Gregor Dorfmeister

This article deals with a German writer who became known under the pseudonym Manfred Gregor ; for the screenwriter with the same pseudonym see Erwin C. Dietrich .

Gregor Dorfmeister (born March 7, 1929 in Tailfingen ; † February 4, 2018 in Bad Tölz ) was a German journalist and writer . He published three novels under the pseudonym Manfred Gregor , and his autobiographical debut work Die Brücke was successfully filmed .

Life

Dorfmeister grew up in Bad Tölz, where he attended high school. He had two older brothers. In the spring of 1945 he was called up for the Volkssturm and took part in the last fighting in his homeland. In 1946 he graduated from high school and then worked in a construction company and in the woodworking industry. From 1948 he studied theater studies , newspaper studies and philosophy at the University of Munich . During this time he completed a traineeship at a Munich daily newspaper . From 1954 he was external editor of the Münchner Merkurs in Tegernsee , from 1957 in Miesbach and from 1960 in Bad Tölz. From 1962 he headed the local newspaper Tölzer Kurier .

Dorfmeister, who in addition to his journalistic work was also involved in helping the disabled, retired in Bad Tölz, where he died in February 2018 at the age of 88.

Act

In his strongly autobiographical first work Die Brücke (1958) he describes the senseless deployment of the Volkssturm by a group of seven sixteen-year- olds who were supposed to defend a bridge against the approaching Americans towards the end of World War II . Six of the boys are killed, only one survived. The book was - also internationally - a great success; the film adaptation of the same name by Bernhard Wicki from 1959 is a classic among anti-war films . In 2007 ProSieben produced a TV adaptation directed by Wolfgang Panzer with Franka Potente in the role of the teacher "Elfie Bauer".

Dorfmeister's second novel The Judgment is about a rape trial against four soldiers of the American army in a small town in southern Germany. The central core of the conflict in the novel comments on the state of the relationship between Germans and Americans towards the end of the 1950s. This novel was also made into a film by Gottfried Reinhardt as a city ​​without pity for Kirk Douglas .

In his third novel Die Strasse , Dorfmeister again depicts a group of young people whose inner emptiness and aimlessness let them slide into crime.

Honors

• Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (June 3, 1981)

Works

Novels

• The bridge . Novel. Desch, Munich 1959 (numerous new editions and editions, audio book read by Volker Lechtenbrink: Hörkultur, Dänikon / Zurich 2006, ISBN 9783952308738 , media combination with film DVD)
• The verdict . Novel. Desch, Munich 1960
• The street. Novel. Desch, Munich 1961

Essays

• Lenggries as a winter sports area In: Carl Josef von Sazenhofen (Red.): Lenggries; a journey through the past and present . 2nd, supplementary edition, Lenggries municipality 1989, p. 334f
• Prof. Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden . Eulogy. In: Upper Bavarian Culture Prize 1991 . District of Upper Bavaria, press office, Munich 1992, p. 12f
• "Gabriel-von-Seidl-Gymnasium Bad Tölz"; Lecture on the naming festival. In: Report on the 1999 school year. Gabriel-von-Seidl-Gymnasium, Bad Tölz 1999 p. 10f
• As far as the horses trot - Josef Martin Bauer in Bad Tölz. In: Christoph Schnitzer: The Tölzer Leonhardifahrt. cs-press, Bad Tölz 2005, ISBN 3-00-016788-9 , p. 66f.
• Foreword to the opening of Hans Reiser's exhibition “Schönfärbereien” in the Olaf Gulbransson Museum in Tegernsee on September 2, 2007. In: And so on ... Messages from the Olaf Gulbransson Society. V. Tegernsee, Heft 8 (2007), p. 30f

Radio broadcast

• Thomas Grasberger: Gregor Dorfmeister. Author of the anti-war novel "Die Brücke". Bayern 2 , January 20, 2017 (audio 24:28 minutes; mp3; 39.2 MB)

Web links

• Literature by and about Gregor Dorfmeister in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gregor Dorfmeister in the Bavarian literature portal (project of the Bavarian State Library )
• Diana Zinkler: "We were still children". In: Hamburger Abendblatt . May 7, 2005, archived from the original on February 10, 2013 ; accessed on February 5, 2018 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Veronika Ahn-Tauchnitz, Christoph Schnitzer: With “Die Brücke” he wrote history: Gregor Dorfmeister is dead . Münchner Merkur , February 5, 2018, accessed on February 5, 2018.
2. ↑ List of holders of the Federal Order of Merit (Federal President's Office)