Gerhard W. Menzel

Gerhard W. Menzel (born February 18, 1922 in Schkeuditz near Leipzig , † March 14, 1980 in Leipzig) was a German writer .

youth

Menzel was the first son of the tram driver Walter Menzel and his wife Frieda, nee. Dietrich was born. Through his father, who was active in the SPD , he came into contact with child friends and the " Red Falcons " at an early age . One month after Hitler came to power , his father lost his job, was reprimanded as an enemy of the state and ringleader , and had to do forced labor until 1945. The mother died in 1935. The gifted boy, the best pupil in his town, wanted nothing more than to attend secondary school and study ; impossible to achieve under these circumstances. He completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller at the German Booksellers College in Leipzig, after which he was drafted into the labor service. There the eighteen-year-old fell seriously ill with pulmonary tuberculosis and, with short interruptions, had to live in sanatoriums until 1947. During this time he acquired classical world literature , dealt with German philosophy from Kant to Nietzsche and began his own artistic experiments. It emerged poems , epic poems and plays . In phases of relative health, he graduated from the Leipzig technical college for booksellers and worked as a manufacturer at the BG Teubner publishing house .

Early work

1948 tried Menzel in the first preliminary course at the Leipzig University , the High School to purchase to after German study. He had to break off the renewed attempt at university because in the same year he began to work as an audio play dramaturge for Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, Sender Leipzig . That meant working as a dramaturge during the day, accompanying radio play recordings in the evening and working on your own texts at night .

The earliest artistic works Menzel professed to be the more than 25 radio plays that were made during this period. There were often adaptations of great works of world literature such as "Der Revisor" after Nikolai Gogol (first broadcast 1949), "Die Weber" after Gerhart Hauptmann (first broadcast 1949), " Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar " by Bertolt Brecht (first broadcast: 1949), " The good soldier Schwejk " after Jaroslaw Hasek (first broadcast in 1950)," Der Postmeister " after Alexander Pushkin (first broadcast in 1951). But he also wrote original radio plays such as "Der Ruhm Frankreichs" about Frederic Joliot-Curie , first broadcast in 1950 and "Die Flucht" by the young Schiller , first broadcast in 1956. At that time, Menzel acquired a lasting reputation as the "father of the GDR radio play".

In May 1952 his play "Marek in the West", a Schwejkiade, premiered in the Kammerspiele of the German Theater under the direction of Wolfgang Langhoff . With 77 performances everywhere in the theaters of the GDR it was considered the most successful post-war play and its author was the new talent in the theater sky. Politically, there was a harsh wind blowing in the GDR in the early 1950s. Menzel's play soon no longer fit into the political landscape because it was characterized by deep pacifism and the National People's Army was being prepared in the GDR with the establishment of the barracked people's police . So the text was changed more and more from performance to performance, i.e. censored . Menzel finally withdrew the performance rights in 1954.

In the meantime Menzel had become chief dramaturge of the radio play department of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, and in 1952 he retired from the station for health and political reasons. On the one hand, his old tuberculosis disease broke out again, on the other hand, he was appalled by how much the radio was ideologized . For this reason, Menzel later successfully resisted years of attempts to win him over to the development of the entertainment department of the GDR television in Berlin.

Menzel worked on an opera with the composer Paul Dessau in 1952/53. She took up the fist topic and was called "Jan and Marie".

Reorientation of creativity

Economically, a difficult time began for the family, in which Menzel initially published small epic works in anthologies such as Urania Universum and began to concentrate entirely on prose . For him, his interest in drama was always linked to radio and theatrical implementation. In the prose, Menzel was still looking for his subject and his niche, because he could not and did not want to meet the cultural-political ideas and wishes of that time for contemporary subjects, which were located as far as possible in production. He made his love for the artists of the past literarily productive and devoted himself to the genre of historical-biographical stories and novels .

With the editor-in-chief of Paul List Verlag in Leipzig , Dr. Walter Franke, Gerhard W. Menzel found a very strict teacher in the field of great prose. Menzel had already written the fifth version of his story "Wormwood are the last drops" about Heinrich Heine's trip to Germany in 1843, but the [book publisher | publisher] still refused to publish it . The author , who was already used to success, took heart and sent the manuscript to Thomas Mann in Switzerland in 1956 . "Wormwood are the last drops" was published in early 1958. With the illustrator Dr. Hanns Georgi , the last late impressionist to live in the GDR, was later linked by a friendly acquaintance for many years. The book had nine editions and was translated into Polish in 1965 and into Lithuanian in 1970 .

Menzel was a slow but very thorough writer. His work was based on broad foundations, he conducted correspondence with archives, libraries and publishers all over Europe in order to gain as much knowledge as possible about the contemporary sources. Because he was not allowed to travel to see the sources himself; on the contrary, he had to assure the publishers that he would not submit a travel request. The basis of his writing was the most exact knowledge of the works of the artists and their contemporaries. So it is not surprising that in every case he managed, like a scientist, to find out a lot of new things about the artists and their time. In the case of "Vermouth are the last drops", he found several letters from Heinrich Heine that were still unknown.

In 1962 the novel "A star does not deviate from its path" was published about Schiller's youth at the Karlsschule until his escape to Mannheim and to Bauerbach in Thuringia . Menzel wanted to counter the strong appropriation of Schiller by the Nazis with a new image of Schiller. He firmly believed that Germans could find examples and role models for upright action and a democratic life among themselves and in their own history - he wanted to show that.

Gerhard W. Menzel's two children's books were written for the first reading age. The cheerful story "The Clown Pallawatsch" was originally a self-illustrated Christmas present for his daughter Dagmar. First published in 1960, a whole generation of children have taken the clown with the tiny violin to their hearts. "The White Dolphin", the poetic story of the friendship between a boy and a dolphin, was published in 1967 by Kinderbuchverlag Berlin .

After more than ten years of study, the art monograph on Pieter Bruegel the Elder was published in 1966 . Ä. at the Leipzig art book publisher EA Seemann . Menzel succeeded for the first time in showing the painter Bruegel as an artist who took a stand in the struggle of the Dutch against Spanish rule with his pictures. He was able to prove that Pieter Bruegel must have crossed the Alps in order to be able to see the original paintings of the painting stars of his time. He found out that Bruegel had worked in a tapestry factory and who his teachers were. He was able to make the dating of the large panel paintings beyond doubt and he was able to shed light on many of Bruegel's unknown circumstances. Most important for Bruegel research, however, was the realization that the famous cycle of monthly pictures must originally have consisted of six pictures and what the lost picture looked like. These surprising results in Menzel's first work in art history earned him the respect of the professional world, especially since the book was very soon published in Switzerland and Poland.

The then publisher of the Seemann Verlag, Gerhard Keil, suggested to Menzel that the material for the extensive preparatory work should also be used for a novel about Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä. to use. This historical novel, "Pieter the Droll", was published in 1969 by Paul List Verlag.

"Die Truppe des Molière ", a novel about the bold comedy poet, actor, director and principal in the France of Louis XIV , has a similarly long genesis . Since the 1950s, Menzel has been concerned with the relationship between artist and society in this exemplary case. The novel was published in 1975 and is probably Menzel's most mature work. Just as he had learned Dutch while working on the Bruegel material in order to be able to read sources and secondary literature unequivocally, he and his wife learned French together while working on the Molière material.

In 1978 the art monograph on Jan Vermeer van Delft was published . The publishing house EA Seemann is reissuing this booklet in 2008 on the occasion of its 150th anniversary in a series of the most beautiful books. Up to then, almost nothing was known about the painter Vermeer, there were hardly any biographical details and the dating of the works seemed arbitrary. Numerous forgeries were assigned to the narrow work. Menzel's great care and extensive source work also led to completely new insights for Vermeer. Menzel found out where Vermeer had received his training, with which of his painters contemporaries he was connected in what way, was able to delete forgeries from the work registers, work out a date of the works and find out essentials about the circumstances of Vermeer's life and time. Menzel also came to exciting results with the iconography, especially the late work and the painting style and its effect.

In 1977 the responsible authorities decided to incorporate the semi-public Paul List Verlag into the Mitteldeutscher Verlag in Halle as its Leipzig branch. From 1978 onwards, Gerhard W. Menzel's novels were published by Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle-Leipzig.

From 1976 until his death in 1980 Gerhard W. Menzel worked on a narrative wreath with the working title "Keeping the quill in the wind. German experiences". The cycle has remained a fragment. The author expresses his intentions in letters and postponed notes. The process of development of responsible citizens and self-determined individuals between the 16th and 18th centuries seemed to him to have been particularly difficult in Germany compared to other European countries and to have required the greatest personal commitment. Menzel wanted to find out, and that's why he was interested in Christian Reuter , Lessing , Herder , Novalis and Georg Forster . For Gerhard W. Menzel, the life of these writers, who differed in their style and spelling, had something in common: he found it in the intellectual courage with which they stood up to their environment and wanted to change it for the better. Menzel saw their often desperate search for truth and reality as a pledge of hope that is still necessary today for a meaningful organization of society. The stories about Herder and Forster are missing from the planned cycle. The Lessing story "Wolfenbütteler Jahre" was published separately in 1980 by Mitteldeutscher Verlag. The parts of the cycle completed by Menzel, namely the stories about Christian Reuter, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Novalis and Georg Forster, are formally very demanding. In 1985 they were given an afterword by Menzel's daughter Dagmar Winklhofer and published under the title "Lessing and others".

For Gerhard W. Menzel, writing historical fiction primarily included accuracy, caution and modesty towards historical personalities and their work. This makes it understandable why one finds less fictionality in his narrative work than in other authors of historical novels. In this way, Menzel consciously withdrew from her and his work all requests for rapid updating.

Honors

Gerhard W. Menzel was honored in 1967 with the " Art Prize of the City of Leipzig for Literature" and in 1979 accepted the Lion Feuchtwanger Prize from the Academy of Arts .

bibliography

• Marek in the west, Henschelverlag 1952

• Vermouth are the last drops, Paul List Verlag Leipzig 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1972
• Vermouth are the last drops, Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle - Leipzig 1982
• Vermouth are the last drops, translation into Polish, Warsaw 1968
• Vermouth are the last drops, translation into Lithuanian, Vilnius 1979
• A star does not deviate from its orbit, Paul List Verlag Leipzig 1962, 1964, 1967, 1975
• A star does not deviate from its orbit, Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle - Leipzig 1978, 1979, 1980
• Pieter der Drollige, Paul List Verlag Leipzig 1969, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1977
• Pieter der Drollige, Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle-Leipzig 1979
• Pieter the Droll, translation into Romanian, Bucharest 1974
• Pieter the Droll, translation into Czech, Prague 1987
• Moliere's Troop, Paul List Verlag Leipzig 1975, 1976
• Moliere's troop, Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle - Leipzig 1978, 1979
• Moliere's troops, translation into Czech, Prague 1979
• Wolfenbütteler years, Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle - Leipzig 1980, 1981
• Lessing and others, Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle - Leipzig 1985

• The Clown Pallawatsch, Der Kinderbuchverlag Berlin 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1983
• The white dolphin, Der Kinderbuchverlag Berlin 1967, 1969, 1970, 1972

• Pieter Bruegel the Elder, EA Seemann Verlag Leipzig 1966, 1968
• Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Stauffacher Verlag Zurich 1970
• Pieter Bruegel the Elder, translation into Polish, Warsaw 1969
• Vermeer, EA Seemann Verlag Leipzig 1977

Contributions to anthologies

• Urania Universum, Urania Verlag Leipzig Jena 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959
• Almanac for the year 1959, Paul List Verlag Leipzig 1959
• The scales, Paul List Verlag Leipzig 1965
• Here and Today, Paul List Verlag 1974
• Parallels, Paul List Verlag 1979