Günther Hoffmann (Author)

Günther Hoffmann (born November 27, 1911 in Neumühlen-Dietrichsdorf , now Kiel ; † December 4, 1986 in Buxtehude ) ( pseudonyms Günther H. Hoffmann-Koepping , Günther Hayo Hoffmann-Koepping and Peer Helkhendorff ) was a German author and artistic director .

Life and activity

After attending school at the Reform Realgymnasium in Breslau, Hoffmann studied theater studies with interruptions from 1928 to 1934 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Breslau and the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin .

On April 1, 1932, Hoffmann joined the NSDAP (membership number 1,055,461). He also became a member of the SA . Within the party, Hoffmann, according to his own statements, was one of the sympathizers of the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser , who advocated a "left" National Socialism that was strongly influenced by the socialist points of the party program . After Otto Strasser and his supporters split off from the NSDAP at the beginning of the 1930s, because he considered the course advocated by Adolf Hitler to be reactionary and insufficiently concerned with the realization of socialist goals, Hoffmann wanted to follow this convincingly, but as an informant of the von Strasser founded the National Socialist secession group Black Front to have remained in the NSDAP.

In the summer of 1931 Hoffmann joined the staff of the then commander of the SA in Silesia, Edmund Heines . After he took part in the 4th course of the Reichsführer-School in Munich at Heines' instigation in September 1934 , Hoffmann received the rank of SA-Sturmbannführer. Subsequently, in consideration of his professional training, he was given leave of absence from the SA service for one and a half years.

In the spring of 1933 Hoffmann switched to the staff of the Berlin SA chief Karl Ernst . After discovering his involvement in fraud, he spent a few months in the Oranienburg concentration camp from January to May 1934 . After his expulsion from the SA in the wake of the Röhm affair in the summer of 1934, Hoffmann joined the Reichswehr as an officer candidate . Until 1936 he was a member of the cavalry regiment in Eisenach .

In 1937 Hoffmann was arrested again. According to newspaper reports from 1948, he was found to have been fraudulent in 66 cases and was sentenced to prison for this. In the following eight years up to 1945, after serving his prison sentence, he was held one after the other as a security detainee (prisoner with a green triangle) in concentration camps in the Esterwegen , Börgermoor , Brual-Rhede , Börgermoor and Neuengamme concentration camps. At the end of the war he and other inmates from Neuengamme were forcibly assigned by the SS to the SS Special Unit Dirlewanger . A few days later, at the beginning of May 1945, he was released.

In the summer of 1945 Hoffmann settled in Hamburg . There he worked for a British garrison theater. In April 1946 he took over the position of artistic director of the Shakespeare Festival in Essen. After the end of this engagement he returned to Hamburg. There he was again a manager of a theater. He was also a short-term speaker and radio play writer for Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk . At this time he intensified the artistic activity he had begun in the 1930s and became a full-time author. Until the 1960s he wrote various works for different narrative genres: According to the Kürschner'schen literary calendar, Hoffmann's work, which - since many of his works were made for the radio and as a stage performance - is only partially accessible in libraries, includes "Drama, Poetry, novel, short story, film, radio play Ue [translations] ". Hoffmann also produced a radio play translation of Kenyon J. Scudder's work, Prisoners are also people, which was broadcast in 1955 .

On November 3, 1948, Hoffmann was sentenced to imprisonment by the Hamburg District Court for imposture and fraud in twelve cases, embezzlement, forgery of documents, unauthorized use of a doctorate . While in custody , he was charged with removing property stamps from books in the prison library and replacing them with his own stamp.

family

On May 9, 1958, Hoffmann married Eva Hildegard Bartel.

plant

As author:

• March into the night , choral music in 1945;
• Rebel uprising , factual report 1955;
• Nine games , Bü. [?] 1957;
• Throw the first stone , novel 1947
• The Confession of Cornell Pendergast , novella 1957.
• Experiment 234 , crime novel, 1957.
• The green car rolls , 1957. (novel)
• Interlunitan: Introduction to the Interlinguistic Decimal Universal Classification [INTERLUN] and the technical auxiliary language UNITAN for electronic data processing translation devices [COMPLATER] , 1967.

As a stage director

• The way up , 34
• March into the night , 1945
• Nine games , 1956.

Archival tradition

• Institute for Contemporary History: MS 594/1: Günther Hoffmann-Koepping "I survived the Röhm Revolte" (description of the prehistory, background and course of the Röhm Putsch of 1934; in the appendix: list of the dead; acquisition correspondence and Karl Buchheim's statement from 24. July 1951)

literature

• Personal entry in: Kürschner's German Literature Calendar , 1963, p. 273.
• “Hoffmann's stories. Post-war career of an SA leader ”, in: Die Welt from October 28, 1948.
• "Prisoner-Intendant", in: Hamburger Abendblatt of October 27, 1948.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Buxtehude registry office: death register for Buxtehude for the year 1986: death certificate no. 359/1986.
2. ↑ Registry office Hamburg Mitte: marriage register for the year 1958: marriage certificate reg. 227/1958.