Günther Birkenfeld

Günther Birkenfeld (born March 9, 1901 in Cottbus ; died August 22, 1966 in West Berlin ) was a German writer.

Life

Birkenfeld was born in Berlin in 1923 with the dissertation The figure of the faithful Eckart in German legend and literature to the Dr. phil. PhD. He worked as an editor at Paul Neff Verlag . From 1927 to 1930 he was Secretary General of the Association of German Writers . His youth novel, Third Court Left , published in 1929, met with a great response and was also translated. After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , the novel was banned and, like the novel Liebesferne, appeared again in 1938 on the list of harmful and undesirable literature . Birkenfeld, who gave Alfred Kantorowicz the information in 1947 that he had "hidden in the modest nook of an editorial office" during the Nazi era , was able to publish popular biographical novels in the alleged inner emigration , already in 1934 an Augustus biography, the description of the Führer The Nazi censors did not object to Gestalt.

During the Second World War he was drafted as an air camp reporter.

After the war, Birkenfeld received a license from the American occupation administration in Berlin in 1945 as publisher and editor-in-chief of the bi-monthly magazine Horizont. Journal of the young generation . The title was the program, the magazine was aimed at young readers, in it mainly young authors wrote who addressed the problems of orientation and education of young people in the post-war period. For the young journalists under the direction of 45-year-old Birkenfeld, the rejection of any form of intellectual oppression was an important concern. This is why the ideological appropriation of the youth by the SED and FDJ in Berlin and the Soviet Zone was viewed particularly critically. The magazine wrote primarily on social and political topics, but also had a section entitled “The Art of Coming” and, from 1948, “Attempts”, an uncommented forum for writers such as Wolfdietrich Schnurre (1920–1989), Arnim Juhre (1925–2015) and Ingeborg Euler (1927-2005). Horizont had to be closed in September 1948 when the newspaper ran out due to the Berlin blockade .

Birkenfeld was a member of the advisory board in the “new” “Protection Association of German Authors”, which was constituted on November 9, 1945 with a Soviet license and which joined the FDGB as division 17 , and retained this function until 1949 despite the looming political and economic division in Berlin and Germany. Birkenfeld advocated a tough stance on the former National Socialists. In April 1947, he was also unwilling to compromise in the Hausmann debate, while Günther Weisenborn “wanted to take very tough action against Nazi activist criminals, while otherwise one should show generosity”. Weisenborn therefore wanted to invite Manfred Hausmann generously to the writers' congress in 1947 despite his recent derailments towards Thomas Mann , which Birkenfeld refused.

Birkenfeld spoke at the first German Writers 'Congress October 4-8, 1947 in the eastern sector of Berlin about the "cooperation of writers' organizations". On the morning of October 7th, when Melvin J. Lasky referred to the censorship in the Soviet Union and the persecution of the Soviet writers Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova , which sparked a sharp protest from the Russian guest delegates , he was appointed chairman of the conference deliberately provoked by Lasky, taken into account by von Birkenfeld.

Birkenfeld was one of the twenty German writers who, according to a resolution of the XX. International PEN Congress in Copenhagen should be named in order to found the PEN Center Germany , after consultation with the Secretary General of the International PEN Club Hermon Ould and the representative of the London exile group Wilhelm Unger . This group was founded under the direction of Hermann Friedmann at the conference from 18. – 20. November 1948 in Göttingen .

At least since the beginning of the Berlin blockade in June 1948, Birkenfeld took a public position against the communists and gradually gave up working with Johannes R. Becher . On July 24, 1948, he was co-founder of the "Free Culture Association" as a counter-organization to the Kulturbund , to which he had belonged since 1945, on September 19, 1948, he was co-founder of the "League for Spiritual Freedom" and in 1949 he founded the combat group against inhumanity , for which he worked until 1951 the license holder was. In 1950 he was head of the Berlin office of the Congress for Cultural Freedom . In 1950, Birkenfeld, Theodor Plievier and Rudolf Pechel demanded the separation of the German PEN from the "Becher group". In fact, a federal republican PEN was founded in 1951 under President Erich Kästner .

Birkenfeld worked as a political commentator for radio in the American sector (Rias) and as a publishing editor at Suhrkamp Verlag . In September 1949, he asked the editor Max Schröder of the licensing Aufbau-Verlag to change the text of Anna Seghers' novel Die Toten Stay Jung . Seghers should at least hint at one point in the novel that German Wehrmacht soldiers had not only been hostile to the Soviet Union, but had also made friends with the population. After Peter Suhrkamp distanced himself from Birkenfeld's demand , the Birkenfeld case could be settled amicably , according to Erich Wendt, the publisher to the author .

At the conference of the German Academy for Language and Poetry , of which he had been a member since 1950, Birkenfeld spoke on May 18, 1954 in Hanover about literature of disquiet , Werner Bergengruen responded with comfort and security in poetry? .

Immediately after it was founded in 1954, Birkenfeld was an "external assessor" for the board of the Association of German-Language Translators of Literary and Scientific Works , VdÜ, which at that time was primarily based in Hamburg.

Fonts (selection)

Book title

• (Ed.): Mosaic of the world .: Travel pictures of German-speaking writers of the present . Berlin-Zehlendorf: Verl. F. Boarding school Cultural exchange, 1959
• The clever alphabet: a lexicon for everyone in three volumes . Berlin: Ullstein, 1957
• (Ed.): Mysterium Heimat. Memories of German Authors. Collected and edited. by G. Birkenfeld . Herrenalb: Erdmann, 1959
• Cloud, hurricane and dust. Novel . Darmstadt: Schneekluth, 1955
• (Ed. With others): Jump into freedom:… reports on the causes, accompanying circumstances and consequences of the mass exodus from the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany . Knorr & Hirth Verlag, 1953
• The NKVD state . The month . Issue 18, Berlin 1950
• with Paul Altenberg (Hrsg.): Deutsche Lyrik der Gegenwart . Berlin: Educational Publishing House B. Schulz, 1950
• with Rudolf Hagelstange ; Heinz Winfried Sabais (Ed.): Free spirit between Oder and Elbe: Poetry and prose since 1945 . Congress for Cultural Freedom. German committee. Darmstadt: Montana Verlag, 1950
• Speech at the rally of "Spiritual Berlin" on July 18, 1948 , with Uwe Prell, Lothar Winkler (Ed.): Berlin Blockade and Airlift 1948/49: Analysis and Documentation . Berlin: Berlin-Verl. 1987, pp. 134-136
• Heroes without weapons . Berlin: Druckhaus Tempelhof, 1947
• Life and deeds of Caesar Augustus . Berlin: Neff, 1943
• Johann Gutenberg. His life and his invention . Munich: Oldenbourg 1939
• Reconciliation. Novel . Berlin: Neff, 1937
• Black Art: A Gutenberg Novel . Berlin: Neff, 1936 (Gutenberg Book Guild 1936, 1955)
• Gutenberg. Acting in 12 pictures . Sales office u. Verl. Dt. Stage writer u. Stage composer, Berlin 1936
• Augustus .: novel of his life . Stuttgart: Cotta, 1934 (1962)
• Distant love. Roman Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1930
• Third courtyard on the left. Novel . Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1929
• Andreas. Novella . Lübeck: O. Quitzow, 1927

Translations

• Pura Santillan-Castrence : Rice Wine : The Philippines in Tales by its Contemporary Authors . From the English. Herrenalb: Erdmann, 1965
• André Maurois : From Proust to Camus from . From d. French transferred by Günther Birkenfeld u. Margot Berthold. Zurich: Droemer / Knaur, 1964
• Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi : Darkness and rays of light: Poetry from the Maghreb . Foreword Princess Lalla Aijah. From the French. Herrenalb-Schwarzwald: H. Erdmann, 1963
• Henry McAleavy : The Chinese Bigamy of Mr. David Winterlea: An anonymous novel from d. late Manchu period . From the English. Herrenalb: Erdmann, 1962
• Michael Dei-Anang : Ghana speaks . From the English. Herrenalb: Erdmann, 1962
• Olga Resnevič Signorelli : The Legacy of the Duse: An image of life made up of letters, confessions, memories . Translated from the Italian by Olga Signorelli, Hanna Kiel, Günther Birkenfeld. Herrenalb: Erdmann, 1962
• James Thomas Farrell : No star is lost . From the English. Herrenalb: Erdmann, 1959
• Louis Paul Lochner : Always the unexpected: memories from Germany 1921-1953 . Darmstadt: Schneekluth, 1955
• John Horne Burns : The Gallery: Novel . From the English. Karlsruhe: Stahlberg, 1951
• Mario Appelius : A guest of the world: Adventure in three continents . From the Italian. Berlin: Neff, 1941
• Taylor Caldwell : The day will come: a novel . From the English. Berlin: Neff, 1939 (1983)
• John Erskine : The brief happiness of François Villon: Roman . From the English. Berlin: Neff, 1939
• Mark Twain : The wise man's smile: the most beautiful humoresques . From the English. Berlin: German Book Community, 1933

literature

• Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books . Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2008, p. 110f.
• Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Under the Emergency Roof: Post-War Literature in Berlin 1945-1949 . Schmidt, Berlin 1996
• Richard Drews and Alfred Kantorowicz : Forbidden and burned, German literature suppressed for 12 years . Ullstein, Munich 1947, p. 23

Web links

• Literature by and about Günther Birkenfeld in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Günther Birkenfeld in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Günther Birkenfeld , call page at Literaturport
• Horizont magazine , inventory records for microfilming at WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Richard Drews and Alfred Kantorowicz (eds.): Forbidden and burned. German literature suppressed for 12 years . Heinz Ullstein - Helmut Kindler Verlag, Berlin and Munich 1947, p. 23
2. ↑ Entry Birkenfeld on the black list
3. ^ Günther Birkenfeld , on: List of harmful and undesirable literature, page 12. Leipzig, 1938
4. ↑ Volker Weidermann: The book of burned books , 2008, p. 110
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Biographical directory , in: Ursula Heukenkamp: Unterm Notdach, 1996, p. 531f
6. ↑ Ursula Heukenkamp: Post-War Literature in Berlin , in: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach , 1996, p. 29
7. ↑ Karin Siegmund: “… having something to say, even under thirty” , in: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach, 1996, pp. 444–447
8. ↑ Jürgen Engler: The "schizophrenia" of the beginning , in: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach , 1996, p. 422
9. ↑ Jürgen Engler: "Spiritual leaders" and "poor poets" , in: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach , 1996, p. 72f; P. 84f
10. ↑ Jürgen Engler: The "schizophrenia" of the beginning , in: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach , 1996, p. 397f
11. ^ Waltraud Wende-Hohenberger (ed.): The Frankfurter Writers' Congress in 1948 , Peter Lang Verlag Frankfurt 1989, p. 75
12. ↑ Christine Malende: Berlin and the PEN-Club , in: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach , 1996, p. 102f
13. ^ Waltraud Wende-Hohenberger (ed.): The Frankfurter Writers' Congress in 1948 , Peter Lang Verlag Frankfurt 1989, p. 45
14. ↑ Christine Malende: Berlin and the PEN-Club , in: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach , 1996, p. 125ff.
15. ↑ Ursula Reinhold: "Contributions to Humanity" , in: Ursula Heukenkamp (Ed.): Unterm Notdach, 1996, p. 176f
16. ↑ Werner Bergengruen: Spoken orally . Die Arche , Zurich 1965, p. 223
17. ^ Josef Winiger : The VdÜ. A professional association with charisma beyond the professional, in Sovereign Bridge Builders. 60 years of the Association of Literary Translators VdÜ. Special issue language in the technical age , SpritZ. On behalf of the Association of German-Language Translators of Literary and Scientific Works - Federal Department of Translators of the VS in ver.di, Ed. Helga Pfetsch. Böhlau, Cologne 2014 ISBN 9783412222840 ISSN  0038-8475 p. 18