Herbert Bräuning

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Herbert Bräuning (born April 11, 1921 in Kassel ; † June 2014 in Germering ) was a German literary translator, journalist and author. He spent several years in prisons in the GDR for inciting boycotts .

Life

Bräuning grew up in Düsseldorf. After graduating from high school, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and spent five years on various fronts.

After the Second World War he studied German , Romance studies and theater studies at the University of Leipzig . Through the mediation of the Germanist Hans Mayer , Bräuning came to East Berlin, where he worked as a publishing editor and translator. Here he met his future wife Ursula (* 1928), whom he married in 1951.

His approval of the politics of the GDR increasingly gave way to skepticism, which he ultimately expressed in a newspaper article. Before they moved to the West, Bräuning and his wife Ursula were arrested and convicted of " boycotting ": Herbert Bräuning was sentenced to three years in prison, his wife Ursula to two and a half years. While in custody, which was partly a dark one , Bräuning wrote 28 sonnets in his head, which he could only put on paper after his release from prison.

From 1959 the Bräuning couple lived in the Federal Republic of Germany. Herbert Bräuning worked in West Berlin, Hamburg and Munich as an editor and literary translator. The couple lived in Germering since 1971. Bräuning had been blind since he was 82 years old.

His wife worked in the writers 'association (VS) and built up the VG Wort authors' pension scheme , for which she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in 1985 .

Work as a writer and translator

Bräuning began publishing poems and short stories in 1941. He wrote a total of ten novels and translated works by Alexandre Dumas , Henri Barbusse , Vladimir Pozner and Jorge Amado , among others .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sonnets in the head (report on a memorial event for Bräuning), Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 10, 2016
  2. A portrait of Ursula Bräuning in the corona crisis appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: Pia Ratzesberger: Hurra, wir leben ; SZ, page 3, May 18, 2020