Gerda Zorn

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Gerda Zorn (born January 11, 1920 in North Berlin ) is a German writer , journalist and contemporary witness . She has experienced four political systems in Germany and processed her experiences in numerous books. Gerda Zorn lives in Hamburg.

Life

Gerda Zorn, née Hesse, grew up in a social democratic family in the north of Berlin. The father, with whom she had a close relationship, was unemployed for a long time, which is why her mother provided the family with sewing coats. Even her childhood dream was to become a journalist .

Training and first work experience

At the age of 14, Gerda Zorn found her first job at a car insurance agency after three months of training in a shorthand and typewriter course at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. After the owner of the agency could no longer pay her, he found her a job at the Tobis film company in Johannisthal. But when she refused to join the National Socialist Association of German Girls (BDM), she lost her position. In 1934 Gerda Zorn found a new job as a secretary at the Reich Association of German Newspaper Publishers. Here she resigned, however, because she disliked the influence of the National Socialists on the association . Gerda Zorn then worked for the propaganda news agency Transocean in Berlin until the end of the Second World War in May 1945 . After the Red Army marched in , Gerda Zorn worked for the Russian Allied press.

Study and professional ban

In October 1947 Gerda Zorn married the German journalist and chief editor of the daily newspaper Junge Welt , Heinz Stern ( 1921 - 2002 ). He also gave Gerda Zorn the opportunity to study cultural politics in Leipzig. She received the Karl Marx scholarship and became a member of the Free German Youth (FDJ). When she realized that political agreement was not enough for marriage, she divorced in 1950 and became an editor at the Information Office in Berlin. She also worked for the Kulturbund der DDR as a lecturer for popular science writings. Because of a visit to the cinema in West Berlin, Gerda Zorn finally had to do "probation work" in a factory in Treptow in 1951. Here she should find the allegedly lost connection to the working class. After only a few weeks she was transferred to the Schweriner Volkszeitung as assistant editor in the cultural department.

Gerda Zorn got engaged again in 1952 and was pregnant with their first child soon after. "Fredchen", her fiancé confessed to Zorn, however, that he was still married at the time. Then she left him. At birth, only the death of the child could be determined. The staunch socialist was finally banned from working because she refused to continue the probation work. She then left the GDR in 1956. Gerda Zorn first went to Kassel, where she met her childhood friend Hans Zorn again. The two married that same year.

Working life in Hanover and Hamburg

Their common path led Gerda and Hans Zorn from Kassel via Frankfurt and at the end of the 1950s to Hanover. Here she soon worked for the newspaper Das Andere Deutschland and became a member of the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime - Association of Antifascists (VVN-BdA eV) and was active in the peace movement. In Hanover she also met August Baumgarte , who had to suffer twelve years in a concentration camp during the Nazi era and had been sentenced to two years in prison in the Federal Republic of Germany. It was he who provided Gerda Zorn with the collected material from women under National Socialism in Hanover, which later became the book City in Resistance .

In 1965 Gerda and Hans Zorn moved to Hamburg-Winterhude. She wrote the book Women against Hitler with the German anti-fascist Gertrud Meyer . Numerous readings and lectures at the universities of Hamburg and Göttingen followed. In addition, Zorn's first novel Bomb Everyday was published in 1985 . She worked as a freelance worker for the program Between Hamburg and Haiti and was elected as a member of the committee on conscientious objection at the Reichswehr Ersatzamt Hamburg. She also campaigned for the Association of German Writers (VS) to join the union and took over the chairmanship of VS Hamburg for a year. Her husband Hans Zorn died in 1990. Gerda Zorn lives in Hamburg.

Fonts

In her journalistic work, Gerda Zorn makes a critical analysis of German post-war history, for example with regard to the harassment of politically left-wing people during the Adenauer era . For her descriptions of the everyday struggle against the Nazi regime, Zorn evaluated many reports from members of the resistance and with the publication made sure that their biographies are documented today.

Book cover Women against Hitler written by Gerda Zorn and Gertrud Meyer, 1974
  • Return of the repressed. Autobiographical memories . Berlin: ed.ost, 2001. ISBN 3-89793-049-8 . Later edition Berlin: Trafo, 2008. ISBN 978-3-89626-687-3
  • France Bloch-Sérazin . On the trail of a courageous woman (screenplay) together with Hans Zorn. Director: Loretta Walz. 80 minutes, Germany 1993.
  • Everyday life as a bomb . Novel. Munich: Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Knaur, 1985. ISBN 3-426-08039-7
  • Red grandmothers yesterday and today . Publishing house for training and study in the Elefanten Presse, 1984. Later edition Cologne: Röderberg im Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag, 1989. ISBN 3-87682-847-3
  • "My everyday fascism". Contribution (pp. 32–67) in: The everyday fascism. Women in the Third Reich . Berlin, Bonn: Verlag JHW Dietz, 1981. ISBN 3-8012-0057-4
  • Our ride goes to Ostland. German policy of conquest between Germanization and genocide . With a foreword by Herbert Wehner . Berlin, Bonn: Verlag JHW Dietz, 1980. Our ride goes later as Nach Ostland. German policy of conquest and the consequences. The example of Lodz . 2., verb. u. exp. With a foreword by Egon Bahr and a foreword by Herbert Wehner. Cologne: Röderberg im Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag, 1988. ISBN 3-87682-841-4
  • Helmuth Hubener. 17 years old, administrative apprentice, executed in Berlin in 1942 . Based on a manuscript by Ulrich Sander, edited by Rosemarie Werder and Gerda Zorn. Preface by Hermann Schön . (Hamburger in the resistance against Hitler; Issue 1) Hamburg: VVN, Bund der Antifaschisten, History Commission, 1980
  • Women against Hitler. Reports from the resistance 1933–1945 . (Together with Gertrud Meyer .) With a foreword by Renate Riemeck and an afterword by Max Oppermann . Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg, 1974. Later Berlin: Publishing house for training and studies in the Elefanten-Press, 1984. ISBN 3-88290-022-9
  • Women in the Resistance , Marie Priess , in: Florence Hervé (Ed.), Bread and Roses. Verlag Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt / M. 1979, pp. 136-144, pp. 145-147
  • City in resistance . With a foreword by Wolfgang Abendroth . Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg-Verlag, 1965. Later as a resistance in Hanover. Against reaction and fascism 1920–1946 . Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg, 1977. ISBN 3-87682-028-6

Screenplay: In the footsteps of a courageous woman (France Bloch-Sérazin)

Gerda and Hans Zorn worked as scriptwriters for the film On the Trail of a Courageous Woman . Directed by Loretta Walz . The film tells about the life of France Bloch-Sérazin , who fought for a free France and was executed in Hamburg on February 12, 1943.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heide Kramer: A Combative Personality , hagalil.com, October 23, 2012, updated February 2013, accessed on December 17, 2014.
  2. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , pp. 19f.
  3. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , pp. 27f.
  4. ↑ Heide Kramer: A Combative Personality , hagalil.com, October 23, 2012, updated February 2013, accessed on December 17, 2014.
  5. ↑ Association of Victims of the Nazi regime, the federal anti-fascists and anti-fascists: [1] , nrw.vvn-bda.de, September and October 2009; Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  6. ↑ Heide Kramer: A Combative Personality , hagalil.com, October 23, 2012, updated February 2013, accessed on December 17, 2014.
  7. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , p. 45
  8. ↑ Heide Kramer: A Combative Personality , hagalil.com, October 23, 2012, updated February 2013, accessed on December 17, 2014.
  9. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , pp. 175–189
  10. ↑ Heide Kramer: A Combative Personality , hagalil.com, October 23, 2012, updated February 2013, accessed on December 17, 2014.
  11. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , pp. 252-258
  12. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , p. 300
  13. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , pp. 303–323
  14. ↑ Gerda Zorn reads from "Return of the Displaced" , medienwatch & metainfo (gfok), 2009, accessed on December 18, 2014
  15. ↑ Heide Kramer: A Combative Personality , hagalil.com, October 23, 2012, updated February 2013, accessed on December 17, 2014.
  16. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , pp. 429f.
  17. ↑ Heide Kramer: A Combative Personality , hagalil.com, October 23, 2012, updated February 2013, accessed on December 17, 2014.
  18. ↑ Zorn, Gerda: Return of the repressed. Autobiographical Memoirs , p. 431
  19. ↑ Heide Kramer: A combative personality , hagalil.com, October 23, 2012, updated February 2013, accessed on May 26, 2013.
  20. ↑ Gerda Zorn reads from "Return of the Displaced" , medienwatch & metainfo (gfok), 2009, accessed on December 18, 2014
  21. ↑ Gerda Zorn reads from "Return of the Displaced" , medienwatch & metainfo (gfok), 2009, accessed on December 18, 2014

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Anger, Gerda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hesse, Gerda (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, journalist and contemporary witness
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin