Herma Kennel

Herma Kennel (married Köpernik , born June 20, 1944 in Finsterbrunnertal near Pirmasens ) is a German writer and painter .

Career

Herma Kennel was born near Pirmasens near the German-French border and grew up in Rhineland-Palatinate . After training as a kindergarten teacher, she studied art at the Free Academy of the Arts in Mannheim and then worked at the Council of Ministers of the European Community in Brussels . From 1972 to 1974 she studied at the University of Politics in Munich . Herma Kennel has lived in Berlin since 1998 .

Writer

First she made a name for herself as an author and illustrator of children's books and as a painter in a naive style . In 1991 her first factual novel "Alleingang" was published, in which she describes the fate of a GDR refugee who dreams of prosperity in the West but tragically fails.

From 1979 to 1983, Herma Kennel lived with her husband in Romania , where she found out about the resistance fighter Radu Filipescu , who was arrested by the Securitate in 1983 while distributing leaflets against the Ceaușescu regime and sentenced to ten years in prison. After 1990, the factual novel There are things you just have to do. The resistance of the young Radu Filipescu . The book was published in Romania in 1998 under the title Radu Filipescu. Jogging cu securitatea .

The documentary novel BergersDorf was published in 2003 . In this novel, Herma Kennel tells how Bergersdorf, located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia near the district town of Iglau , became the village of SS General Gottlob Berger and had to atone for it. In one chapter of her novel, the author describes the night of the murder in the Budinka. The description sparked police investigations that led to the exhumation of the mass grave near Dobrenz in 2010 and made headlines in the Czech and German media. The novel was published in a Czech translation in 2011.

In 2008, another historical factual novel, Die Welt im Frühling (Leaving the World) was published , in which the author describes the fate of a group of young Czech resistance fighters near Brno in 1944/45 who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo . This novel was also published in Czech in March 2015.

painting

First , Herma Kennel illustrated her children's books, then she turned to oil painting . Herma Kennel illustrated her first children's book “Crocodiles do not do a handstand” with pen drawings. “The journey with the pepper mouse” and “The bear with the flying hats” were also illustrated with illustrations from her pen.

In 1977, Herma Kennel picked up a brush and painted oil paintings in a naive style for several years. Most of these images were printed as greeting cards or in art calendars. From 1980 she showed her pictures in solo exhibitions in Bucharest , Belgrade , Zagreb , Vienna , Copenhagen , Luxembourg , Strasbourg , Bonn , Brussels , Geneva and Munich . In 2014 she gave her painting "Ceaușescu comes" to the Timișoara Revolutionary Museum as a permanent loan.

Works

Children's books

• Crocodiles do not do a handstand , Franz Schneider Verlag 1973, ISBN 3-505-03800-8
• The circus bear , Franz Schneider Verlag 1990, ISBN 3-505-04234-X
• The journey with the pepper mouse , Franz Schneider Verlag 1976, ISBN 3-505-04809-7
• The bear with the flying hats , Verlag Hora, Hermannstadt / Sibiu 2010, ISBN 978-973-8226-84-5
• A lamb in the house , Verlag Hora, Hermannstadt / Sibiu 2010, ISBN 978-973-8226-90-6
• A penguin counts to one and other stories , Hora Verlag, Hermannstadt / Sibiu 2011, ISBN 978-973-8226-94-4
• Come back, Dinodil! , Verlag Hora, Hermannstadt / Sibiu 2011, ISBN 978-973-8226-95-1
• The dog from the gas station , Verlag Hora, Hermannstadt / Sibiu 2014, ISBN 978-606-8399-07-2

Factual novels

• Going it alone , Luchterhand Literaturverlag 1991, ISBN 3-630-86757-X
• There are things you just have to do. The resistance of the young Radu Filipescu , Verlag Herder 1995, ISBN 3-451-04446-3
• Radu Filipescu. Jogging cu securitatea , Polirom Publishing House, Bucharest and Iași 2009, ISBN 978-973-46-1624-4
• BergersDorf , Vitalis Verlag Prague 2003, ISBN 80-7253-097-6
• BergersDorf , (in Czech) Paseka Prague Publishing House, 2011, ISBN 978-80-7432-103-0
• Leaving the world in spring , Vitalis Verlag Prague 2008, ISBN 978-3-89919-115-8
• Je smutné opouštět svět na jaře , (Czech edition of Leaving the World in Spring ) AOS Publishing, Aussig / Ústí nad Labem 2015, ISBN 978-80-87624-25-8
• When the comics learned to run: The animation pioneer Wolfgang Kaskeline between the art of advertising and propaganda. 1st edition. bebra verlag, 2020, ISBN 978-3-89809-173-2

Prices

• 1998: Gheorghe Ursu Human Rights Award for the book There are things that you just have to do. The resistance of the young Radu Filipescu .
• 2011: nominated for the Marion Dönhoff Prize for international understanding and reconciliation

Web links

• Literature by and about Herma Kennel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Own website
• Short biography and information on the work of Herma Kennel at Literaturport

Individual evidence

1. ^ Half-year publication.homepage.t-online.de , William Totok: Resistance against the Ceausescu regime
2. ↑ stifterverein.de , BergersDorf. Book presentation and conversation with Herma Kennel
3. ↑ radio.cz , “I am overwhelmed” - author Herma Kennel on the investigation into the massacre in Dobronín