Franz Liebhard

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Franz Liebhard (born June 6, 1899 in Temesvár , Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary ; † December 17, 1989 in Timișoara , Socialist Republic of Romania ), also Franz Liebhardt , was the stage name of Róbert Reiter , a Romanian-German poet of expressionism and dramaturge . He wrote poems and essays in German and Hungarian .

Life

Franz Liebhard was born in what was then Temesvár as the son of a family of craftsmen . He received his school leaving certificate at the Nikolaus Lenau Lyzeum there . Liebhard made his first attempts at writing in the Hungarian language, using the Magyarized form of his name, Reiter Róbert. In 1916, the school newspaper he helped to edit, Holnap ( German:  Der Morgen ), was suspended by the school director due to an appeal for peace. The poem Erdő ( German  forest ) in Lajos Kassák's avant-garde magazine Ma ( German  today ) was his first publication in 1917.

In the same year he began to study philology in Budapest . Liebhard became politically active on the side of the Social Democrats . He gave speeches and wrote left-wing articles, which earned him the arrest and the nickname Der Rote Reiter during a general strike in Temesvár . After the Soviet Republic of Hungary was smashed, Liebhard went to Vienna , more out of solidarity with the political and artistic elite of the Hungarian communists, who were fleeing the White Terror , than out of necessity. Here he continued his studies and took an active part in the literary life of the Hungarian emigrants at Kassák's side and continued to write poetry in the Hungarian language.

After completing his studies, he returned in 1925 to Timișoara, now Romanian after the Treaty of Trianon . Liebhard worked there in the editorial offices of the Hungarian-language Munkáslap (German workers 'newspaper ) of the Catholic workers' association and the German-speaking Catholic-conservative Banater Deutsche Zeitung (BDZ). He married and had two children. His contacts with the Hungarian literary scene slowly broke off and he began to write mainly in German. In the 1930s he worked as a publicist and only occasionally wrote poetry. He published articles such as German Art in the Banat in the publication Klingsor , which spread targeted political propaganda in the spirit of National Socialism . During the Second World War he continued to work as an editor for the follow-up publication of the BDZ, the National Socialist Südostdeutsche Zeitung .

At the end of the Second World War, he and about 70,000 other Romanian Germans were deported to the Soviet Union for three years for forced labor . After his return, ten volumes of poetry and essays were created over the next 25 years, including numerous odes to Josef Stalin . Friends translated his work into Romanian and Hungarian. His socialist text from the 1950s was bold and simple. In the relatively small Romanian German literature , Liebhard took on a mediating role between the Marxists and the “opposition”, but he was considered close to the system. His homage poem Ein Term - a homage to Nicolae Ceaușescu - was published several times in prominent places in Romanian propaganda books. The first lines of this poem: Ceauşescu, Party and Fatherland were the title of an anthology from 1982 in which “contemporary authors paid homage to Comrade Nicolae Ceauşescu on the occasion of his 65th birthday”.

Liebhard was appointed dramaturge at the German State Theater Timişoara and held this position until his retirement in 1968. He received numerous awards from the Romanian state; so he was honored in his later years as the doyen of Banat German poetry .

Publications

  • As Róbert Reiter: Your eyes anchor in the evening . Seals. Afterword by Max Blaeulich, Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1989
  • Miniatures from four decades. Kriterion, Bucharest 1972
  • Timisoara evening talk: histories, pictures and other prose. Facla-Verlag, Timișoara 1977
  • Banat mosaic. Contributions to cultural history. First volume, Bucharest 1976
  • Poems. Youth publishing house, Bucharest 1964
  • The Turkish treasure. Espla State Publishing House for Art and Literature, Bucharest 1958

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klingsor 16 , 1939, no. 10, pages 288-291
  2. ^ Johann Böhm : National Socialist Indoctrination of Germans in Romania 1932-1944 . Peter Lang, 2008, ISBN 3-63157-031-7 , p. 42.
  3. ^ Banater Deutsche Zeitung, 1925-1941 . In: Austrian National Library , 2011.
  4. ↑ a b Orientation , No. 4, Zurich 1992, p. 42.
  5. ↑ See the classification of Liebhard in the literary life of Romania in the 1950s by Peter Motzan and Stefan Sienerth in: Words as Danger and Danger - Five German Writers in Front of a Court , ed. by Peter Motzan and Stefan Sienerth in association with Andreas Heuberger, Munich 1993, p. 56.
  6. ↑ Omagiu Tovarăşului Nicolae Ceauşescu , Editura Politica, Bucharest, 1973; Honoring President Ceaușescu , Kriterion Verlag, Bucharest 1984.
  7. ↑ Ceaușescu, Party and Fatherland - Contemporary authors pay homage to Comrade Nicolae Ceaușescu on the occasion of his 65th birthday . Ion Creanga Publishing House, Bucharest 1982
  8. ↑ Nikolaus Berwanger (ed.): Franz Liebhard. A writer's life. O viata de scriitor. Illustrated anniversary volume, compiled by NB Timișoara 1979. For the evaluation of the poetic work see Horst Fassel : Robert Reiter - Franz Liebhard: a poet in Timişoara. In: Banatica. Contributions to German culture 7 , 1990, No. 1, pages 19-22
personal data
SURNAME Liebhard, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Liebhardt, Franz; Reiter, Róbert (real name); Hartmann, Georg (pseudonym); Wanderer, Johann (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian-German poet and dramaturge
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Temesvár , Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 1989
Place of death Timișoara , Socialist Republic of Romania