Gerd Koenen

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Gerd Koenen (left) with Timothy Snyder 2016

Gerd Koenen (born December 9, 1944 in Marburg an der Lahn ) is a German publicist and freelance historian . His main areas of work are German-Russian relations in the 20th century and the history of communism . He became known to a wider public with his books on communism as a utopia of the cleansing (1998) and the autobiographical description of the left-wing radical scene of the 1970s in The Red Decade (2001). Most recently his main work The Color Red - Origins and History of Communism (2017) was published.

Life

Koenen grew up in Bochum and Gelsenkirchen and studied Romance studies , history and politics in Tübingen from 1966 . There, under the impression that Benno Ohnesorg was shot by the police, he joined the radicalizing Socialist German Student Union (SDS). In 1968 he moved to Frankfurt am Main , where he passed the state examination in history and politics in 1972 and began with Iring Fetscher with the preparations for a doctorate on the theory of democracy by Karl Marx .

In 1973 he joined the newly founded Communist League of West Germany (KBW), a tightly organized Maoist K-group led by Joscha Schmierer . Under their influence, he gave up his doctoral project in 1974 in order to devote himself instead to “revolutionary company work” and from 1976 to edit the KBW's Communist People's Newspaper .

In 1982 Koenen resigned from the KBW, whose dissolution he had previously requested, and became involved in solidarity with the Polish resistance movement Solidarność , about which he published at the same time. In several publications, Koenen later devoted himself to the history of the literary personality cult ( Die Große Gesänge - Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tsetung, 1991 ) as well as the perception of revolutionary Russia in Germany (for example in 1998 in a large anthology he edited, Germany and the Russian Revolution 1917 –1924 , together with Lew Kopelew).

From 1988 to 1990 Koenen was editor of the magazine Pflasterstrand published by Daniel Cohn-Bendit , in which the essay The Child's Dream of Communism appeared in 1990 . The author presented its basic theses in more detail in 1998 in Utopia of the Purge . During the heated discussion of the black book of communism at the time , the utopia was received intensively and made Koenen known to a wider public. In 1990 he sketched his criticism of communism as follows:

“What does this [communist] conception of society boil down to? Mainly on the idea of ​​a higher authority, which could eliminate all risks and vicissitudes of life and which would even be able to ensure the happiness of the people. The steps that lead into this new, voluntary bondage are each seemingly harmless in themselves. One has always walked this path happily and energetically, with flags flying and stormy demands: 'Right to work - right to housing - right to education - right to social security - right to leisure time ...' Nothing that one would want to deny even to a single person.
Except that it inevitably has its price. That dreamed-of good state power and 'great nurturer', who is supposed to relieve the individual of their life risk, already gathers a potentially unlimited competence and power in their hands. For example: if you think through it, can there be a 'right to work' without a 'duty to work', however mild or strict? Hardly likely. And so it is with everything. Freedom and social security are certainly not mutually exclusive, they complement and condition each other. But there is also a tension between them. Anyone who wants to radically resolve this tension on one side, the side of 'social security' - and this is precisely the basic impulse of communism - establishes a new bondage, with or without terror. [...]
The communists from various countries who were given the opportunity to carry out this historical experiment on the living organism of society were similar to those schoolboys who try to first disassemble and then reassemble a cockchafer. That's no joke. For the establishment of communist societies was always and inevitably associated with a drastic reduction in the level of sophistication and complexity that had long been achieved. The prerequisite for the ability to plan human needs is precisely their reduction - and thus at the same time the curtailment of all vital, unpredictable, anarchic drives and aspirations of people. "

- Gerd Koenen : The childhood dream of communism

In 2001 Koenen's (partly autobiographical) book The Red Decade. Our little German cultural revolution 1967–1977 was again widely received, since its appearance coincided with the discussion about the left-wing radical past of Joschka Fischer and the importance of the 1968 movement in the history of the Federal Republic. In 2003, Koenen published a sketch about the origins of German left-wing terrorism based on the triangular relationship between Gudrun Ensslin , Andreas Baader and Bernward Vesper . This book served as a template for the award-winning feature film by Andres Veiel, which was presented at the Berlinale 2011, Who if not us .

Unlike other intellectuals with a communist past, such as the French authors of the Black Book of Communism , Koenen does not go so far as to condemn his own radical left-wing positions absolutely in a 180 ° turn. In 2001, for example, in the magazine Kommune, published by Joscha Schmierer , he polemicized against the "attempt by the young senior citizens of the Free and Christian Democracy to use a rhetoric of universal suspicion to establish their path of decisive conformism as the only possible path to socialization ex post" .

Koenen's articles also appeared in Der Spiegel , Die Zeit and many national newspapers. In addition, Koenen is the author or co-author of various radio and television programs. Koenen received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen in 2003. phil. with a thesis on Rome or Moscow - Germany, the West and the revolutionization of Russia 1914–1924 . The work was published in a revised, supplemented and abridged form under the title The Russia Complex . Together with the Russian philosopher Michail Ryklin , Koenen received the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding on March 21, 2007 at the Leipzig Book Fair, endowed with a total of 15,000 euros . From 2008 to 2010 Koenen conducted research on the history of communism at FRIAS in Freiburg . From 2015 to 2016 he was a fellow of the Imre Kertesz Kolleg in Jena.

In the fall of 2017, Koenen's main work, The Color Red - Origins and History of Communism, was published . The book was nominated for the Bavarian Book Prize in November 2017 and for the Leipzig Book Prize in March 2018 , both in the non-fiction category.

Works (selection)

  • anonymous "under guidance" by Martin Fochler : The conquest of the Teutonic Order against the peoples of the East (= series on German history , volume 1), Sendler, Frankfurt am Main 1977 ISBN 3-88048-042-X (published by the editorial staff of the Communist People's newspaper).
  • with Krisztina Koenen and Hermann Kuhn : Freedom, Independence and Bread. On the history and goals of the labor movement in Poland. Sendler, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-88048-050-8 .
  • with Barbara Büscher, Ruth-Ursel Henning, Dorota Leszczynska, Christian Semler , Reinhold Vetter: Solidarność. The Polish trade union 'Solidarity' in documents, discussions and contributions. Bund, Cologne 1983, ISBN 3-7663-0815-7 .
  • The unexplained peace. Germany - Poland - Russia. A story. Sendler, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-89354-017-2 .
  • The great chants: Lenin - Stalin - Mao Tsetung. Leadership cults and hero myths of the 20th century. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1987 (2nd edition 1991), ISBN 3-8218-1143-9 .
  • with Karla Hielscher: The black front. The new anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. rororo, Reinbek near Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-499-12927-2 .
  • with Lew Kopelew (ed.): Germany and the Russian Revolution 1917–1924 (= West-Eastern Reflections , Series A, Volume 5), Fink, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7705-3184-1 .
  • Utopia of purification. What was communism? Alexander Fest Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-8286-0058-1 .
  • The red decade. Our little German cultural revolution 1967–1977. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-462-02985-1 .
  • Vesper, Ensslin, Baader. Primal scenes of German terrorism. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-462-03313-1 .
  • The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53512-7 ( Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding 2007).
  • Dream paths of the world revolution. The Guevara Project. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-04008-1 .
  • with Andres Veiel : 1968. Image trace of a year. Torch bearer, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7716-4359-1 .
  • What was communism? (= FRIAS Red Series , Volume 2), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-32301-4 .
  • The color red. Origins and history of communism . CH Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-71426-9 .

University thesis

  • Rome or Moscow: Germany, the West and the revolution in Russia 1914–1924 , presented by Gerd Koenen, 2003, DNB 969685335 (online dissertation Universität Tübingen 2003, 764 pages full text online PDF, accessible free of charge)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The childhood dream of communism . In: PflasterStrand , July 1990, pp. 47-50 (PDF, 35 kB); see. also Koenen's contribution to the mirror series “The Presence of the Past”: Gerd Koenen: In den Herzen Asche . In: Der Spiegel No. 35/2001 of August 27, 2001 ( extended online version , PDF, 42 kB).
  2. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The childhood dream of communism . In: PflasterStrand , July 1990, pp. 47-50 (PDF, 35 kB).
  3. ↑ Gerd Koenen: Oh, sixty-eight. Fischer, the “Red Decade” and us (PDF; 41 kB), first printed in: Kommune. Journal for Politics, Economics, Culture , No. 2/2001, pp. 6–11.
  4. ^ Fellows . In: frias.uni-freiburg.de , accessed on December 4, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Koenen, Gerd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publicist and freelance historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Marburg on the Lahn