Grete Weiskopf

Grete Weiskopf (right), 1954

Grete Weiskopf (born Margarete Bernheim , pseudonym: Alex Wedding , born May 11, 1905 in Salzburg , † March 15, 1966 in Saalfeld / Saale ) was an author of books for children and young people.

Life

From 1925 Grete Bernheim earned her living as a typist, bookseller or bank clerk in Berlin . In 1928 she married the Czechoslovakian author Franz Carl Weiskopf (1900–1955), a member of the KPD and the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers (BPRS), and moved with him to Berlin. 1931 was published under the pseudonym Alex Wedding in Malik publishing her first book for teens, Ede and Unku that in the book burning in Germany in 1933 was mitvernichtet. It was filmed in 1980 at DEFA under the title Als Unku Ede's girlfriend was . In 1933 she and her husband fled to Prague and in 1939 to New York via Paris .

After the Second World War , she and her husband returned to Prague at short notice in 1949. In the same year, her husband began working in the diplomatic service and they moved to Washington, DC and to Stockholm in 1949/50 . From 1950 to 1952 they lived in the People's Republic of China , where Alex Wedding worked as a translator and correspondent . From 1953 until her death she lived in the GDR , u. a. in the “House of the Child” on Strausberger Platz in Berlin .

Grete and Franz Carl Weiskopf are buried in a shared grave complex in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin.

Grave of Grete Weiskopf in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin

Services

In the GDR she wrote books for children and young people, short stories, reports and numerous articles. Her two most successful books Ede and Unku and Das Eismeer ruft (both published by Malik-Verlag) were made into films. Alex Wedding is regarded as a pioneer of socialist children's and youth literature.

Honors

• A literary prize named after her, the Alex Wedding Prize , has been awarded since 1968 .
• On January 27, 2011, on the occasion of the commemoration day of the victims of National Socialism in Berlin-Friedrichshain, a path was named as Ede-und-Unku-Weg in memory of Erna Lauenburger and Grete Weiskopf.
• Since around 2009 a small street on Alexanderplatz between Karl-Liebknecht-, Keibel- and Wadzeckstraße has been called Alex-Wedding-Straße after it.

Works

• Ede and Unku . Malik-Verlag, Berlin 1931
  • Ede and Unku . Audiobook - read by Heike Makatsch. 3 CD audio. Kassel: MEDIA Net Edition 2015 . ISBN 978-3-939988-08-3 .
• The Arctic Ocean is calling . Malik Publishing House, London 1936
• The flag of the piper hanger . 1948 (youth book about the Franconian preacher Hans Böhm )
• Mercenaries without pay. A novel for the youth . 1948 (from the 2nd edition in 1951 under the title The great adventure of Kaspar Schmeck )
• The iron buffalo . 1952
• The dragon bride. Chinese folk tales . 1961
• Hubert the hippopotamus . (Based on an actual event, the migration of the hippopotamus Huberta through South Africa)
• In the shadow of the baobab. Fairy tales and fables from Africa . Alfred Holz Verlag, Berlin 1965

Filmography

Literary templates

• 1961: The Arctic Ocean is calling ( Ledove more vola ) - Director: Hanuš Burger
• 1980: When Unku was Ede's girlfriend
• 1981: The great adventure of Kaspar Schmeck
• 1984: The Arctic Ocean is calling - Director: Jörg Foth

script

• 1957: Lissy
• 1964: Holidays

literature

• Hermine Scheibe: Alex Weddings artistic and literary theoretical contribution to the development of socialist German children's literature . GDR Center for Children's Literature, Berlin 1976 (= series of publications on children's literature; 2)
• Susanne Blumesberger, Ernst Seibert: Alex Wedding (1905–1966) and the proletarian children's and youth literature . Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 3-7069-0363-6
• Astrid Fernengel: Children's literature in exile , Tectum, Marburg, 2008, Diss.TU Berlin 2006
• Jürgen Kaulfuß, Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Wedding, Alex (actually Grete Weiskopf) . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Manfred Orlick: Reminiscence of Alex Wedding (on the 50th anniversary of his death). In: Ossietzky , Heft 6, 2016, pp. 208–210, online at sopos.org.
• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 1212

Web links

Commons : Alex Wedding  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Grete Weiskopf in the catalog of the German National Library
• Street naming, women personalities in Berlin-Mitte
• Information about Grete Weiskopf at KinderundJugendmedien.de
• Alex Wedding Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin