Heinz wing

Heinz Flügel (born March 16, 1907 in São Paulo , Brazil ; † May 5, 1993 in Tutzing ) was a German publicist , writer and radio play author .

Life

Heinz Flügel was born as the son of a German diplomat in São Paulo, Brazil. After another station in Helsinki, Flügel grew up in a middle-class family in Berlin-Zehlendorf, where he also graduated from high school. He studied philosophy in Berlin and Kiel from 1926 to 1932.

In 1930 he published his first volume of poetry with the title "Myths and Mysteries". After completing his studies, Flügel initially worked as a lecturer for Berlin's “ Rabenpresse ”. His first plays (“Wölund”, 1938, or “Albwin und Rosimund”, 1939) were also published by this small publisher at the end of the 1930s, which by 1937 had managed to create a niche for authors that distanced themselves from the Nazi regime faced.

Wing also worked in the opposition " Deutsche Rundschau ". The Kulturzeitung was headed by the courageous Hitler critic Rudolf Pechel, who was arrested in early 1942 for "treason" after numerous poisonous satires and who was in camp at the end of the war.

During the war, Flügel was in Ghent in occupied Belgium - as a lecturer at the " Deutsche Akademie ", a propaganda institution of the National Socialist state .

After the war, the avowed Protestant Flügel initially edited the Catholic magazine “ Hochland ” , which was published in Munich . Protestants and Catholics had also worked together in Berlin before and during the war at the Protestant " Eckart ", named after the warner and rater of the same name in the old German Harlung saga. Editor Kurt Ihlenfeld had founded the Eckart Circle , whose members wanted to promote the encounter between theology and literature, faith and poetry. Evangelical authors such as Rudolf Alexander Schröder , Albrecht Goes , Jochen Klepper and Otto von Taube, as well as Catholics such as Werner Bergengruen and Reinhold Schneider , who converted in 1936, formed an illustrious circle to which Heinz Flügel belonged.

Heinz Flügel remained loyal to "Eckart" and Kurt Ihlenfeld after the war. From 1951 to 1960 he edited the re-appearing magazine, initially together with Ihlenfeld, later as its sole editor. In 1950, Flügel also began his intensive conference work as a part-time director of studies at the Evangelical Academy in Tutzing , with whom he was closely connected until his death.

From 1957 on, Flügel repeatedly traveled to Latin America to give lectures there. His commitment to the conversation between Christians and Marxists in the then clearly bipolar world and his participation in the social movements in Latin America have earned him the label “left Christian”. Most of all, Flügel believed in the transforming power of language and in dialogue: "Man realizes himself by speaking, by transforming himself and his world into words and by responding to the challenge of nothingness."

In 1959 he was one of the first Germans to go to Israel at the invitation of the Israeli government. He was one of the first to campaign for the encounter between Christians and Jews. "Without the church, apart from the church and against its theology, I had to go to the Jews," he noted in memory of a formative encounter with a Holocaust survivor.

From 1950 to 1993, Heinz Flügel shaped the dialogue between culture and church, between theology, literature and theater, as a part-time study director at the Evangelical Academy in Tutzing . The essayist, radio play and book author Heinz Flügel was one of the most prominent Protestant writers of the 20th century.

Works (selection)

• Doubt. Melancholy. Genius. Eckart-Verlag, Witten and Berlin 1952.
• Between the lines. Autobiographical records. Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1987. ISBN 3-459-01678-7 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinz Flügel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Article in the Protestant weekly newspaper "Sonntagsblatt" on the 100th birthday of Heinz Flügel