Jiří places
Jiří Orten (real name Jiří Ohrstein ; born August 30, 1919 in Kutná Hora , Czechoslovakia ; † September 1, 1941 in Prague ), was a Czech poet .
Life
Born as the second child of a merchant in Kutná Hora , he attended the secondary school there from 1929 to 1936. In 1936 he went to Prague to study acting, but was not admitted to the Conservatory because he was not yet of legal age. He then began to study foreign languages. At the same time he worked as an archivist at Crediton . In 1937 he enrolled in the acting class at the State Conservatory. Orten could not finish his studies. In 1940 he was expelled because of his Jewish origins. He then published under the names Karel Jílek and Jiří Jakub , lived from casual work and took part in the organization of readings and the student theater Divadlo mladých . Here he also appeared as an actor. Together with the poet Hanuš Bonn he worked in the Jewish community in Prague.
On his 22nd birthday, he was hit by a German ambulance. A friend took him to the General Hospital, which turned him away. He was taken to another hospital but did not wake up and died two days later.
Work and effect
He made his debut in 1936 with poems and essays in some artistic magazines, in which he also edited the youth pages for a while. His first work Čítanka jaro (Reader Spring) appeared three years later under the pseudonym Karel Jílek. Under this name he published his next collection of poems, Cesta k mrazu (The Way to Frost) , in 1940 . As Jiří Jakub, he published the extensive poem Jeremiášův pláč (Jeremias Weeping) and the Ohnice Collection in 1941 . He prepared two further collections for printing, but did not live to see them appear: Elegie (Lamentations) (1946) and Scestí (Irrweg) (1947). In 1947 the literary scholar Václav Černý published a collection of Orten's works under the title "Dílo Jiřího Ortena".
In addition to his main poetic work, he also created smaller novellas, prose pieces and dramatic works. He left three diaries: The Blue, the Striped, and the Red Book. It contains all of Ortens’s poems that were unpublished during his lifetime.
Like Kamil Bednář , Zdeněk Urbánek , Ivan Blatný , Josef Kainar or Jiří Kolář, Jiří Orten belonged to the so-called "war generation" of Czech writers, whose work was influenced by the outbreak of war and the occupation. He is considered their most important representative. His work was particularly popular in the immediate post-war period. After 1948 it was not allowed to be published for a long time, but places influenced Czech poetry well into the 1970s.
Outstanding writers and poets under the age of 30 have been awarded the Jiří Orten Prize since 1987 . Originally created outside of state structures, the prize is awarded today by the City of Prague and the Mladá fronta publishing house . Since 1993, the Ortenova Kutná Hora Festival has been held annually in his hometown in memory of the poet . Associated with this is a literary competition for poets under the age of 22.
literature
- Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1971, Vol. 12, Col. 1486
Web links
- Literature by and about Jiří Orten in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature and other media from and about Jiří Orten in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
- Short biography of Jiří Holý (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Places, Jiří |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ohrstein, Jiří (real name); Jílek, Karel; Jakub, Jiří |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Czech poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 30, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kutná Hora , Czechoslovakia |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 1, 1941 |
| Place of death | Prague |