Gerhard Sawatzky

Gerhard Sawatzky (born December 26, 1901 in Blumenfeld , Ukraine , Russian Empire as Гергард Генрихович Завацкий, scientific transliteration : Gergard Genrichovič Zavackij; † December 1, 1944 in Solikamsk , Soviet Union ) was a Russian-German writer .

Life

He was born into a Black Sea German farming family. He spent his childhood in the Altai in western Siberia. After studying at the Leningrad Pedagogical Heart Institute, Sawatzky worked first as a teacher, then as a journalist and author in the Volga German Republic . In the early 1930s he wrote for the newspapers “Nachrichten” and “Der Kämper”, for the latter periodical he also worked as editor-in-chief . Sawatzky published his literary texts mostly in newspapers, magazines and compilations such as “Rote Bud” (Moscow 1928) and “Oktober-Erzählungen” (Charkow 1932); Eleven of his own poems appeared in the compilation "Battle songs Volga-German Soviet poets" published in 1934 in Engels under Sawatzky's editorship .

In 1938, Gerhard Sawatzky became chairman of the Writers' Union of the Volga German Republic. Sawatzky is regarded as a pioneer of independent Soviet German literature. His great social novel "We ourselves" was completed in 1937. Even before the work saw the light of day, its author was arrested at the end of 1938 in the course of the Stalinist purges and died in the GULAG camp in Solikamsk .

We ourselves (1937)

Sawatzky's social novel is considered the most important text in Russian-German literature. It tells of the lost world of the Volga German Republic in the years 1920 to 1937. The forbidden and destroyed contemporary novel about the Germans from Russia was lost for decades. Sawatzky's widow Sophie Sawatzky managed to save the original manuscript when she was deported to Siberia. In the years 1984 to 1988 the novel was first published in a censored version in the Soviet almanac "Heimatliche Weiten".

The main characters in Sawatzky's 900-page book are two young people: the exemplary collectivist and later engineer Heinrich Kempel and the exemplary, beautiful factory worker Elly Kraus. The plot revolves around everyday life in the factory in Balzer, in the village, the intrigues and acts of sabotage and the love stories between Heinrich and Elly and other Komsomol couple.

literature

• Gerhard Sawatzky: We ourselves . Ed. by Carsten Gansel . Galiani Verlag, Berlin 2020. ISBN 386971204X
• Nina Paulsen: It is a text that is part of cultural memory . In: People on the Way, No. 2–4, 2020

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A Volga-German time novel of the 1930s. By Hartmut Fröschle, Stuttgart and Saratow
2. ↑ The novel exposes a lost piece of German history
3. ↑ Homeland expanses
4. ↑ The novel by Gerhard Sawatzky "We ourselves"