Georg Drozdowski

Memorial plaque in honor of Georg Drozdowski in Chernivtsi, where he was born and lived

Georg Drozdowski (born April 21, 1899 in Chernivtsi , † October 24, 1987 in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee ) was a German-speaking writer , journalist, translator and actor.

Life

The son of an Austrian officer's family - the father's family had Polish roots, the mother's came from France - attended elementary school in Czernowitz and moved to Vienna during the high school years ; he graduated from Wasa-Gymnasium . In the last year of World War I , he served as an ensign on the Italian front . He returned to his hometown, which was now called Cernăuţi and belonged to the Kingdom of Romania . Until the resettlement in 1940 he worked in Czernowitz as a bank clerk, but also published poems and prose, especially in the Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung and in the Czernowitzer Deutsche Tagespost . He was a member of the Schlaraffia (Reich Pruthana), at whose events he was able to present his comedic talent and became known throughout the city. After the Romanization of the city theater, he occasionally worked with the Kammerspiele and was at times a dramaturge and theater critic .

High school in Vienna, where Georg Drozdowski studied

In the course of the resettlement of the Bukowina Germans in 1940, he moved back to Vienna. In the Second World War he served in the Air Force (Wehrmacht) and experienced the end of the war as a sergeant in Lavamünd in Carinthia . In 1945 he became cultural editor and later cultural director at the Kärntner Volkszeitung in Klagenfurt; the Carinthian capital, today the twin town of Chernivtsi, became his second home. Here he worked as a journalist, publicist and translator. In five decades he published 17 books and countless works for the press and radio.

Like his compatriot Gregor von Rezzori , Drozdowski was a typical child of the imaginary “Maghrebia”: a little bon vivant, a little bohemian, a little bit of a bon vivant. He is not one of the greats of the Chernivtsi literary scene, but his journalistic works from the Chernivtsi years are interesting contemporary documents. As a poet he found - apart from humorous occasional poems - an individual language. His later publications are notable and still deserve attention today.

For his poetic and journalistic work, he was awarded numerous prizes in Austria , including the 1959 Nikolaus Lenau Prize . His book Damals in Czernowitz und rundum (1984) is a reminiscence of the Bukovinian capital and is in the tradition of Leo Flinker , Heinrich Nadler , Karl Julius Weber and Franz Porubsky .

One son is the actor Georg Marin , a grandson of the filmmaker Niki Drozdowski .

Awards

The German House in Chernivtsi, in which the Drozdowski Hall is located and the "Carinthia" cafe was housed for several years

• 1959 Nikolaus Lenau Prize
• 1965 Award of the Theodor-Körner-Foundation
• 1965 Awarded the title of Professor by the Federal President of the Republic of Austria
• 1977 Honorary Prize of the State of Carinthia (first awarded)
• 1982 Honorary gift of the Andreas Gryphius Prize 1982, awarded by the Esslingen Artists' Guild in Düsseldorf
• 1984 Pfennig of honor from the state capital Klagenfurt
• 1987 Culture Prize of the Club of Carinthian ÖVP Members

Works

• Poems. Chernivtsi, 1934.
• The stonemason garden. Poems. Vienna, 1957.
• Odyssey. XXX. Singing. Salzburg / Klosterneuburg Donors' Library, 1958.
• God's zoo is big. Lyric nonsense. Carinthia, Klagenfurt, 1959.
• With a sealed order. Poems. Austrian Publishing house, Vienna, 1963.
• Flea in the ear, thorn in the heart. Serious and cheerful stories. Pustet, Regensburg, 1965.

Town hall in Chernivtsi, which was designed by a relative of Georg Drozdowski

• Sand in the gears of the hourglass. Poems. Carinthia, Klagenfurt, 1965.
• Military music. Stories in minor and major. Carinthia, Klagenfurt, 1967.
• Epheta. Poems. The thing about Noah. Carinthia, Klagenfurt, 1969.
• Iro-Niersteiner late harvest. Thoughtful and questioning verses. Carinthia, Klagenfurt, 1975.
• Painted on the wall. Poems. Carinthia, Klagenfurt, 1972.
• Quibbles. A Friwohl and Moritatenbuch. Carinthia, Klagenfurt, 1976.
• When looking through my glasses. Poems 1977/1978. Heyn, Klagenfurt, 1979.
• The trace of your steps. Poems. Heyn, Klagenfurt, 1981.
• Strange open up! Stories in the semi-darkness. Heyn, Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, 1983.
• Back then in Chernivtsi and all around. Memories of an old Austrian. Kleine Zeitung, Klagenfurt, 1984.
• To read when the little girl calls. Stories. Heyn, Klagenfurt, 1985.
• Back then in Chernivtsi and all around. Memories of an old Austrian. New edition, Georg Drozdowski Society and Carinthia, Klagenfurt, 2003.
• With a sealed order. Selected poems 1934–1981. Edited and afterword by Helga Abret, Aachen, Rimbaud, 2009.
• Back then in Chernivtsi and all around. Memories of an old Austrian. New edition, foreword by Helga Abret, Aachen, Rimbaud, 2013.
• Painted on the wall. Poems. New edition, epilogue Bernhard Albers, Aachen, Rimbaud, 2015.
• Odyssey. XXX. Singing. New edition, Aachen, Rimbaud, 2018.

memories

On December 17, 1998, the Georg Drozdowski Society was founded in Klagenfurt / Carinthia with the aim of honoring Georg Drozdowski's literary legacy and maintaining contacts in terms of regional cooperation between the state of Carinthia and the Chernivtsi area. The company serves as a bridge between the federal state of Carinthia and the Chernivtsi area as well as the capitals Klagenfurt and Chernivtsi.

Since 1999, after extensive renovation through international aid, the Drozdowski Hall in the former German House in Chernivtsi has been used as a museum for the writer and as a seminar, event and exhibition center.

Klagenfurt, located between the mountains where Georg Drozdowski spent the second half of his life and which was very similar to his home town of Chernivtsi

To the north of his house in Klagenfurt, Rosentalerstraße at the corner of August-Jackschstraße, as well as on his former house in Chernivtsi, today Schewtschenko-Straße, plaques remind of him.

In memory of Georg Drozdowski and his native city of Chernivtsi, a model of the “Chernivtsi Theater” in the “Minimundus - Die Kleine Welt am Wörthersee” model park was built in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee on the occasion of its 600th anniversary. In 1904 the construction of the new theater building planned by the architects Fellner und Helmer in Chernivtsi began. The opening took place after 14 months of construction on October 3, 1905 as the "Czernowitz German City Theater". After 1922 it became the “Romanian National Theater”. Since 1940 and 1944 it has been "The Ukrainian Musical-Dramatic Olga Kobylanska Theater". The building is located in the middle of what was then a new part of the city on the former "Elisabeth Platz", today "Theaterplatz" and surrounded by a park. From 1907 to 1922 there was a monument by Friedrich Schiller in front of the theater and since 1980 one of the Ukrainian national poet Olga Kobylanska has been there. The building belongs to that group of theaters, the front of which is highlighted by an arched portal architecture. The model in "Minimundus - Die Kleine Welt am Wörthersee" was supported by the Chernivtsi area, the Province of Carinthia, the cities of Chernivtsi, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee and Wolfsberg as well as the Austrian Cooperation Association, the Georg Drozdowski Society in Klagenfurt / Carinthia and the Bukowina Center in Chernivtsi. It was created in the "Minimundus" model building workshop.

In 2009, the Aachen-based Rimbaud-Verlag published a selection of Drozdowski's poems, which were edited by the German studies professor Helga Abret. In the following years, with the support of the Georg Drozdowski Society in Klagenfurt / Carinthia, new editions of the works “Back then in Czernowitz and all around. Memories of an old Austrian. ”(2013),“ Painted on the wall. Poems. "(2015) and" Odyssey. XXX. Gesang. ”Was published by Rimbaud-Verlag. On the occasion of Drozdowski's 110th birthday, an alley was named after him in the same year at the suggestion of the Georg Drozdowski Society Klagenfurt / Carinthia in the western part of the state capital Klagenfurt am Wörthersee.

literature

• Peter Rychlo , Oleg Liubkiwskyj: Chernivtsi , city of literature. Chernivtsi 2007, digitized
• Heinrich Zillich: Respect for Georg Drodzowski , in Fidibus . Journal of Literature. 12th year, volume 2, Klagenfurt 1984, p. 33 ff.
• Helga Abret: On Georg Drozdowski's poetry. In: Fidibus. Journal of Literature. 12th year, volume 2, Klagenfurt 1984, pp. 11-25.
• Helga Abret: Siblings in the strange at home and the absurd. On Georg Drozdowski's late stories. In: Quarber Mercury . Franz Rottensteiner's unillustrated literary magazine. No. 71, Bremerhaven 1988. pp. 53-62.
  Also in: Dietmar Goltschnigg, Anton Schwob (Ed.): The Bukowina. Studies on a sunken literary landscape. Tübingen 1990, pp. 413-427.
• Günther F. Guggenberg: Georg Drozdowski in literary fields between Czernowitz and Berlin (1920-1945 ), Berlin 2015 (plus Univ., Diss., Vienna 2014).
• Günther Guggenberger: Spook and games and life brackets. On the development of the literary work of Georg Drozdowski. In: Claudia Fräss-Ehrfeld (Ed.): Carinthia and the Bukowina. Verlag des Geschichtsverein für Kärnten, Klagenfurt 2002, pp. 231–247.
• Günther Guggenberger: "We were one heart and one soul" (Georg Drozdowski). On the German-Jewish reciprocity in Chernivtsi up to 1940. In: Cécile Cordon, Helmut Kusdat (ed.): An der Zeiten Ränder . History-Literature-Persecution-Exile. Verlag der Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft, Vienna 2002, pp. 135–148.
• Raimund Lang: Drozdowski in the CAZ. A selection of early texts from the “Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung 1925–1932”. In: Chernivtsi Small Fonts. Issue 14, Innsbruck 2003.
• W. Platzer, U. / Puschnig: Czernowitz and Klagenfurt am Wörthersee as well as the person Georg Drozdowski as bridge builder between the two cities. In: Bukowina Center at the University of Chernivtsi / Austria. Cooperation (ed.): Chernivtsi in the context of urban processes in Eastern Central Europe from the 18th to the 20th centuries, contributions to the international scientific conference on the occasion of the first documentary mention of Chernivtsi on June 6th - 7th. May 2008, city of Chernivtsi. Verlag Selena Bukowina, Chernivtsi 2008, pp. 189–209.
• Helga Abret: Epilogue . In: With sealed order - Selected poems. Aachen 2009, pp. 168-216.

Web links

• Georg Drozdowski Saal - event center and museum for Georg Drozdowski, Chernivtsi  ( page no longer available )
• Literature by and about Georg Drozdowski in the catalog of the German National Library