Jan Herchenröder

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Jan Herchenröder (born April 5, 1911 in Langen (Hesse) , † August 13, 1986 in Lübeck ) was a German columnist and writer . He also published under the pseudonyms Christian G. Langen and Till H. Werner .

Jan Herchenröder in the early 1930s

Career

Jan Christian Herchenröder grew up in well-off circumstances as the son of an architect and a nurse who had become wealthy. He had two brothers, Max Herchenröder , art historian and curator, and Karl Heinrich Herchenröder , editor-in-chief and co-editor of the Handelsblatt .

Herchenröder completed his education at the secondary school Langen and in the reform pedagogical school community Dr. Bondy in Bad Gandersheim . While still a high school graduate, he wrote his first article for the " Frankfurter Zeitung ", and later switched to its editorial office. From 1929 he also published in the " Kölnische " and the " Vossische Zeitung " and from 1932 wrote radio plays for the radio. During the Second World War he worked as a war correspondent. After the German surrender in 1945, Herchenröder relocated from the western zones to Thuringia and initially worked again for a newspaper as a feature editor, later as a speaker and editor at Leipziger Rundfunk, according to a source he even founded the station.

Herchenröder was married three times and from these marriages had three daughters and a son.

In 1946 Jan Herchenröder was arrested by the Soviet occupation authorities and taken to special camp No. 1 in Mühlberg without trial or judgment . When the camp closed in 1948, he was not released, but continued to be held in the Soviet special camp No. 2 Buchenwald until 1950 . Then he was handed over to the GDR authorities and imprisoned in Waldheim prison. In the notorious Waldheim trials he was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment as a "war prolonger" because of his membership in a propaganda company for "essential support for National Socialism". As a leading member of the West German PEN center, Hans Henny Jahnn campaigned for Johannes R. Becher to have Jan Herchenröder released. In 1952 Herchenröder, who by then suffered from open tuberculosis , was pardoned. After his release, he went to Frankfurt (Main) with his third wife , the daughter from this marriage only brought the couple from the GDR in 1956.

In Frankfurt he worked as a political editor for the " Abendpost " from 1953 to 1954 . In 1954 he wrote dialogues and scripts for two feature films. In 1955 the family moved to Timmendorfer Strand . From 1961 to 1976 he was the arts section head of the " Lübecker Nachrichten ". He was also a freelancer for the “ FAZ ”. In 1976 and 1977 he played the poet prince Goethe at the Lübeck Theater and the Frankfurt Volkstheater .

Herchenröder wrote novels, comedies, satires and reviews as well as numerous travel guides in his later years. For the first German travel guide to Denmark he was awarded the Royal Danish Dannebrogorden . He also wrote about Denmark in 1962 in the book Where else you live differently, listed under Works (see below) .

In the same book he wrote the contribution Norway . In this, in a description of the city of Bodø, he mentioned a "huge fire that destroyed the church next to the entire city in 1940". In the book he went on to say that residents “quickly raised money for a new place of worship”. However, Jan Herchenröder did not write that the city was completely destroyed on May 27, 1940 as a result of a German bomber attack and therefore burned. Herchenröder also did not mention that Bodø was the city that was most destroyed during the war in Norway and therefore had to be completely rebuilt afterwards.

Many of his works were reprinted several times. For some books he worked with the draftsman Harald Bukor.

In 1965 Herchenröder was a co-founder of the Thomas Mann Society, for whose annuals he worked as an editor from 1981. He was a member of the PEN Center Germany and the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs . In the German Literature Archive Marbach there are some documents from and about Herchenröder, including some letters from and to Ernst Kreuder .

Works (selection)

  • Drive home. Stories , Offenbach 1943
  • The staircase , anti-war piece 1946
  • Michael and Barbara , novella, Darmstadt 1953
  • Cheerio - Gin Gin. A little schnapsology , Offenbach 1953
  • Happy ducks. A little marriage , Offenbach 1954
  • Rum is in the smallest hut. A new schnapsology , Offenbach 1955
  • My beach chair has a hole. A kind of factual novel , Hameln 1957
  • A flame for every bachelor. A recipe for the pleasant possibilities , Offenbach 1958
  • The bright nights are dangerous. Novel of a Swedish Summer , Hameln 1959
  • You can't go without a car , Stuttgart 1961
  • You live differently elsewhere. Without naming the publisher, contributions (picture and text): Denmark . Pp. 22–28, Iceland pp. 72–75, and Norway p. 106, Praesentverlag Heinz Peter, Gütersloh 1962
  • Across time , Offenbach 1972
  • Cardboard comrades , play 1972
  • Day of the Schnorrer , play 1977
  • A girl gets out of hand. Tales of the Sea. Hamburg 1978
  • Lübeck-Revue , play 1983

literature

Individual evidence

  1. a b H. Degener, W. Habel (Ed.): Who is who? The German who's who. Volume 23 . Schmidt-Römhild, 1984, p. 505
  2. Ulrike Edschmid: This side of the desk. Luchterhand, 1990, p. 231, ISBN 9783630619088
  3. ^ Letter from Ernst Kreuder to Hans Henny Jahnn , printed in: Jan Bürger (Ed.): Der Briefwechsel 1948 - 1959. Jahnn / Kreuder. von Hase & Koehler Verlag, 2001, ISBN 9783775813396 , p. 95
  4. Hans Henny Jahnn: Letters: 1941-1959. Hoffmann & Campe, 1994, ISBN 9783455038453 , p. 709 ff.
  5. ^ Sven Hanuschek: History of the Federal German PEN Center from 1951 to 1990 . Niemeyer, Tübingen, 2003, ISBN 9783484350984 , p. 143
  6. Erik Steffen: Babette Herchenröder (born 1946) . In: Tagesspiegel of December 28, 2012, accessed on July 4, 2013
  7. Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bodo.no
  8. In this publication were u. a. gathered several other authors or photographers who had also been war correspondents .

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