Harald Gerlach

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Harald Gerlach (1988)

Harald Gerlach (born March 7, 1940 in Bunzlau ; † June 19, 2001 in Leimen ) was a German poet, writer and playwright .

Life

In 1945 Gerlach's family fled from Kittlitztreben in Lower Silesia to Römhild in southern Thuringia. There Harald Gerlach completed his Abitur in Meiningen in 1958 , but did not get a place at university because he refused to do military service in the People's Army. He got into conflict with the SED state when he left the GDR in 1960 and traveled through Italy and southern France for half a year. After his return he worked temporarily as a gravel pit worker, grave digger and stage technician. He later began distance learning, which he completed in 1968 as a theater master. In 1970 Gerlach was employed as a dramaturge at the Erfurt Municipal Theaters . From 1984 he worked as a freelance writer.

His work was varied: he wrote essays, poetry, novels, radio plays and libretti . Gerlach has received numerous prizes, such as the Louis Fürnberg Prize in 1985, the Terre des Hommes Radio Play Prize in 1990, the Special Literature Prize in the Silesian Cultural Center in 1992, the honorary award from the German Schiller Foundation in Weimar in 1993 and the Merano Poetry Prize in 1994 . He last lived in Leimen and died there in 2001 at the age of 61 from complications from a brain tumor. In an obituary, Der Spiegel characterized him as follows: "The man [...] was one of the quiet people in the country, but he was characterized by an unwavering obstinacy."

On the basis of an initiative by Ingo Schulze , the Thuringian Ministry of Culture and the Thuringian Literary Society set up a new author's grant in 2009 to promote literary projects in and about Thuringia. It is called the Thuringian Literature Scholarship Harald Gerlach .

Literary work

Poetry

Gerlach's first poems were about landscapes and other regional themes. In the volume of poetry Mauerstücke he deals with personalities from the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, for example Petrarch and Helius Eobanus Hessus . In later poems, some of which were still related to the landscape, he also addressed his personal situation and the political realities. In Nowhere and at no time he fears with "unexcited bitterness" about its identity and "entrenched in the realm of illusions, not to lose the ground under their feet." Other poems Gerlach enjoyed staying Friedrich Schiller in Bauerbach or Friedrich Hölderlin visit of the Great Gleichberg to the subject.

Quote

  • “The angel of history / Mondays on Opernplatz / speaks Saxon. The looped / university church rings its / melted down bells. // With voices like this / the ruins speak for themselves / when barbarism falls apart. "

Novels

His first novel Das Graupenhaus takes place in the Römhild of the post-war period and describes the life of the war orphans and their tutors in the home there. The novel was filmed in 1982 under the title Das Graupenschloss . Another important novel by Gerlach is Windstimmen , for which he was awarded the 1997 “Fantastic Prize” from the city of Wetzlar. The work is a generation portrait that extends from the 17th century to the revolutionary GDR autumn days of 1989. In multi-layered storylines, the author works on his original theme, coping with homelessness, whereby he also brings in fantastic elements, for example the haunted dead. Gerlach's linguistic art was widely praised, but with the restriction that his utterances are striking “where they are based on the results of German reunification. These meager replicas and objections are based on the lack of distance to the events. "

In his novel Rottmanns Bilder (1999), Gerlach sensitively draws two solitary figures, the GDR composer Scheerbarth and his teacher Rottmann. Although the critics sometimes found his style of language a bit populist, the "tone of fine irony with which the narrator illuminates the inner life of his hero down to the deepest corner" is remarkable .

Works

Books

  • Poetry album No. 56. Poems. Poetry album (lyric series) . Berlin 1972.
  • Jump into the sea of ​​oats. Poems. Epilogue: Wulf Kirsten . Aufbau-Verlag, Weimar 1973.
  • The barley house. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1976 (most recently 1990: ISBN 3-351-01833-9 ).
  • Assumptions about a tramp. Stories. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1978.
  • Wall pieces. Poems. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1979.
  • Games. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1983.
  • Message from Grimmelshausen. Poems. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1984.
  • Attempts to walk. Novel. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1985 (last as paperback 1999: ISBN 3-7466-0112-6 ).
  • Hymen skin. Novella. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1987, ISBN 3-351-00370-6 .
  • Farewell to Arcadia. Novella. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1988, ISBN 3-351-01011-7 .
  • Desolation. Poems. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1989, ISBN 3-351-01423-6 .
  • Follow the pleasure. New games. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1990, ISBN 3-351-01630-1 .
  • Inclusions, openings. Sheets on six months of German history. Burgart-Presse, Rudolstadt 1991, ISBN 3-910206-03-4 .
  • Ecce homo. Cycle of poems with etchings by Michael Morgner , arches in cassette, Rudolstadt 1994.
  • Continued conquest. Footnotes on the zeitgeist. Hain, Rudolstadt 1997, ISBN 3-930215-31-4 .
  • Wind voices. Novel. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-351-02370-7 .
  • Nowhere and at no hour. Poems. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02825-3 .
  • Rottmann's pictures. Novel. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-351-02871-7 .
  • The completely paradisiacal area. In Goethe's footsteps between the Rhine, Saar and Moselle. With a search for clues by Wulf Kirsten and a comment by Ralph Schock . Gollenstein, Blieskastel 2001, ISBN 3-935731-09-4 .
  • Blues Terrano. New wind voices. Novel. Aufbau-Verlah, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-351-02921-7 .
  • You only love what gives you freedom. The life story of Friedrich Schiller. Beltz and Gelberg, Weinheim / Basel 2004, ISBN 3-407-80877-1 .
  • Serene step on the edge of the abyss. Goethe or how to learn to live with crises. Wartburg-Verlag, Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-86160-321-4 .
  • So everything is said. Selected texts from the years 1972-2000. Edited by Bettina Olbrich. With a foreword by Ingo Schulze. NORA Verlagsgemeinschaft Dyck & Westerheide OHG, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86557-219-6 .
  • but you who i was 100 portrait poems from three decades. Edited by Bettina Olbrich and Ulrich Kaufmann. With a foreword by Thomas Spaniel as well as a postscript and notes from the editor. Wartburg-Verlag, Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-86160-244-6 .

Plays

  • The street. World premiere: Städtische Bühnen Erfurt 1979.
  • Hero Ulysses. World premiere: Städtische Bühnen Erfurt 1982.
  • The layer. World premiere: Städtische Bühnen Erfurt 1984.
  • The stake. First performance: Compagnie Les Treteaux de l'Arche Marseille 1985.
  • Rape. World premiere: Württembergische Landesbühne Esslingen 1993.
  • La Ronde. First performance: Compagnie Les Treteaux de l'Arche Marseille 1998.

Opera libretti

  • The cold heart . Children's opera. Music: Klaus Hofmann. World premiere: Theater Erfurt (Alte Oper) 1969.
  • The price . Music: Karl Ottomar Treibmann . World premiere: Theater Erfurt 1980.
  • Joke, satire, irony and deeper meaning . Music: Karl Ottomar Treibmann. World premiere: Städtische Bühnen Erfurt 1987.
  • The idiot . Music: Karl Ottomar Treibmann. World premiere: Leipzig Opera House 1988.

Radio plays and audio books

  • Ikaros . Director: Norbert Speer . Prod .: Radio of the GDR , 1984 (original broadcast 1990)
  • The way to the promised land. Prod .: Broadcasting of the GDR, 1986.
  • Market day. Director: Peter Groeger . Prod .: DS Culture , 1993.
  • Heinrich Heine - time life work. Together with Waltraud and Jürgen von Esenwein. CD. Metzler, Stuttgart 1997.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Time Life Work. Together with Jürgen von Esenwein. CD, structure, Berlin 1999.
  • Anna Seghers on her 100th birthday. CD. SWR Media, Stuttgart 2000.

TV feature film

  • The barley castle. Director: Hans Werner. Prod .: Television of the GDR, 1982. First broadcast on November 28, 1982. Disc by Studio Hamburg Enterprises GmbH 2017. Based on the story “Das Graupenhaus” by Harald Gerlach. The shooting location was Mirow Castle . The real location of the action, however, is Glücksburg Castle (Römhild) . In the discussion about the book version of the film, which spanned several years, decisive passages of dialogue were deleted. The comparison between books and films shows the problems with film and television productions in the GDR.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Spiegel - June 25, 2001 edition.
  2. ↑ Jan Röhnert receives Gerlach literature scholarship. The Berlin literary criticism , March 4, 2010.
  3. ↑ Dorothea von Törne : Lost home, invented home . In: new german literature . Issue 2, 1999
  4. ↑ Ulf Heise in: Critical lexicon for contemporary German literature
  5. ↑ Meininger Tageblatt. March 7, 2020. p. 15.
  6. ^ Reference: Monday demonstrations in 1989/1990 in the GDR
  7. ↑ From: Inclusions. Departures . (1991) on the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig
  8. ↑ Critical Lexicon for Contemporary German Literature ( KLG )
  9. ↑ Isa Schikorsky: The pedant and the vixen . In: reading . Issue 4, 1999 ISSN  0944-7660
  10. ↑ Meckpress, February 22, 2015, [1] , accessed April 19, 2020

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gerlach, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Bunzlau
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 2001
Place of death Glue