Jean Villain

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Jean Villain (real life Marcel Bruno Brun , born June 13, 1928 in Zurich ; † September 8, 2006 in Dreesch ; legal resident in Geneva ) was a Swiss journalist and writer .

Life

Villain came from an upper class family. Pastor Ludwig Spyri, brother-in-law of the children's book author Johanna Spyri , was his great-grandfather. (He also wrote a book on Johanna Spyri.)

After graduating from the Trogen Cantonal School , he worked as a journalist for social democratic newspapers, among others. His journalistic role model was Egon Erwin Kisch .

From 1949 Villain spent a long time in an Israeli kibbutz . He worked for the daily newspaper "Al Hamishmar" in Tel Aviv , in the same year the first GDR publications were made in the " Weltbühne " (Berlin), of which he became a permanent employee. Villain was a permanent employee of the Swiss " Vorwärts ", the party newspaper of the Swiss Labor Party (PdA).

From 1951 to 1961, Villain undertook worldwide reporting trips on behalf of the “Weltbühne”, initially in Western Europe, from 1957 mostly in Africa.

In 1961 he moved to the GDR in East Berlin , where he worked, among other things, as a correspondent for the PdA- Vorwärts and was an employee of the Neue Berliner Illustrierte (NBI).

A course for young reporters on behalf of the NBI, which he led in 1964/65, led to a partial writing ban because he dealt with texts by the American economist Paul Sweezy and the Spiegel . A project for a GDR news magazine called Profil , which was planned as a counterpart to Spiegel, did not get beyond a zero number .

From 1965 he published country report volumes in the GDR (about France and Switzerland) and translated works by Louis Sébastien Mercier for the Leipziger Insel Verlag . Further, this time independent reporting trips took him to Africa, India and Cuba; the reports were published by Volk und Welt .

In 1971/72 Villain taught at the Berlin Humboldt University , in 1974 he moved to the village of Dreesch in the Uckermark.

Villain had been a member of the Swiss Labor Party (PdA) since 1949 and later secretary of its GDR section. He was also a member of PEN Germany and IG Medien , after which it was merged into the ver.di trade union in the Association of German Writers (VS), Berlin and Brandenburg. Villain was an unofficial member of the GDR - state security (code name "IM Erwin").

Awards

Works

  • 1950: The Kibbutz - The Realization of an Illusion? . Publishing house “Der Scheideweg”, Zurich; appeared under Marcel B. Brun
  • 1957: Night over Spain - Travel Notes 1956 . Kongress Verlag, Berlin
  • 1960: Burning Maghreb . Reports from North Africa . Structure of the publishing house - with your own photos
  • 1961: And so God created apartheid . Construction publishing house , Berlin
  • 1969: urban development. Company's business card . Report. Director: Barbara Plensat ( Broadcasting of the GDR )
  • 1971: The Big 72 Days A report on the Paris Communards . Verlag Volk und Welt , Berlin
  • 1974: Venice. Days and millennia . Verlag Volk und Welt , Berlin
  • 1978: Back then in Allenwind . Verlag der Nation - autobiographical novel
  • 1979: Plea for Cinderella. About reports and reporters . Mitteldeutscher Verlag - Essays
  • 1980: snapshots. Reports from a quarter of a century . Publishing House of the Nation
  • 1987: Young man from a good family . Publishing House of the Nation - Roman
  • 1990: The revolution rejects its fathers. Statements and conversations about the fall of the GDR . Zytglogge Verlag, ISBN 3-7296-0371-X (interviews conducted around 1990 with men from different levels of the GDR's power elite)
  • 1997: The written sky - Johanna Spyri and her time . Nagel and Kimche (Switzerland)
  • 2002: Vineta 89 - Diary of a turning point , MV Taschenbuch , Rostock
  • 2007: Traveling without a return ticket. A reporter's life . Zytglogge Verlag, Oberhofen am Thunersee, ISBN 978-3-7296-0735-4

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A Swiss in the GDR | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . September 18, 2006, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed July 2, 2018]).
  2. ^ Patrick Conley: Features and reports on radio in the GDR. Recordings from 1964-1991 . 2nd edition Berlin: Askylt, 1999. ISBN 3-9807372-0-9 , doi: 10.15496 / publication-4416 (p. 27)
personal data
SURNAME Villain, Jean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brun, Marcel Bruno (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 2006
Place of death Dreesch