Georg Schwarz (writer, 1896)

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Georg Otto Schwarz (born July 13, 1896 in Dortmund , † July 12, 1943 in Berlin ) was a German writer .

life and work

Coal pot by Georg Schwarz (1931)

Little is known about the life of Georg Schwarz. According to his own statements, he was born as a working class child in Dortmund. His career up to his work at the Essen workers' newspaper Der Abend at the end of the 1920s is in the dark.

As an editor , Georg Schwarz dealt with the situation of workers in the Ruhr area . Ideologically he was close to the labor movement and represented a communist worldview. In the early 1930s he went to Berlin , where he worked for the “ Gutenberg Book Guild ” and wrote for various newspapers. The topics always revolved around the Ruhr area, workers' and vagabond literature. His documentary book Kohlenpott , published in 1931 , which describes the living conditions in the Ruhr area for an all-German reading audience at the time of the first colliery death during the Great Depression, was created on the initiative of the book guild lecturer Erich Knauf and contains, in addition to an extensive picture section with photographs by Erich Grisar , Annelise Kretschmer , Albert Renger-Patzsch and others wrote Schwarz 'critical reports from the miners' milieu. The Gelsenkirchen city ​​historian Herbert Knorr emphasizes that the socialist Schwarz tries in his reports to look at the district and its people from a different angle and to show not only aesthetic idylls but also the dark sides and contradictions. According to the judgment of the Bochum city ​​historian Dietmar Bleidick, the “demonization of industry” pervades the presentation, which denounces the living conditions of the workers, “from the first to the last page”.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Schwarz published with Völker, the headquarters heard a sharp reckoning with the policies of the KPD during the Weimar Republic . Like the majority of his later narrative works, it was published by Franz Seldte's right-wing national Frundsberg Verlag , in which Ernst Jünger also published. It is unclear to what extent Schwarz had changed his mind in 1933 or whether he tried to camouflage his existence in Nazi Germany, which was already precarious due to the communist past.

The German scholar Jens Kruse considers the Goethe novel ( Mystery in Weimar. A novel about Goethe and Napoleon ), whose plot revolves around a fictitious plan to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte , to be a mysterious book, the “secret” of which may be in the camouflage of his own ideology Opposition from the author could be. In order to carry out the assassination attempt, the conspirators need notes that are on the back of a stolen song manuscript by Goethe , which two English hobby detectives are also looking for on his behalf. They have to camouflage themselves in the French-occupied Weimar, experience all sorts of entanglements and establish contacts in the Weimar cultural milieu until they can prevent the planned attack at the last minute in an adventurous way. The cover of the book is made of light green linen and is illustrated with a colored picture showing a masked face. The censors apparently did not notice the possible subversive thrust against the Nazi regime. "If Schwarz intended a hidden criticism here, he was careful enough to only make it accessible to a detective's instinct."

In 1939 he published an illustrated adventure story for a children's book publisher in Potsdam, which was part of the regime-critical emigrants around Edith Jacobsohn and Kurt Leo Maschler ; In 1941 there followed a biography of Ernst Schweninger , Otto von Bismarck's personal physician , which was published by Reclam Verlag . Georg Schwarz was apparently not subject to any publication bans or persecution measures during the Nazi era. He died the day before his 47th birthday, probably in a bomb attack in Berlin.

Book publications

Cover of the 1937 Goethe novel by Georg Schwarz

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jens Kruse (p. 19): “It is hard to escape the impression that here an author whose political roots, regardless of how much he may have changed his views in 1933, make his position in Nazi Germany highly precarious, is trying to eke out a living by writing relatively safe things. "
  2. ^ "And yet this camouflaged rejection of a nationalist German renewal might indeed be the secret in secret in Weimar " (Kruse, p. 23).
  3. ↑ “If Schwarz intended a hidden critique here, he was ever so careful to open it only to the detective's skill” (Kruse, p. 23).
  4. ↑ In the Soviet Zone on a list of literature to be sorted out from public libraries, cf. German administration for popular education in the Soviet zone of occupation (Ed.): List of the literature to be sorted out. Second addendum. Deutscher Zentralverlag, Berlin 1948.
  5. ↑ Brief publishing history on the website of Dressler Verlag , accessed on September 25, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Black, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwarz, Georg Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1943
Place of death Berlin