Hartmut Kühn

Hartmut Kühn or Hartmut Michael Kühn (born July 5, 1947 in Berlin ) is a German philosopher, historian , publicist and translator of Polish literature .

life and work

Hartmut Kühn grew up in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin-Grunewald and Mutzschen near Grimma as the son of the bassist, percussionist and tuba player as well as choirmaster and bandmaster Herbert Kühn and his wife Ilse, an accountant and authorized signatory . In Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg he attended the ten-grade high school. In 1964 he began an apprenticeship as a typesetter, which he completed in 1966, at the same time he passed the Abitur at the evening school in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg in 1967.

From 1967 to 1968 he was the editorial secretary of Weimar Posts and in the summer of 1968, at the invitation of his predecessor Peter Anders (Petr Stanek) , he was a guest at the partner magazine Plamen in Prague. Through his dismissal after an article critical of the GDR in this magazine, the visit to Prague shortly before the intervention of the Warsaw contracting states and the acquaintance with the editorial secretary von Plamen , Antonin Hulík, the sociologist Miroslav Jodl and the philosopher and professor at Charles University in Prague Karel Kosík got caught in the maelstrom of ideological and political arguments about the Prague Spring , about which he was questioned several times.

Kühn completed a degree in philosophy, logic and semiotics at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1968–1971 . His fellow students included the writers Christoph Hein and Rolf Schilling , the logicians and semiotics Evelyn and Johannes Dölling, the cultural theorist Günter Kracht, the urban planning department. Theorist Ulrich Reinisch, the later civil rights activists Wolfgang Templin and Klaus Wolfram, the journalists Gisela Hoyer and Gisela Blank as well as the medievalist Hans-Ulrich Wöhler and the political scientist Dieter Segert belonged. After being relegated for political reasons as a result of an allegation of revisionism, which came about at the instigation of loyal SED comrades in the Philosophy section in December 1971 and was untruthfully issued as a leave of absence, Kühn was subject to a lifelong study ban and a temporary publication ban in the GDR. which was initially only undermined by Michael Franz and Josef Hermann Sauter at the Berliner Rundfunk and Klaus Hilbig at the Forum .

At first Kühn worked in odd jobs - as a scrap dealer, production manager and small actor ( TV of the GDR and University for Film and Television , Babelsberg), waiter, editorial staff ( Filmspiegel ) and dubbing writer for the DEFA dubbing studio and television of the GDR. From 1975 he worked as a freelance lecturer a. Translators working for Polish literature for various publishers - so to Michal Choromariski, Kornel Filipowicz , Witold Gombrowicz , Ireneusz Iredyński, Zdzisław Kuksewicz, Andrzej Kuśniewicz , Waldemar Łysiak, Aleksander Minkowski, Władysław Misiolek, Jerzy Putrament and January Józef Szczepański - so for publishers people and World and New Life as well as the German Publishing House for Science and the Academy Publishing House .

This work as a translator and his political convictions made Hartmut Kühn a sympathizer of the Solidarność movement that emerged in August 1980 . After martial law was declared, Kühn activated his Solidarność contacts and left the FDGB trade union federation in 1980 when he was asked to sign a resolution against Solidarność, which he refused. From 1981 to 1985 he was banned from traveling to Poland for several years.

After his rehabilitation at the Humboldt University in 1990, he completed his studies in philosophy and semiotics in 1994 with the help of the historian Heinz Schilling and the philosophers Volker Gerhardt and Heinz Kuchling, defending the work on the critique of the Marxist reception of the approach of Charles Sanders Peirce in sign theory . Reviewers of his work were Heinz Kuchling and Michael Franz. At the universities of Warsaw and Szczecin, however, he studied political science and history after 1990, for example with Janusz Faryś, Andrzej Głowacki, Michał Paziewski, Jan Maria Piskorski and Adam Wator (Szczecin) as well as Zdzisław Kuksewicz, Karol Modzelewski , and Henryk Samsonowicz (Warsaw).

In August 1996 he was u. a. with Olga Krzyzanowska, deputy marshal of the Polish Sejm, Solidarność activists Bogdan Borusewicz , Zbigniew Janas, Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska and Jan Lityński as well as Wolfgang Templin, participants in an international conference on issues of the topicality and aftermath of Solidarność in Gdańsk. Also in 1996 he published the book Where from Communism? by Karol Modzelewski, Medievalist, former Vice-President of the Polish Academy of Sciences and former spokesman and member of the Solidarność National Commission, which he translated and provided with an afterword. In 1999 he published his book The Decade of Solidarność, the standard work on Solidarność, which, with 620 pages and 103 photos and documents, was the most comprehensive work on the history of the Polish trade union and citizens' movement that was published in German-speaking countries.

In December 2000, he made a speech at the Polish-French-German conference The Solidarność Movement and the Unification of Europe in Szczecin, where he held talks a. a. with Dieter Bingen (German Poland Institute Darmstadt), Michel Dobry (Laboratoire d'Analyse de Systèmes Politiques, Paris) Gerhard Doliesen (Ost-Akademie Lüneburg), Andrzej Friszke (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), Jerzy Holzer (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), Bogdan Lis (Centrum Solidarność, Gdańsk), Jan Maria Piskorski (University of Szczecin), Georg Wilhelm Strobel (Aschaffenburg), Jean Charles Szurek (Laboratoire d'Analyse de Systèmes Politiques, Paris), Alain Touraine (Center d ' Analyze et d'Intervention Sociologiques-EHESS, Paris), Gert Weisskirchen (German Bundestag), Michel Wieviorka (Center d'Analyse et d'Intervention Sociologiques-EHESS, Paris), Klaus Ziemer (German Historical Institute Warsaw) and Andrzej Zybertowicz (University Toruń), some of which resulted in a long-term collaboration.

In December 2001 he took a. a. with the translator Henryk Bereska , the political scientist Andrzej Kotula, the historian Burkhard Olschowsky, the Polonist Heinrich Olschowsky , the Germanist Leszek Szaruga, the documentary filmmaker Konrad Weiß and Wolfgang Templin at the German-Polish conference GDR. Poland. Politically prescribed friendship , which also took place in Szczecin. At the request of the President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Thierse , Kühn wrote a constitutional report on the history of Polish parliamentarism for the academic service of the German Bundestag in 2003 .

In 2004 he was mediated by the Institute Director for History at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Prof. Michael G. Müller , and the Institute Director for History at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Prof. Heinz Schilling, as well as at the invitation of its director at the time, Prof. Klaus Ziemer, worked for several months in Warsaw at the German Historical Institute there. Since November 2019 Hartmut Kühn has been working as an associated research assistant at the Aleksander Brückner Center for Polish Studies .

Hartmut Kühn lives as a freelance author in Berlin and Ramin near Szczecin (Poland).

Quotes

“In a way that was quite peculiar and autonomous at the time, the Poles were way ahead of the other countries in 1980/81. Although the roots of the end of communist rule are of a general nature, the political movement of Solidarność and the events of the ten or so years from 1980 to 1990 that it played a key role in can only be derived from Poland's special history. This also applies to the interaction between Solidarność and the Communist Party, which agreed on free elections for June 1989 when the student revolt in Beijing was crushed by tanks. And a prime minister from the ranks of the opposition had taken up his office when the bells of the Gethsemane Church in Berlin heralded the end of the GDR. "

- Hartmut Kühn : The Decade of Solidarność - The Political History of Poland 1980–1990, with a historiographical appendix until 1997, BasisDruck Verlag, Berlin 1999, page 14

“On the map of Europe from 1921, states appeared whose nationalities before 1914 were often only known to politicians, historians or linguists. There were a total of seven states that had emerged from the bankruptcy estate of three lost empires: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Ukraine was also part of it for a while until it became part of Soviet Russia in 1920. … Poland was a specialty among the newly created nation-states, as it had been divided among three of the states involved in the First World War, that all these empires had collapsed one after the other and Polish soldiers on both sides of the front for the Entente powers as well as fought for the Central Powers and got involved politically. "

- Hartmut Kühn : Poland in the First World War: The struggle for a Polish state up to its re-establishment in 1918/1919 , Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2018, page 286

Works (selection)

as an author

• Editor and author of the epilogue to Karol Modzelewski, Wohin vom Kommunismus aus? , BasisDruck Verlag, Berlin 1996
• The Decade of Solidarność - The Political History of Poland 1980–1990, with a historiographical appendix up to 1997, BasisDruck Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3-86163-087-6
• The Decade of Solidarność , Federal Agency for Civic Education , Berlin 2002 (special edition)
• On the constitutional development of the Polish Parliament , Scientific Service of the German Bundestag, Berlin 2003
• Poland's highest state organs (1917-2011) , German Poland Institute, Darmstadt 2011
• Poland in World War I: The struggle for a Polish state up to its re-establishment in 1918/1919 , Warsaw Studies in Cultural and Literary Studies, Volume 12, Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2018, ISBN 9783631765302

as translator

• Aleksander Minkowski, Holidays with Wilga , Berlin 1977
• Andrzej Zbych, Eine Partie Domino , Berlin 1980
• Andrzej Zbych, The Last Chance , Berlin 1980
• Wladyslaw Misiolek, Heidekraut , Berlin 1981
• Andrzej Zbych, Top Secret , Berlin 1981
• Andrzej Zbych, The penultimate performance , Berlin 1981
• Andrzej Zbych, A stupid joke , Berlin 1982
• Andrzej Zbych, Die Parole , Berlin 1982
• Andrzej Zbych, Captain Kloss under suspicion , Berlin 1983
• Andrzej Zbych, Captain Kloss intervenes , Berlin 1990
• Karol Modzelewski, Where to from Communism? , BasisDruck Verlag, Berlin 1996
• Interrogation of Noel Fields by Colonel Swiatło from the Polish State Security and General Roman Romkowski, August 27, 1919 in: The Noel Field case , Berlin 2005
• Wladyslaw Terlecki, Der Damm , publishing rights: free
• Zdzisław Kuksewicz, Outline of the History of Medieval Philosophy , publishing rights: free
• Olga Tokarczuk, The journey of the people of the book , publishing rights: free
• Olga Tokarczuk, EE , publishing rights: free

Articles and radio reports

• Chain stores and retail chains , Berliner Rundfunk 1971
• The self-image of the writer , Berliner Rundfunk 1971
• Work groups for literature in the world of work , Berliner Rundfunk 1971
• The man of letters as a loner , Berliner Rundfunk 1971
• Art as a commodity , Berliner Rundfunk 1971
• Why we still read Homer today , Berliner Rundfunk 1971
• A clever question is half recognized , answer to Helga Hörz's article Science in the Coffee House under the pseudonym Michael Franke, Forum, Berlin 1972
• Poland and the turning point - Twenty years ago the independent trade union Solidarnosc was founded in Gdansk. The first historical appearance of the working class, which ended victoriously, was also their last - No way back to the Lenin shipyard , Berliner Zeitung, September 2, 2000, page 4M
• The god was mortal. Josef Stalin died 50 years ago , Neues Deutschland, Berlin March 1, 2003, page 19
• So that the tanks roll faster , Neues Deutschland, Berlin 2012
• A moment of spring , on the 50th anniversary of the Kafka conference, Neues Deutschland, Berlin 2013

Sync texts

• Hildegard , TV movie, 1984,
• Revolver , feature film, 1984
• There was no summer that year , feature film, 1984
• The Marx Brothers in the department store , feature film, 1984
• A perfect blackmail , feature film 1984
• The Sky Blue Cat , feature film, 1984
• Emil, the sleeper , film 1985
• Hidden behind the mask , feature film 1985
• Romance on the Orient Express , feature film 1983
• The School of Women , teleplay based on Molière, 1986

Web links

• Kühn, Hartmut in: Polish personal database.
• Review by Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk on The Decade of Solidarność at H-Soz-Kult

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Poland and the Wende - No return to the Lenin shipyard in: Berliner Zeitung of September 2, 2000
2. ↑ Karin Tomala in: The Parliament , 1/2 2000
3. ↑ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk : Review of Kühn, Hartmut: The Decade of Solidarność. H-Soz-Kult , March 2, 2000.
4. ↑ Review in: Der Tagesspiegel from April 6, 1999, p. 7
5. ↑ Review Pride and Truth - Hartmut Kühn on the rebirth of Poland by Bernd Flechsig in Neues Deutschland on July 4, 2019