Gerhard Henniger

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Gerhard Henniger, address at the annual conference of the German Writers' Association in November 1966

Gerhard Henniger (born May 5, 1928 in Großkamsdorf ; † July 20, 1997 in Berlin ) was a German publicist and cultural functionary in the GDR .

Life

youth

Henniger, the son of a commercial employee, attended high school in Saalfeld / Saale . Even as a schoolboy he was an avid reader of the writer Karl May . In September 1942 he became the founding chairman of the "German Karl May Association", which pursued the concern of cultivating Karl May's pacifist and humanist ideas. Groups in Berlin, Vienna, Silesia, Thuringia, the Sudetenland, Styria, the Rhine-Palatinate, Baden and the Rhineland quickly joined the Bund, of which the widow of the poet Klara May became an honorary member in 1943 .

After the "German Karl-May-Bund" began publishing the hectographed magazine Karl-May-Post in January 1944 , the Gestapo prohibited further activities . Henniger was drafted into the war in January 1945 and was taken prisoner of war in the United States in April of the same year , from which he was released in January 1946. In the same year he joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany . In 1947 he passed the Abitur in Saalfeld . In the same year he tried to found a Karl May Society in the Soviet occupation zone . A detailed application in German and Russian pointed to Karl May's ideas of peace, democracy, international reconciliation and humanity for the intended foundation. In addition to Gerhard Henniger himself, Carl-Heinz Dömken , Joachim Matthes and Gerhard Lange were among the signatories of the application to form an association. The application was neither rejected nor approved. From 1974 to 1950 Henniger studied German and journalism at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the University of Leipzig .

Activity as a cultural functionary

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Federation of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers on November 1, 1968, Henniger awards the writer Ludwig Renn a medal.

In 1950 and 1951 Henniger worked as a secretary in a specialist group of the Kulturbund . From 1952 to 1957 he was the first secretary of the Leipzig district management of the Kulturbund and was an editor at the Börsenblatt for the German book trade in Leipzig . From 1957 to 1966 he held the office of federal secretary of the Kulturbund in Berlin. Science, art and literature as well as photography fell into his area of ​​responsibility. From 1966 to March 1990 he held the position of First Secretary of the German Writers 'Association , which was called "Writers' Association of the GDR" since November 1973.

In this function, Henniger acted as an interface between the Writers' Union , the Culture Commission of the Central Committee of the SED, the censorship authority and the Ministry for State Security , from which Henniger received several awards. Since 1963 he has been a member of the Presidium of the Kulturbund, since 1969 of the Presidium of the Writers' Union.

In his memoirs, Günter Görlich describes Henniger as a controversial and contradictory person who was rather modest in his portrayal of himself. Henniger had taken into account the interests of the party as well as those of the writers and had achieved numerous social achievements for them.

In the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR, Henniger and Christian Heermann and others tried to rehabilitate Karl May's works. In 1947 he supported Euchar Albrecht Schmid and the then in Radebeul based Karl May Verlag . Henniger was involved in the fact that from 1983 May's novels were allowed to appear again in the GDR. The volumes appeared with Henniger's afterwords in the Neues Leben publishing house . In 1988 Henniger presented theses on Karl May in the GDR in the magazine Weimarer Posts . In 1995 he reflected on Karl May's reception in the GDR in the cultural magazine die horen .

Gerhard Henniger presented numerous publications on literary criticism, questions of cultural policy and subjects of photography. After reunification , he took early retirement in 1990. At Henniger's death in 1997, Hermann Kant gave a funeral speech.

Fonts (selection)

  • Photography as a cultural and political task. Comments on the situation and development of photography in our republic. German Cultural Association, Berlin 1959.
  • For a socialist German photo art. Essays on cultural-political and artistic questions in photography . German Cultural Association, Berlin 1961.
  • On the development of socialist-realistic photo art in the GDR: balance sheet and perspective. German Cultural Association, Berlin 1964.
  • On the social effectiveness of amateur photography in the GDR. Notes and experiences. German Cultural Association, Berlin 1965.
  • Photography in the shade. On the influences of imperialist politics on photography in West Germany. German Cultural Association, Berlin 1966.

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erwin Müller : Gerhard Henniger and the German Karl May Bund . In: Wiener Karl May Brief Issue 1/2006.
  2. ^ Wilhelm Brauneder : The first and only "Karl-May-Post" . In: Wiener Karl May Brief 4/2005.
  3. ↑ See Erich Heinemann : Eine Gesellschaft für Karl May. 25 Years of Literary Research 1969–1994 . Husum 1994, ISBN 9783920421667 , and Horst Matthey: An almost forgotten early attempt to found a Karl May Society . In: Mitteilungen der Karl-May-Gesellschaft , No. 76 (1988).
  4. ↑ See the entry Karl May Society (SBZ) in the Karl May Wiki.
  5. ↑ Cf. Günter Görlich : No advertisement in the newspaper. Memories . Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3320019648 , pp. 335-336.
  6. ^ Jürgen Seul : 100 years of Karl May Verlag . In: 100 years of Karl May Verlag. Publishing work for Karl May and his work (1913–2013) (ed. With Bernhard Schmid). Karl-May-Verlag Bamberg / Radebeul 2013.
  7. ↑ "With Tomahawk and Peace Pipe." 4 theses on Karl May reception in the GDR . In: Weimar Contributions 34, year 1988, issue 2.
  8. ↑ Gerhard Henniger: "Praise be to your much maligned name" - Karl May in the former GDR . In: die horen (Volume 178, 2nd quarter 1995).
  9. ↑ Cf. Günter Görlich: No advertisement in the newspaper. Memories. Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3320019648 , p. 336.
personal data
SURNAME Henniger, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publicist and cultural functionary
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Großkamsdorf
DATE OF DEATH July 20, 1997
Place of death Berlin