Fred Wander

Fred Wander (born Fritz Rosenblatt on January 5, 1917 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died July 10, 2006 in Vienna) was an Austrian writer .

Life

Fritz Rosenblatt grew up in poor circumstances as the son of Galician immigrants. Wander attended elementary and secondary school in Vienna , was an apprentice in the textile trade for three years and then worked in various professions. After the annexation of Austria in 1938 he managed to flee to France via Switzerland , where he was interned as an "enemy alien" after the start of the war . He was able to flee to Marseille and was finally extradited to the Vichy police from there in 1942 after trying to escape to Switzerland. Wander was deported to Auschwitz via the Drancy assembly camp and liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945 . His parents were murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. He returned to Austria and worked as a journalist and photo reporter. In 1950 he joined the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ). In 1955 Fred Wander took part in the first course at the "Johannes R. Becher" literary institute in Leipzig. In 1956 Wander married his wife Maxie , née Elfriede Brunner. With her, a later - since the seventies - well-known writer, he moved to Kleinmachnow in the GDR in 1958 . Here he worked as a freelance writer. Maxie Wander died in 1977. Fred Wander married his third wife Susanne in 1982, left the GDR with her for good in 1983 and settled again in Vienna. He died on July 10, 2006 after a serious illness in his Vienna apartment and was buried in Kleinmachnow.

In his work he dealt in particular with his experiences in the German extermination camps during the Nazi dictatorship. The novel 'The Seventh Well' is considered to be his key work. According to his self-image, he saw himself in the tradition of Hasidic storytellers. In addition to novels and short stories, Fred Wander has published plays, travel literature and books for young people.

Awards

• 1966 Theodor Fontane Prize of the Potsdam district
• 1972 Heinrich Mann Prize
• 1996 Austrian Prize for Literature
• 2003 Theodor Kramer Prize
• 2006 Literature Prize of the City of Vienna
• 2009 Wingate Literary Prize

Works

Gravestone for Maxie Wander and Fred Wander in the forest cemetery Kleinmachnow

• Twenty-Four Hours from the Life of a Reporter , 1954
• Typhoon over the islands , 1957
• Corsica - not yet discovered , 1959
• Bandidos , 1963
• Paris- Double Face , 1966
• Nicole , 1971
• The seventh well , 1971; New edition 2005
• Holland at first sight , 1972
• A room in Paris , 1975
• Provencal trip , 1978
• Hotel Baalbek , 1991, republished in 2007 with an afterword by Erich Hackl
• Joshua sends his regards. The bungalow. Two pieces , 1979
• The dove-gray house , 1977
• Patrique, Patrique , 1983
• The good life , 1996, expanded new edition 2006 under the title The good life or From the happiness in horror. Memories , ISBN 3-89244-855-8

Editorial activity

• Maxie Wander: Life would be a great alternative. Diaries and letters , 1979
• Maxie Wander: One life is not enough. Diary entries and letters. Edited and with a foreword by Fred Wander, 1990. ISBN 3-518-45963-5

literature

• Walter Grünzweig, Ursula Seeber (ed.): Fred Wander, Leben und Werk , Weidle Verlag Bonn 2005, ISBN 978-3-931135-88-1
• Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Wander, Fred . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Konstantin Kaiser: Wander, Fred. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , p. 523f.
• Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century . Volume 3: S – Z, Register. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 1425.

Web links

• Literature by and about Fred Wander in the catalog of the German National Library
• http://www.literaturepochen.at/exil/a5078.html
• Entry on Fred Wander in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Fred Wander in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Lecture at the Austrian Society for German Studies. Hans Höller : storytelling as remembering and resistance. Fred Wanders´ "The Seventh Well" in the context of literature on the Shoah. Conference "Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Austrian Literature and German Studies, Studies on the 20th Century", Vienna, June 2001; PDF file 108 kB
• Fred Wander archive in the archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin