Prisoner literature

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Prisoner literature (also prison literature ) includes all those experience reports , reports , correspondence , autobiographies , prose and poetry that were created during or as a result of imprisonment . Fictitious texts that are thematically about deprivation of liberty are only included if the author was actually affected.

Since prisoner literature is exclusively about authentic, subjective texts from experience - leaflets , horror stories and interrogation protocols are therefore not included - almost no texts by non-intellectuals from the initial phase of the prison system (around 1800) have survived. Prison diaries can be included, but when they are received, it must be taken into account that they were written with the certainty of observation and evaluation.

Historical framework

The beginnings

The earliest example of prison literature is Boethius ' 524 consolation of philosophy . Miguel de Cervantes drew the inspiration for his novel Don Quixote (1605) as a galley slave from 1575 to 1580 . Sir Walter Raleigh wrote his History of the World in a cell in the Tower of London around 1610 . Hugo Grotius wrote his Bewijs van den Waren Godsdienst (published in Dutch in 1622; in Latin in 1627 as De veritate religionis Christianae ) while imprisoned at Loevestein Castle . The non-conformist English Baptist preacher John Bunyan created the first part of his famous pilgrimage to blessed eternity (1678) in prison.

Countess Leonora Christina Ulfeldt ( imprisoned in Copenhagen Castle from 1663 to 1685 ) wrote her autobiography , a report on her imprisonment - Jammers minde (published in 1869), biographical sketches of women - published under the title Prize of the Heroines - and sacred poems.

18th century

An early example of an imprisoned intellectual is Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart , who was a prisoner of the Duke of Württemberg between 1777 and 1787 : "[...] one year of total isolation in a dark, cold and musty cellar on rotten straw with no reading or writing - and more still ideologically treated by the fortress commander and a clergyman; depending on his 'progress', he was gradually granted relief in prison: light, fresh air, participation in the Lord's Supper, permission to write letters and visits, and finally writing and reading opportunities. " Despair, accusation, longing for death and docility are dominant elements of his writings, which were written during his imprisonment.

One figure that is still controversial today is Donatien Alphonse François de Sade , who was imprisoned in a fortress in the Paris Bastille between 1777 and 1789 after being accused several times of his pornographic scandals. Books were available to the nobleman, which eventually led him to write The 120 Days of Sodom as well as Justine .

19th century

Fritz Reuter's experiences during various detention stations from 1836–1840 found their autobiographical record in the book Ut mine fortress stid published in 1862 .

The Russian writer Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski (exiled from 1849 to 1853) created the prose work Records from a House of the Dead about his experiences, which was published in 1860.

20th century to 1945

In 1916, while in custody, Rosa Luxemburg wrote essays that were smuggled out and published illegally, as well as her famous personal letters to friends from prison .

Max Hoelz - from 1921 to 1928 in the penitentiary - reached the public through the publication of his penitentiary letters (1927) and a revision of the sentence. In the second part of his autobiography From White Cross to Red Flag Eight Years in German Prisons (1929) he wrote down his impressions.

As a consequence of the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch , Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years probation in a fortress in 1924 , but released on December 20 of the same year for good conduct. During this time the first part of Hitler's political work Mein Kampf was written .

Hans Fallada's own experiences reproducing the classic prison novel Who Eats From a Tin Bowl? Was published in 1934.

Luise Rinser , who spent a few months in a women's prison in the Third Reich from 1944 to 1945 , wrote her prison diary (1946) partly on wrapping paper and old criminal lists that served as toilet paper.

Before his execution in 1945, the German theologian and resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer laid down his theological and literary testament, which culminated in his poem " Von gute Mächten ".

20th century from 1945

Wolfgang Borchert processed his stays in prison during National Socialism for alleged degradation of military strength in several short stories as well as in his short story Die Hundeblume , which were written in 1946 and 1947.

A significant part of the literary output of the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn reflects his experiences in the Soviet Gulag (from 1945 to 1953) in the story A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and in his monumental work The Archipelago Gulag (published 1974).

Ezra Pound , in 1945 in Pisa , Italy, locked by American troops in a cage intended for death row inmates, wrote the Pisan Cantos (1949 Bollingen Prize ) during this time .

For Walter Kempowski , who was imprisoned in Soviet Special Camp No. 4 between 1948 and 1956 , his stay in prison became the main drive for writing. He addressed the term of imprisonment primarily in his first novel Im Block. A detention report from 1969, in the family novel A Chapter for Himself and finally in Langmut , Kempowski's first volume of poetry, which was published posthumously and which ended his work.

Horst Bienek (1951 to 1955 in a Soviet labor camp), whose novel The Cell (1968) summarizes his experiences, proceeds in a similar way . Bienek suggested the term "Lazarenic literature" for prison literature.

The American Caryl Chessman wrote several books on death row between 1954 and 1960, of which the first Death Row 2455 was filmed in 1955 by Fred F. Sears .

The former leader of the "Jaeger gang" Henry Jaeger was imprisoned in a German penitentiary from 1955 to 1963 and wrote the novel Die fortress secretly on toilet paper rolls in 1962 , each of which was smuggled out by the priest.

The Egyptian scholar and theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, wrote much of his works, including the 30-volume commentary on the Koran, In the Shadow of the Koran , after he was sentenced to several years in prison in 1954 on charges of attempting to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser .

Nelson Mandela's autobiography The Long Road to Freedom was largely created during his imprisonment on Robben Island (1964–1982). Writing such texts was strictly forbidden. Although documents were discovered by guards, copies were smuggled out of prison by inmates.

Numerous post-colonial literary texts are marked by the prison experiences of their authors. The work of the Nigerian poet Chris Abani Kalakuta Republic is rooted in the experiences of that time. The Indonesian Pramoedya Ananta Toer wrote the Buru Quartet during his imprisonment from 1965 to 1979 . The Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o published his prison diary in 1981.

The prison novels written in post-colonial times come from a. by the Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa , who was executed in prison and portrayed a simple young prisoner soldier in Sozaboy (1985). The South African writer Alex LaGuma describes the fate of a black dissident in In the Fog of the Season's End . Derek Walcott's drama Dream on Monkey Mountain (1970) is set in a prison, as is Woman at Point Zero by the Egyptian author Nawal El Saadawi .

The American Mumia Abu-Jamal , who has been imprisoned and sentenced to death since 1982, has intensified his journalistic work on death row. He published, among other things, the books Live from Death Row about life in prison and I Write to Live , a collection of essays and reflections on social life and individual meaning in life.

features

All authors of prison literature have three writing impulses in common:

  • Communication (through letters),
  • Informing the public (especially through articles, documentation, field reports) and
  • Channeling pent-up aggression (especially through poetry).

Conversations, (oral) narratives, monologues, knocking signals , balls of paper, sign language, "pendulum" (throwing a message from one window to the next), speaking through the "bello" (exhausted toilet) are forms of communication that are often addressed in prisoner literature.

Writing usually has the following functions:

  • Self-expression, self-liberation, self-discovery,
  • Preservation of identity,
  • To survive,
  • Mouthpiece outside,
  • Protest and resistance.

literature

  • Nicola Keßler: Writing in order to survive. Studies of prisoner literature. Forum Verlag Godesberg, 2001, ISBN 3-930982-78-1
  • Uta Klein , Helmut H. Koch (ed.): Prisoner literature. Speaking - writing - reading in German prisons. Padligur, Hagen 1988, ISBN 3-922957-15-3
  • Uta Klein: Prison Press. About their origin and development in Germany. Forum Verlag Godesberg, 1992, ISBN 3-927066-55-9
  • Meinolf Schumacher : Being imprisoned - why confused? A theodicy argument of the 'Welschen Gastes' in the horizon of European prison literature from Boethius to Vladimir Nabokov , in: Horst Wenzel, Christina Lechtermann (Ed.): Movability of Images. Text and imagination in the illustrated manuscripts of the 'Welschen Gastes' by Thomasin von Zerclaere. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, 2002, pp. 238-255, ISBN 3-412-09801-9 , online at Univ. Bielefeld
  • Sigrid Weigel : “And free even in prison…!” On the theory and genre history of prison literature 1750-1933. Guttandin & Hoppe, Marburg, 1982, ISBN 3-922140-14-9
  • Documentation center for prisoner literature at the University of Münster u. a. (Ed.): News from Anderwelt. Ingeborg Drewitz Literature Prize for Prisoners . Agenda Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-89688-097-7 (anthology)

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sigrid Weigel: On the history of prison literature. In: Klein / Koch 1988, p. 75
  2. ↑ Klein / Koch 1988, pp. 9-13