Hadley, Michael L .: The myth of the German submarine weapon . Hamburg 2001, p. 113: "As he confided to some veterans, he publishes rather serious work under his real name, while he reserved his author's name for those books that were intended for a wider audience."
  27. ↑ www.literature.at
  28. ^ Wolfgang Kohrt: Immortal destroyed. Dresden commemorates the victims of the air raid on February 13, 1945. But how many were there? And how should one remember? There is a dispute about this. In: Berliner Zeitung . February 4, 2005, accessed June 11, 2015 .
  29. ↑ Franz Kurowski's estate in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
personal data
SURNAME Kurowski, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Hombruch
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 2011
Place of death Dortmund