Jürgen Rühle

Jürgen Rühle (born November 5, 1924 in Berlin , † June 29, 1986 in Bonn ), actually Theo-Jürgen Albert Rühle , was a German writer, journalist, publisher and television editor. As the author of numerous cultural-political and ideology-critical books and writings, his central theme was the interrelationship between writers and dictatorships. In numerous films for the West German Broadcasting Corporation (WDR), he took a stand on questions of how to cope with the German past and spoke out against “ sinking into a lack of history ”. The ÖTV chairman Heinz Klunker called him a contentious "anti-opportunist and counter-hierarch", the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki a "contentious chronicler" who "had a strong impact".

The early years (1927 to 1950)

Jürgen Rühle was born in 1924 as the only child of Martin Theodor Rühle and Marie Rühle, b. Krause was born in Berlin and grew up in Berlin-Moabit . After primary school he attended the Kirschner Oberschule in Berlin from 1935 to 1942. In July 1942, after graduating from high school, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and in April 1943 transferred to the Eastern Front in Russia . In June 1944 he was promoted to lieutenant and in 1945 saw the end of the war with Pacov in the German-occupied Bohemia / Czechoslovakia , where he had to go into Russian captivity. He spent his captivity initially in Pacov and Deutsch-Brod in Bohemia, but most of the work in Chelyabinsk , a major Russian city in the Urals . There he worked as a lecturer at the anti-fascist school from 1947 and also founded cultural and theater groups there. Although he also got to know the inhuman practice of the Soviet system , he was initially taken with the basic idea of communism . After four years he was given preferential discharge and returned to Berlin in May 1949. There he lived in the western districts of Lichterfelde (1950–1955) and Moabit (1949–1950, 1955–1957), but began his journalistic activity in East Berlin in July 1949 as a volunteer and from April 1950 as an editor at the SED - nearby Berliner Zeitung . At the same time he studied German literature, philosophy, literature and theater criticism at the Humboldt University , also located in East Berlin . At that time, he later said, he was shaped by the thoughts of his teachers Alfred Kantorowicz , Hans Mayer , Victor Klemperer , Richard Hamann and Wolfgang Harich .

In September 1950 he married the journalist and later writer and literary critic Sabine Brandt , and in August 1951 their only son Dietrich was born.

Life as a writer (1950 to 1962)

Jürgen Rühle 1958

In the eastern part of the city, which was still open in many ways, Rühle headed the culture department of the Berliner Zeitung until 1955 , where Bertolt Brecht was also employed at the time, and from 1952 also wrote theater reviews for Sunday in East Berlin. However, despite many temptations from the East German leadership, the family kept their residence in the western part of the city. As an opponent of Stalinist cultural policy, he was one of the spokesmen for the “New Course” and “ Revisionism ”. Because of his personal and journalistic commitment to socialist cultural policy, Rühle has been repeatedly attacked since 1951 in the SED party press, in the SED central committee and in the State Commission for Art Affairs . After the uprising of June 17, 1953, Rühle worked with Johannes R. Becher , Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Bloch to loosen censorship with little success. By mid-1954 at the latest, it was hardly possible to write freely. In addition, the pressure from the East German rulers grew on Rühle to move to the eastern part of Berlin. When the situation for the uncomfortable journalist became politically more and more precarious, Rühle resigned his job at the Berliner Zeitung at the end of 1954 under a pretext and did not return to the eastern part of Berlin from March 1955 for fear of political arrest.

In the western part of the city, he now worked as a freelancer for the magazines The Month (Berlin), The Parliament (Bonn), Die Welt (Hamburg), Der Spiegel (Hamburg), Stuttgarter Zeitung , Die Zeit (Frankfurt) and Forum (Vienna) . During this time, he also wrote his first major work, Das gefesselte Theater , in which he first described the decline of Soviet theater to German readers from its revolutionary beginnings to Stalinist adaptation.

But it was not certain that exposed opponents of the East German regime would stay, even in West Berlin. Opposite Rühle there was at least one specific attempt at kidnapping by the East German " Ministry for State Security ". In addition, he and his family were constantly shadowed, right up to when the son went to kindergarten. One had before one's eyes the many fates like that of Walter Linse , kidnapped from the West and later executed in Moscow . At the end of 1956, Rühle took a position as a lecturer at the Cologne publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch , where he stayed until 1962. In early 1958 the family moved to Cologne by air .

In 1960 Rühle's even richer and more ambitious book Literature and Revolution was published . Here he did not limit his investigations to the Soviet Union , but extended them to Germany and some other European nations. Both works showed that Rühle was a good expert on Marxist literature and the practices of Stalinist cultural policy. Before the opening of Europe in 1990, literature and revolution in particular was unique in terms of the sources it had compiled, making it a standard work that was also published in Spanish (1963) and English-American (1969) versions. Also in 1960 Rühle published the collection The Trial Begins on the then newer Russian storytellers. His last book was only published after his death, thanks to the sustained efforts of his widow Ilse Spittmann-Rühle.

From 1959 to about 1964 sat Rühle together with his wife Sabine in " Congress for Cultural Freedom " ( " Congress for Cultural Freedom ," CCF) policy for the freedom of prisoners one, especially those in the " DDR " z. B. Günter Zehm , Heinz Brandt , Walter Janka and Siegfried Ihle. The Rühle family worked closely with Heinrich Böll , Manès Sperber , Marcel Reich-Ranicki , Wolfgang Leonhard , Friedrich Torberg , François Bondy , Carola Stern and many others. In this context, they were also involved in the founding of the German section of Amnesty International . The German section of Amnesty International was founded in Cologne at the end of July 28, 1961 and was the first section to be entered in the register of associations on September 25, 1961 under the name "Amnesty Appell" (rewritten to the new name Amnesty International at the end of September 1962) .

Life as a filmmaker (1963 to 1985)

Jürgen Rühle in the early 1970s

In 1963 he switched to Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, where he introduced a new style of political reporting as head of the East / West editorial team (1963 to 1973) and later of the history / contemporary history department (1973 to 1985). Jürgen Rühle is considered one of the pioneers of German history television and in WDR as one of the most prominent personalities of his time. His main subject was the German question. In 22 years he was responsible for over 500 programs, some of which he was also an author. Rühle experimented with different forms of the representation of history and contemporary history and broke with the reporting that had been customary up until then by also describing political events from the perspective of the communist states and was the first to use film material from these states in his films. His new way of dealing with contemporary history without ideological guidelines naturally brought him criticism from very different quarters: Fascist Spain felt just as wrongly treated as communist Poland, the CSU asked the Bundestag about an Ulbricht interview, and Rühle even received it an (unsuccessful) complaint for sedition . By turning away from the hitherto rather one-sided view of the Cold War, he took later, back in West Germany still very controversial Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt anticipated, with whom he very identified. In series such as traces (here he dealt with German history and European revolutionary history), Yesterday (dealing with National Socialism ), Justice of the Allies and Fatherland - memories of German history , he repeatedly put the German question up for discussion. He employed well-known authors like Ralph Giordano , Wanda Brońska-Pampuch , Edith Scholz , Paul Karalus , Carl-Ferdinand Siegfried , Dieter Kronzucker , Klaus Liebe , Erika von Hornstein , Roshan Dhunjiboy and Olrik Breckoff , who were also among his friends. His cinematic highlight was the award of the Adolf Grimme Prize in silver in March 1980 for his accompanying documentary Final Solution to the broadcast of the Holocaust film series in January 1979, both of which for the first time resulted in a previously unknown preoccupation with the subject of the extermination of the Jews in Germany led. Another highly regarded highlight in the large number of his broadcasts was the 1983 film Those Days in June , which for the first time in the West dealt with the unsuccessful workers' uprising of June 17, 1953 without bias and without glorification.

The marriage with Sabine Brandt was formally divorced in December 1975. In 1978 Rühle married Ilse Spittmann , b. Streblow (* 1930), head of the Cologne Germany Archive (originally the SBZ archive). Rühle was never a member of a political party . On July 29, 1985, Rühle left the WDR to finish a few more writings in retirement. Exactly on the day 11 months later, he unexpectedly died of a heart attack while visiting Bonn at the age of 61 . His friend Ralph Giordano gave the eulogy.

Fonts (selection)

• The tied up theater . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Berlin / Cologne, 1957.
• Literature and revolution . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Berlin / Cologne, 1960.
• The process begins . (Eds.), Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Berlin / Cologne, 1960.
• The writers and communism in Germany. Special edition for the Ministry for All-German Issues (with Sabine Brandt), Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Berlin / Cologne, 1960.
• Literatura y Revolucion . Translated by Manuael Orta Manzano, Luis de Caralt Publishing House, Barcelona 1963, no. Registro 1202-1962.
• Russian drama in the 19th and 20th centuries, Gogol, Ostrowskij, Tolstoij, Gorkij, Mayakowskij, Chekhov in world theater: stages, authors, productions , S. Melchinger / H. Rischbieter (ed.), Georg Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1962, p 287-300.
• Theater and revolution . German Taschenbuch Verlag., Munich, 1963.
• Literature and revolution . Publishing house Droemer / Knaur, Munich, 1963.
• Foreword in love letters Lilja by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Dt. Taschenbuch Verlag., Munich, 1965.
• Literature and Society in the GDR in Central German Lectures (with Sabine Brandt), Kammwegverlag, Troisdorf, 1969, p. 5 ff.
• Hope and mourning ribbon in conversations with Ernst Bloch . R. Traub / H. Wiesner (eds.), Edition Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt, 1975, ISBN 3-518-10798-X , pp. 13-27.
• Review of Caucasian chalk circle in Brecht in the criticism: Reviews of all Brecht premieres , Kindler Verlag, Munich, 1977, ISBN 3-463-00699-5 , pp. 264-267.
• Foreword in Literature as History - Two pamphlets by Paul Rilla, CH Beck Verlag, Munich, 1978, ISBN 978-3-406-06764-8 .
• Literature and Revolution. Translated by Jean Steinberg, Frederick A. Praeger Verlag, New York / Washington / London and Pall Mall Press, London, both 1969, ISBN 978-0-269-67313-9 .
• August 13, 1961 . (With Gunter Holzweißig), Edition Germany Archive, Cologne, 1981, ISBN 3-8046-0315-7 .
• Articles about Alexander Ostrowski (p. 204 ff.) , Maxim Gorki (p. 204 ff.) And Jewgnij Schwarz (p. 312 f.) In Welttheater: Theater History, Authors, Plays, Stagings (German Edition), Georg Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig, 1985, 3rd edition, ISBN 3-07-508883-8 , pp. 204-207, 227-231 and 312-313, respectively.
• The Hohenstaufen in German History (with Volker Schneider), Tele-Manuscriptdienst BR / WDR, Munich, p. 113 ff.
• Literature and revolution. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt / M., 1987, ISBN 3-7632-2740-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Dittmar: The history conscious , in Die Welt , Hamburg, July 1, 1986, p. 23.
2. ^ Heinz Klunker: Obituary for a cross-border commuter in Deutsches Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt , Hamburg, July 13, 1986, p. 23.
3. ^ Marcel Reich-Ranicki, The contentious chronicler in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Frankfurt, July 2, 1986, p. 23.
4. ↑ Cf. on the same fate: Record of a cheated youth by Wolfgang Schöler, Hubert Zecherle (Ed.), Epubli, Berlin, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86931-611-6 , pp. 5 ff.
5. ↑ Jürgen Rühle. In: Munzinger: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 33/1986, Ravensburg. August 4, 1986. Retrieved October 19, 2017 . 
6. ↑ Manfred Jäger: In Memoriam Jürgen Rühle , Germany Archive, Cologne, August 1986, p. 800 ff.
7. ↑ Wissen.de: New course. Retrieved October 29, 2017 . 
8. ↑ Andrea Brockmann: Remembrance work on television: The example of June 17, 1953 . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna, 2006, ISBN 3-412-29905-7 , p. 184 f.
9. ↑ Andrea Brockmann, ibid.
10. ↑ Heinz Klunker: Obituary for a cross-border commuter , in Deutsches Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt : Hamburg, July 13, 1986, p. 23.
11. ^ FORVM authors. FORVM editorial and publishing company, accessed on August 28, 2019 . 
12. ↑ Jürgen Rühle died in Der Tagesspiegel , Berlin, July 2, 1986.
13. ^ Biography Jürgen Rühle. In: Who's Who. Schmidt-Römhild Verlag, Lübeck, accessed on October 19, 2017 . 
14. ↑ In the 1950s, the East German Ministry for State Security kidnapped around 600 to 700 people from the West to the "GDR" in the course of various arrests against "enemy agents".
15. ↑ File of the Ministry for State Security, "GDR", copy of the BStU, archive no. 4220/71, volume no. 6; the East German rulers then saw Rühle's absence as "RF" (= escape from the republic). According to these files, he was monitored until his death.
16. ↑ Ludwig Marcuse: The writers and communism. Die Zeit, Hamburg, December 2, 1960, accessed on October 19, 2017 . 
17. ↑ Dr. Walter Fabian: Book Reviews. (PDF) Library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn, accessed on October 19, 2017 . 
18. ↑ Cf. Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Der streitbaren Chronicler , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 2, 1986.
19. ↑ As of April 1966, the international activities of the CCF ended when a series of articles in the New York Times published that its main funding via foundations (in Germany the Ford Foundation ) was essentially funds from the American secret service CIA ; see. Frank Möller: The book Witsch , Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 2014, ISBN 978-3-462-04130-9 , p. 521 ff.
20. ↑ Michael Hochgeschwender: Freedom on the offensive? tape 1 . R. Odenbourg Verlag Munich, 1998, ISBN 3-486-56341-6 .
21. ↑ Frank Möller: The book Witsch . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 2014, ISBN 978-3-462-04130-9 , p. 465 ff. Photos by Rühle on p. 468, 484, 493, 494.
22. ↑ Stefan Creuzberger, Dierk Hoffmann (ed.): Intellectual danger and immunization of society, Witsch and the activities of the Cologne group of the CCF (with photos), de Gruyter, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-74708-9 .
23. ↑ Christina von Hodenberg: Consensus and Crisis. A history of the West German media public , Walsteinverlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-462-02981-9 , p. 256.
24. ↑ Carola Stern: Double Life . Kiepenheuer and Witsch Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 978-3-462-02981-9 , p. 167 f.
25. ↑ Gerd Laudert: The red doctor . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86331-494-1 , p. 143 ff .
26. ↑ Andrea Brockmann: Memory work on television. The example of June 17, 1953 , Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-412-29905-7 , p. 183 ff.
27. ↑ Jürgen Rühle died in Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger on July 1, 1986, p. 24.
28. ↑ Jürgen Rühle. Internet Movie Database (IMDb), accessed October 19, 2017 . 
29. ^ Right to experiment in Süddeutsche Zeitung of July 2, 1986, p. 16.
30. ↑ Michael Grenzebach: The man who looks for white spots in Hör Zu , 48/72, October / November 1972.
31. ↑ Died - Jürgen Rühle. Der Spiegel, accessed October 16, 2016 . 
32. ^ Math Reder: Jürgen Rühle died in Bonn in Hamburger Abendblatt , July 2, 1986 p. 10.
33. ^ Those days in June , ARD , broadcast June 17, 1983; See also Jürgen Rühle: Show what it was like back then in Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger of June 14, 1983, p. 34.
34. ↑ Ilse Spittmann fled in March 1949 with her boyfriend at the time, Wolfgang Leonhard, from East Berlin via Prague to Yugoslavia .
35. ↑ Peter Dittmar: Inexorable against ignorance and conscious of history , both in Die Welt, Hamburg, July 1, 1986.
36. ↑ Heinz-Josef Hubert: Farewell to a volcano , WDR-Print, Ed .: WDR, 1985, No. 112, Cologne.