Fritz Beer
Fritz Beer (born August 25, 1911 in Brno , Austria-Hungary ; died September 2, 2006 in London ) was a German-speaking journalist and writer.
Life
Fritz Beer worked as a journalist in Prague from 1930 to 1939, including for the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung . After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Wehrmacht , Beer emigrated to England via Poland. From 1940 to 1944 he was a war volunteer in a tank regiment of the Czechoslovak Army in Exile . He completed combat missions in France in 1940 and 1944/45.
After the war, he worked as a script writer and political commentator in the German-language service of the BBC until 1975 , after which he received airtime for his own radio broadcasts twice a month. From 1954 Fritz Beer was also the London correspondent of the Neue Ruhr Zeitung . From 1977 to 1979 he was the head of the London Foreign Press Association .
From 1988 he was President of the PEN Center for German-Speaking Authors Abroad . During the time of his presidency the efforts of the two German PEN centers to reunite, which led to numerous withdrawals from the German PEN , including Jürgen Fuchs and Ralph Giordano , who subsequently joined the PEN Center for German-Speaking Authors Abroad.
Beer himself criticized the intended reunification in a Focus interview with the words: "I cannot come to terms with the fact that the goals of democracy and freedom can be compromised just to agree to a symbolic unification of the two German PEN centers."
From 2000 onwards, Fritz Beer ran the liquidation of the PEN center for German-speaking authors abroad because the members had become too “lethargic”, as he emphasized in an interview with Deutsche Welle : “[...] we kept it wrong to represent a force that no longer existed. "
Beer died after a long illness at the age of 95.
Works
- Gunfire at dawn , 1933
- Black suitcase , short stories, 1934
- The house on the bridge , novellas, 1934
- The future doesn't work yet. A portrait of Czechoslovakia 1948–1968 , 1969
- Did you shoot Germans, Grandpa? Fragments of a life story , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin, 1992, ISBN 3351021615
- Kaddish for my father. Essays, stories, memories , Arco Verlag, Wuppertal, 2002, ISBN 3980841006
- with Klaus Kamberger (ed.): The CSSR case, punitive action against a brother state . Fischer Verlag 1968, ISBN 3436009555
Awards
- Peace Prize of the Publishing House for Foreign Language Literature (Moscow) (1934)
- Literature Prize from Die Zeitung (London, 1941)
- Josef Brunner Prize, Essen, 1968
- Order of the British Empire (1979)
- Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon (November 13, 1998)
literature
- Christoph Haacker: A heretical "grandpa". For the 90th birthday of the writer and journalist Fritz Beer . Between world. Journal of Culture of Exile and Resistance; 18th vol., No. 4; Vienna: February 2002; Pp. 25-28, ISSN 1606-4321
- Wilhelm Sternfeld , Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933-1945. A bio bibliography . Foreword by Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer , Schneider, Heidelberg / Darmstadt, 1962
- Beer, Fritz. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 1: A-Benc. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-598-22681-0 , pp. 441-442.
- Christoph Haacker: Beer, Fritz. 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. 36f.
Web links
- Literature by and about Fritz Beer in the catalog of the German National Library
- Fritz Beer on lyrikwelt.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Glossary, Volume 2: "Farewell to the PEN Center of the Federal Republic" ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2008 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.
- ↑ Theodor Siepert: "freedom of speech violated" , Focus , No. 18 of 29 April 1996th
- ↑ Petra Tabeling: We have encouraged each other (Deutsche Welle, September 26, 2002)
- ↑ Information from the Office of the Federal President
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Beer, Fritz |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Jewish writer |
DATE OF BIRTH | August 25, 1911 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Brno |
DATE OF DEATH | September 2, 2006 |
Place of death | London |