Herbert Ziergiebel

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Herbert Ziergiebel (born June 27, 1922 in Nordhorn , † September 11, 1988 in Berlin ) was a German writer .

Life

Herbert Ziergiebel originally wanted to become an engineer and first learned to be a fitter. Afterwards he worked for some time as a technical draftsman and designer.

During the war he was active in the anti-fascist resistance and was almost arrested for posting illegal leaflets in his apartment, but was able to escape shortly before. He initially went into hiding in Tyrol , but was arrested in 1942 and first imprisoned in Innsbruck and then in Dachau concentration camp . There he fled under adventurous circumstances shortly before the liberation by the Americans in 1945.

After the war he studied philosophy and history at the Humboldt University in Berlin . For several years he worked as a journalist in Budapest , from where he was ordered back during the 1956 popular uprising . But he also had his first publications as a freelance writer in the press and radio (including the radio plays Goodbye, Gustav and Captain Brown loses his bet ).

His first novel Rebels around Ferdinand von Schill was published in 1953. This was followed by contemporary historical novels and stories such as 1959 The Face with the Scar (filmed in 1962 under the title The Last Chance ) and 1962 Satan said me to be silent , in which he deals with his time in the concentration camp and the confusion that followed. A first sketch for The Face with the Scar was published as an autobiographical short story under the title Escape from Hell as early as 1955 . His almost forgotten novel When it becomes day (1963) is a family biography work that is set in the time of the Weimar Republic .

After his "historical phase" to pediment moved on Philosophy and fictional and published in 1966 by the publisher The New Berlin 's acclaimed science fiction novel The Other World , which - far ahead of his time - depicts the inner conflicts of a spaceship crew, caused by accident was catapulted into space and has to deal with the fact of her approaching death. The book saw numerous reprints and was translated into Czech and Hungarian. Franz Rottensteiner wrote: "Herbert Ziergiebel's space travel novel The Other World reveals greater ambitions , an ambitious psychological study of some wrecked space travelers."

1972 followed the time of the shooting stars , in which the question of life in space is answered in an original and humorous way. Here the protagonist of the book (including his dachshund Waldi) is picked up by aliens because they noticed that the earthly girl they had taken with them to Babylon a few thousand years ago and who has barely aged due to dilatation, could now need a sexual partner. They generously drop him and the dachshund at home so that he can choose between his home on the one hand and an existence between the stars on the other. He decides against the adventure.

Quarrels with the GDR Writers' Association in connection with Wolf Biermann's expatriation made things quieter around Herbert Ziergiebel. He only published the science fiction story The Experiments of Professor von Pulex (published in the anthology Der Mann vom Anti ) and in 1975 a collection of humorous anecdotes under the title Vizedusa .

He then retired to his Manik Maya property in Spreeau near Berlin, which readers also know from his novels as the starting and landing place for spaceships. There he dealt a lot with astronomy and shifted more and more to painting.

The problems of the environment and the future of mankind were to become the subject of another novel, which had grown to several hundred pages under the working title On the day when the Laleb came and remained unfinished. Herbert Ziergiebel died of cancer after a short, serious illness. His grave is in the Protestant Karlshorster and New Friedrichsfelder Friedhof in Berlin-Karlshorst .

bibliography

  • Rebels: novel about Ferdinand von Schill . The New Berlin, Berlin 1953.
  • The escape from hell. The new adventure # 59. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1955.
  • The last veil: Albanian travel pictures. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1956.
  • When the day comes. Grandstand, Berlin 1959.
  • The face with the scar. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1959.
  • Satan made me keep silent. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1962.
  • The other world: fantastic novel. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1966.
  • Time of the shooting stars: fantastic novel. The New Berlin, Berlin 1972.
  • The Pulex Professor's Experiments. 1975. In Ekkehard Redlin (ed.): Der Mann vom Anti Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1980.
  • Vizedusa and other strange occurrences. Stories. Eulenspiegel, Berlin 1975.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Heyne Science Fiction Magazin # 4, ed. by Wolfgang Jeschke , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag , Munich 1982, ISBN 3-453-30832-8 , p. 226.
personal data
SURNAME Ornamental gable, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Nordhorn
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 1988
Place of death Berlin