Johannes R. Becher

Johannes Robert Becher (born May 22, 1891 in Munich , † October 11, 1958 in East Berlin ) was a German expressionist poet and SED politician, Minister of Culture and the first president of the GDR Kulturbund . He is also known as the author of the text of the GDR national anthem .

Johannes R. Becher in the midst of young people, 1951

Life

Childhood and youth

Bronze "Johannes R. Becher" by Fritz Cremer in the Bürgerpark Pankow (detail)

Born as Hans Robert Becher, he was the son of Heinrich Becher , a lawyer at the Munich Higher Regional Court , and his wife Johanna, née Bürck. Politically, he described his father Heinrich Becher as "roughly mood-wise German national, otherwise emphatically apolitical"; Nevertheless, in the Becher house, loyalty to the monarch and national enthusiasm were the top priority. The greatest enemy were socialists and social democrats . Diligence and the fulfillment of duty were the life philosophy of the father, who was part of the "Protestant-bureaucratic-Prussian-military establishment".

The upbringing of the often irascible father was strict, Hans was barely able to cope with the constant pressure to perform. He found refuge with his grandmother, who probably aroused in him a passion for literature and poetry. Because of the persistently poor performance in school, the father chose the career of an officer for Hans, which initially appealed to the sport-loving son. More and more, however, the desire to become a poet arose, many violent arguments between father and son were inevitable.

In 1910, in a desperate youth, he and his childhood sweetheart Franziska Fuß, who was seven years older than him, attempted a double suicide. Emulating Heinrich von Kleist's role model , he shot Franziska first and then himself with a pistol. She succumbed to her injuries, Becher survived after three months in mortal danger. According to Section 51 of the Criminal Code a. F. Declared insane and not punished. In the meantime he paid homage to his literary idol Richard Dehmel in enthusiastic letters .

Decay and triumph

In 1911, Becher moved to Berlin with the publisher and poet Heinrich Bachmair to enroll in medical school. Because of the cheap rent, they settled in the proletarian east of Berlin. On the 100th anniversary of Heinrich von Kleist's death, the jointly founded publisher Heinrich FS Bachmair Becher's first poem, “Der Ringende”, was published. From then on, Hans Robert became known under the name Johannes R. Becher.

The studies fell victim to the publishing house, which, however, quickly ran out of financial resources. So they returned to Munich in 1912 and hoped for help from their parents' home, which was initially granted. Although Bachmair was able to win over many important expressionists, from Walter Hasenclever to Else Lasker-Schüler , the publisher soon went bankrupt, probably due to a lack of business acumen. After only three years, the entire publishing house was put up for auction.

The year before, Becher had a formative encounter with Emmy Hennings for the following years - probably not in the most positive sense . He owed not only beautiful things to her, but also the addiction to morphine that arose in the following years with the accompanying lack of money and hunger as well as changing places of residence in Munich, Leipzig and Berlin arose (at least initially) from this relationship. Numerous rehab treatments in the years up to 1918 failed. He was only able to stay afloat with fairy tales, loans and patrons like Harry Graf Kessler and the Kippenberg couple . There was radio silence with the parents for years. So he pledged his salary many months in advance. It was not by chance that his most important Expressionist work was created during this period: Decay and Triumph .

Becher was also very attracted to men. He deals with the topic of homosexual relationships. a. in the novel Abschied and the fragment Wiederanders ; he discusses his own inclination and a. in letters to his friend Bachmair.

The war and politics initially passed him apparently without a trace, also because he had no need to fear being called up because of his gunshot wound. Like Becher, many Expressionists ended up with “one of the two great political religions of the twentieth century, National Socialism or Communism”. However, his political biography is presented very differently to this day. So about his political beginnings you can read about "not the slightest trace of a political thought" and "revolution took place [...] only on paper" as well as about "solidarity with the beheaded revolution" (with regard to the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburgs) and noble reluctance to "fight the day". Even his USPD - and the (first) KPD membership seem controversial.

He fought with a hard personal blow in 1918 when his younger brother Ernst Becher committed suicide in the Schwabing cemetery. This event seemed to open his eyes, however. With the help of his wife Käthe (née Ollendorf), a niece of Alfred Kerr , who studied medicine, he began a morphine withdrawal that was successful. In 1921 the two divorced.

While conditions resembling civil war prevailed in Germany at the time of the November Revolution and afterwards, Becher's life returned to normal. In Urach , he found refuge in the anarchist commune around Karl Raichle , Gregor Gog and Theodor Plievier , where he also met the traveling prophet Gusto Gräser from Monte Verità , whom he drove from the settlement. In Jena , however, in contrast to many friends and acquaintances, he was not a revolutionary subverter. His short-term relationship at the time also broke up as a result, "when I did not participate in the revolution on the barricade as a speaker". He "only stepped on barricades made of ink".

In Jena, Becher joined the local communist association. The enthusiasm for the party did not last long. He soon resigned to seek refuge in the Catholic Church. About his work at that time he said: “I have developed beyond so-called political expressionist poetry. My goal is an intensive, fulfilled classical music. "

Artistically, he was in his expressionist phase, from which he was later to distance himself, close to the Magdeburg artists' association Die Kugel and published, among other things, in the magazines Verfall and Triumph , Die Aktion and Die neue Kunst . Together with Albert Ehrenstein , Becher worked for a short time as an editor at Kurt Wolff Verlag .

Promotion in the KPD

Lajos Tihanyi : Johannes R. Becher (1924)

Becher turned back to the KPD in 1923 . After separating from Eva Herrmann , the daughter of a millionaire American painter, he again began to resist a dominant father figure - the father Frank Herrmann forbade his daughter to marry Becher - and the rich educated middle class . In addition, the hyperinflation of 1923 encouraged his left swing. After years of moving around, he finally relocated to Berlin, where he socialized with intellectuals from Robert Musil to Lion Feuchtwanger . So he became a member of the KPD again in March 1923, happy to have found structure for his life. “I hate my sloppiness from the past. How happy, how happy I am that I found my way on this path. ”From then on, separating literature and politics was no longer his goal.

Within the party, his civil education and manners as well as the necessary degree of opportunism paved the way for him to the top. His rise was closely linked to the turbulent history and the political changes in direction of the Communist Party in the Weimar Republic . Initially, he saw his task in solving social problems beyond poetry, but Becher quickly established himself as a party poet who wrote poems and articles, such as On Lenin's Grave , on behalf of the party . He saw the task of art initially in the “unmasking and destruction of all bourgeois forms of thought and being”.

The communists' cultural policy initially lay idle. According to Leon Trotsky , proletarian art is only possible after capitalism has been overcome , which in Germany was still a long way off. Becher saw an opportunity for himself here to "Bolshevise art according to the pattern of the party as a whole".

He quickly came to terms with the new party leader, Ruth Fischer . He also got to know Gerhart Eisler , who worked for the KPD's press service, through Hede Eisler, Gerhart Eisler's first wife. Through this group he got into the central committee of the KPD. As a follower of Ruth Fischer, he got into trouble after her disempowerment, and just in time he declared “the anti-Soviet attitude of Trotskyism” to turn his back on it. In addition to the many internal power struggles, the KPD also had to fight against the Weimar judiciary; until the change of government by the Social Democrats she was involved in numerous trials. Johannes R. Becher soon found himself in pre-trial detention for five days; charges of treason against him were later dropped.

For Becher, as for many others, and by no means just communists, the economic engine of the Soviet Union , in which industry seemed to grow ad infinitum, was now the economic and social future with "Father Stalin ". You didn't want to or weren't allowed to look beneath the surface. While the investigation was still ongoing, he traveled to the USSR for the first time on the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution - with an overwhelming visitor program in order not to become aware of the considerable social problems. The Soviet Union also came up with the idea of ​​how to bring poems to the “class-conscious proletarian”: together, poems were spoken in meetings or performed as a speaking choir.

In 1928 the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers was founded, and Becher became its chairman. He no longer wanted to dwell on basic work; he was hardly interested in unrepresentative activities. As a result, his linguistic talent also suffered, which was increasingly degenerating in the party's administrative apparatus. As chairman of the federal government, it was of particular importance to him to keep “on the pulse of the Kremlin”. Numerous changes of direction under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann became a constant balancing act. The fights for direction in the federal government also revolved around closeness to left-wing bourgeois and liberal writers such as Alfred Döblin , Kurt Tucholsky or Bertolt Brecht . More than once they were sharply criticized, and soon afterwards they received an order from the Comintern : “If the bourgeois writers win, they don't alienate us!” Becher should not always succeed in changing direction quickly enough; he too was banned from the party apparatus for four months in 1930, during which time he was already convinced that he would turn his back on Berlin forever. How far Becher's subservience to the authorities went is again shown by his comment on the show trial against the so-called "industrial party" in Moscow at the end of 1930 : "We proletarian poets [...] welcome the will of the first proletarian state in the world, the Soviet Union, to annihilate the pests and saboteurs."

On Black Friday in 1929, the “archenemy capitalism” collapsed. The beneficiaries of the global economic crisis in Germany were the NSDAP and the KPD , which were able to look forward to a considerable number of visitors. With the election in September 1930, the NSDAP became the second strongest force in the country after the SPD ; for the KPD under Thälmann, however, the great enemy was still "social fascism" (SPD), and so Hitler's " seizure of power " hit the KPD largely unprepared. As an important functionary, Johannes R. Becher had long been on the SA's black list ; With a forged passport , he managed to travel to Czechoslovakia in March 1933 , where he initially waited for his wife Lotte and their son Hans Thomas. The marriage had long since broken down; Lotte moved to Great Britain with Hans Thomas . The first and only reunion did not follow until December 1950.

Mug in exile

Glad to have just escaped the SA, Becher later spoke reluctantly about these twelve years of homelessness.

“The twelve years that I had to live outside Germany were the toughest tests of my life for me; I almost want to say it was purgatory, if not hell. But it was just that [...] that I was such a complete German, also with its negative qualities, that I had nowhere to adapt and actually only waited twelve years to be able to return home. "

He found comfort and relaxation in the memory of his time in the Swabian commune near Urach, which he conjured up in his long poem The Wanderer from Swabia .

On March 29, 1934, the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger published the second expatriation list of the German Reich through which Becher was expatriated . In April 1933 he came to Moscow , where he turned to the reorganization of the exile alliance with all his might. During this time he worked a. a. also for Radio Moscow . With the common enemy of National Socialism , the idea of ​​a united front between communists and socialists moved more into focus again. Also Eisler United Front Song of 1934, of which a certificate. Becher's order from the Comintern was to form a united literary front. To this end, he traveled across Europe and spent a lot of time in Paris , making contact with numerous writers in exile, from Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann to Robert Musil and Bertolt Brecht . A letter to Ernst Ottwalt clearly shows that Becher was initially not at all convinced of the united front idea : “Can we leave the fight against Social Democracy only to the National Socialists?” He wrote in February 1934, although his speech at the All-Union Congress the Soviet writer was all about the united front.

Socialist realism was now propagated in the Soviet Union , and it was easy to make friends with it. Meanwhile, the first victims of the Stalinist purges could be observed. One of Becher's liaison officers in the Moscow Germany office also disappeared from one day to the next. On September 5, a telegram from the party leadership reached Becher in Paris that he should return to Moscow immediately. Well knowing that nothing good was in store for him, he finally had to obey the order anyway, because the Comintern turned off the money tap.

Back in Moscow, the " Great Terror " continued to spread. The "pest madness" hysteria also led to a close scrutiny of all exiled writers. Why Becher, who was meanwhile editor-in-chief of International Literature, survived the “purge” unscathed, whereas three quarters of all German USSR emigrants were murdered or disappeared in gulags , is largely in the dark. Ultimately, it was probably thanks to high party functionaries like Wilhelm Pieck . The ardent zeal of the functionaries has now largely given way to fearful devotion to Stalin. “[...] to the same extent [] as I adored and loved Stalin, I [was] moved [...] by certain events that I had to experience in the Soviet Union. I can't pretend I didn't know anything. Nor can I say that I didn't want to hear about it. I not only suspected, oh, I knew! ”- this is how he described the time of the Great Terror in 1957, long after Khrushchev's speech on XX. Party congress of the CPSU .

Again and again he toyed with the idea of leaving the Soviet Union for the USA or Sweden . In his works he followed the general Soviet aesthetics of the time and reflected on national values ​​and traditions. The 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact became a personal tragedy for many German exiles. From one day to the next, anti-fascism disappeared from the media and around 1200 emigrants were extradited to the Gestapo . But in the short poem You protect with your strong hand Stalin praised Stalin for the conclusion of the pact with Hitler. He was on the same line as Walter Ulbricht , who announced: "Anyone who intrigues against the friendship of the German and Soviet people is an enemy of the German people and is branded as an accomplice of English imperialism." Until the Wehrmacht attacked the USSR in 1941 the enemy image had to be called financial capitalism again.

Among the German writers who remained in the USSR, Becher could now be considered the most prominent and important. During the chaos of war, depression alternated, fleeing from the German Wehrmacht and meetings of the KPD leadership in the Hotel Lux . When the defeat of the German Reich approached in autumn 1944, a working commission was set up there to shape the new Germany. Many future SED functionaries such as Walter Ulbricht , Wilhelm Pieck and Hermann Matern were there ; in the report on the reconstruction of cultural life were: Johannes R. Becher, Alfred Kurella and Erich Weinert .

After twelve years of exile, Becher was finally allowed to return to his homeland in June 1945.

Mug in the Soviet Zone / GDR

Laying out of Johannes R. Becher in 1958, standing from left: Anna Seghers , Erwin Strittmatter , Kurt Stern , Arnold Zweig , Jeanne Stern , Stefan Heym .

Grave of Johannes R. Becher in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin

First day cover on the 1st anniversary of death, 1959, from the GDR Post

The cultural new beginning in the Soviet occupation zone was also Becher's work. The Russians had prepared for this the previous year, and for this purpose he was sent to Berlin by Stalin. Soon after Becher's return, the Kulturbund for the democratic renewal of Germany was founded and he became its president. The Kulturbund should not represent a communist mass organization, but can be viewed as relatively liberal; it should be an association for many intellectuals, both commoners and leftists. This apparently did not contradict the overarching goals of the KPD, insofar as Becher was also a member of the Central Committee of the KPD and, after the compulsory merger of the SPD and KPD, was a member of the central executive committee of the SED .

As President of the Kulturbund he was particularly keen to convince emigrated artists to return to Germany - including the brothers Mann, Bertolt Brecht , Hermann Hesse , Lion Feuchtwanger and Hanns Eisler - but also them with "inner emigrants" like Erich Kästner or even to reconcile Wilhelm Furtwängler , who were now exposed to many accusations. He wanted to position the Kulturbund as an all-German organization, which soon put him between the fronts of the “ Cold War ”. From the western side he was seen as a Soviet puppet , from his own ranks soon as a political deviator. So the SMAD pushed for him to be replaced by a more loyal comrade. After getting more and more between the fronts of the Western press and the SED leadership, he finally had to pull the emergency brake and give up his liberal work - he would rather sacrifice his personal views than his party membership. So the party remained a blessing and a curse for him until the end of his life. His resistance to downgrading the Kulturbund to the party's propaganda instrument died out.

After the Second World War, Becher tried to get German writers back into the international PEN writers' association as an all-German PEN club. As in the Kulturbund, however, its priorities also changed here. The year 1950 was marked by many disputes in the all-German PEN. As one of three presidents, he came under increasing fire, as he was increasingly using his office of an actually apolitical association as a political stage for Stalinism and protecting the political justice system in the GDR across the board. Despite considerable pressure on him, he did not want to resign as PEN president; Dirt campaigns on both sides finally led to a split in the German PEN at the end of the year.

For him, poetry became an “aid in politics”, wrote a young historian in Döblin's magazine Das Goldene Tor , an accusation that cannot be completely dismissed. The works include the GDR national anthem , an order from the Politburo, and the libretto for the 1950 cantata. Because of his loyalty, he was placed on the III. SED party congress elected to the Central Committee, now that the focus of his work was on the “struggle for peace, for the democratic unity of Germany and for the consolidation of our anti-fascist-democratic order”.

The following years were for him, outwardly, a further political rise and an internal fall within the SED, but on closer inspection, above all, a time of great physical suffering and literary and political decline.

“This is the greatest poet, that's how you talk and write. I always agree he's the greatest, certainly; namely the greatest dead poet in his lifetime, one whom nobody heard or read - but he lived and wrote. "

- Bobrowski

In January 1954 he became the first GDR Minister of Culture; his state secretaries were Alexander Abusch and Fritz Apelt . He probably owed his office to two outside influences: the death of Stalin and the June uprising in 1953 . The government's role as minister of culture was primarily intended as a representative role. As he was still a supporter of German unity, Becher organized some East-West talks during a brief political thaw that came with Nikita Khrushchev's assumption of office and again made people sit up and take notice with thoughts on the cultural unity of Germany. However, all efforts in this direction quickly fell victim to the party apparatus.

Two world political events in 1956 were his undoing: Khrushchev's party congress speech and the Hungarian uprising . With Khrushchev's speech, an anti-Stalinist opposition formed in the GDR, to which Becher was not a member, but whose plans he was privy to and with which he thoroughly sympathized. This opposition also planned to intervene in the Hungarian uprising. Together with colleagues, Becher decided to get his old friend Georg Lukács out of Hungary, but this failed because of Becher's naivety. The SED leadership was deeply insecure; Walter Ulbricht got rid of numerous party comrades. Becher retained his title and office pro forma, but was disempowered and replaced by Alexander Abusch. In The Poetic Principle he now reckoned with socialism as the "fundamental error of my life"; this was only published in the GDR in 1988.

Becher died on October 11, 1958 after cancer surgery. With his death, the party, above all Walter Ulbricht, declared him the "greatest German poet of recent times"; his last will, “One shouldn't bore the public with commemorations” and refrain from “official honors” and “shabbles”, was completely disregarded with a state funeral that no author in the GDR had received before him.

The Institute for Literature "Johannes R. Becher" , which was founded in Leipzig in 1955, was named after him in 1959. Several schools and streets in the GDR also bore his name, such as the POS Johannes R. Becher (now Gebrüder-Grimm-Grundschule) and Johannes-R.-Becher-Strasse (now Heinrich-Beck-Strasse) in Karl-Marx- City (now Chemnitz ), as well as Johannes-Becher-Strasse and the associated student residence in Leipzig-Lößnig.

Works

• The end of the wrestling. Kleist hymn . Heinrich FS Bachmair-Verlag, Berlin 1911, DNB  579154874 .
• Earth. A novel . Heinrich FS Bachmair-Verlag, Berlin 1912, DNB  572180020 .
• De profundis domine . Heinrich FS Bachmair-Verlag, Munich 1913, DNB  579154866 .
• The Idiot , 1913
• Decay and triumph . Hyperionverlag, Berlin 1914
  • First part. Poems . Digitized
  • Second part. Try in prose . Digitized
• Fraternization. Poems . Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig 1916. Digitized
• To Europe. New poems . Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig 1916 digitized
• Paean against time. Poems . Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig 1918 digitized
• The holy host. Poems . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1918 digitized version
• The new poem. Selection (1912–1918), poems . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1918, DNB  572180047 .
• Poems about Lotte . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1919, DNB  572180055 .
• Poems for a people . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1919, DNB  572180063 .
• To all! New poems . The action, Berlin 1919, DNB  578825953 .
• Zion. Poems . Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich 1920, DNB  578826062 .
• Forever in turmoil . Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin 1920, DNB  57882597X .
• Man, get up! , 1920
• To God . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1921, DNB  572180160 .
• The deceased . Verlag Der Weiße Reiter, Regensburg 1921, DNB  572180128 .
• Workers, peasants, soldiers. Draft for a revolutionary fighting drama . Taifun-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1921, DNB  578825961 .
• Transfiguration. Hymn . Publishing house Die Schmiede , Berlin 1922, DNB  572180489 .
• Annihilation . Oskar Wöhrle Verlag, Konstanz 1923, DNB  572180497 .
• Three hymns , 1923
• Forward, you red front! Prose pieces . Taifun-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1924, DNB  578826054 .
• Hymns . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1924, DNB  572180195 .
• At the grave of Lenin . Malik-Verlag, Berlin 1924, DNB  572180179 .
• Red March. The corpse on the throne / The bomb pilot . Association of international publishing companies, Berlin 1925, DNB  572179766 .
• Machine rhythms. (Poems) . Publishing house Die Schmiede, Berlin 1926, DNB  572180314 .
• The banker rides across the battlefield. Narration . Agis-Verlag, Vienna 1926, DNB  572756747 .
• Levisite or The Only Just War. Novel . Agis-Verlag, Vienna 1926, DNB  572756755 ( online ).
• The hungry city. Poems . Agis-Verlag, Vienna 1927, DNB  57218042X .
• In the shadow of the mountains. (Poems) . R. Fechner Verlag, Berlin 1928, DNB  578826038 .
• A man of our time. Collected poems . Greifenverlag, Rudolstadt 1929, DNB  572180322 .
• Gray columns. 24 new poems . Internationaler Arbeiter-Verlag, Berlin 1930, DNB  578825996 .
• The big plan. Epic of socialist construction . Agis-Verlag, Berlin 1931, DNB  572180349 .
• The man who walks in line. New poems and ballads . Universum library for everyone, Berlin 1932, DNB  578826011 .
• New poems . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1933, DNB  993039898 .
• Murder in the Hohenstein camp. Reports from the Third Reich . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1933, DNB  575550724 .
• It's time . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1933, DNB  572180071 .
• German Dance of Death 1933 . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1933, DNB  572180446 .
• To stick on the wall. (Poems) . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1933, DNB  572179898 .
• Germany. A song about the head roll and the "useful limbs" . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1934, DNB  993039790 .
• The transformed place. Stories and poems . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1934, DNB  572180365 .
• The Third Reich , poems, illustrated by Heinrich Vogeler . Two worlds, Moscow 1934
• The man who believed everything. Seals . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1935, DNB  572180292 .
• The luck seeker and the seven burdens. A high song . Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1938, DNB  363901051 .
• Certainty of victory and a view of great days. Collected sonnets 1935–1938 . Meschdunarodnaja Kniga, Moscow 1939, DNB  572180136 .
• Rebirth. Seals . Meschdunarodnaja Kniga, Moscow 1940, DNB  992072840 .
• The seven years. Twenty-five selected poems from the years 1933–1940 . Meschdunarodnaja Kniga, Moscow 1940, DNB  992072476 .
• Farewell . A German tragedy first part, 1900–1914, novel . Meschdunarodnaja Kniga, Moscow 1940, DNB  572179820 .
• Germany calls. Poems . Publishing house for foreign language literature, Moscow 1942, DNB  572179987 .
• German broadcast. A call to the German nation . Publishing house for foreign language literature, Moscow 1943, DNB  572180403 .
• Thanks to Stalingrad. Seals . Publishing house for foreign language literature, Moscow 1943, DNB  572179952 .
• The Hohe Warte. Germany seal . Publishing house for foreign language literature, Moscow 1944, DNB  572180519 .
• Poetry. Selection from the years 1939–1943 . Meschdunarodnaja Kniga, Moscow 1944, DNB  572180004 .
• The sonnet , 1945
• Novels in verse . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1946, DNB  450287726 .
• Homecoming. New poems . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1946, DNB  450287432 . (including your mothers of Germany ... )
• Education for freedom. Thoughts and contemplations . Volk und Wissen publishing house, Berlin / Leipzig 1946, DNB  450287394 .
• German creed. 5 speeches on Germany's renewal . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1945, DNB  760145253 .
• The leader picture. A German game in five parts . Zinnen-Verlag Desch, Munich 1946, DNB  920016286 .
• Rebirth. Book of Sonnets . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1947, DNB  450288048 .
• Praise of Swabia. Swabia in my poem. Constance and Leipzig 1947.
• People walking in the dark . Der Neue Geist Verlag, Berlin 1948, DNB  450287971 .
• The ashes burn on my chest. 1948.
• New German folk songs. 1950.
• Happiness from afar - shining close. New poems . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1951, DNB  450287513 .
• So great hope in another way. 1950's diary . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1951, DNB  450287319 .
• Defense of poetry. The novelty in literature . Rütten & Loening, Berlin (GDR) 1952, DNB  450287955 .
• Nice German home . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1952, DNB  450287572 .
• Winter battle (Battle of Moscow). A German tragedy in 5 acts with a prelude . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1953, DNB  450288064 .
• The way to Füssen. (Acting) . Rütten & Loening, Berlin (GDR) 1953, DNB  450288021 .
• On the death of JW Stalin. 1953 literature-online.de .
• We, our time, the twentieth century . Rütten & Loening, Berlin (GDR) 1956, DNB  450288102 .
• The poetic principle . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1957, DNB  450287718 .
• Mid-century step. New seals . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1958, DNB  450287742 .
• Walter Ulbricht. Dietz-Verlag Berlin 1958
• Becher, Johannes R .: Poems, letters, documents. 1945-1958. Development of the Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1991.
• Becher, Johannes R .: Collected Works. Published by the Johannes R. Becher Archive of the Academy of the Arts in the GDR. 18 volumes. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1966–1981.

Film adaptations

• The Benthin family (directed by Kurt Maetzig and Slatan Dudow ), DEFA , 1950
• The way to Füssen (Director: Fritz Bornemann ), DFF , 1962
• Farewell (Director: Egon Günther ), DEFA, 1968

Settings

• Karl-Rudi Griesbach : Planetary Manifesto. Cantata after Johannes R. Becher for soprano, baritone, piano, choir and orchestra (1962)
• Stars glow - Wenzel sings Johannes R. Becher (Sailor Blue, 2015)

See also

• Johannes R. Becher Medal
• “Johannes R. Becher” residential complex in Leipzig, Lößnig

literature

• Carsten Gansel : Metamorphoses of a poet: Johannes R. Becher. Expressionist, bohemian, functionary. 1910-1945. Texts, letters, documents. Construction Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-7466-0160-6 .
• Carsten Gansel: The split poet. Johannes R. Becher. Poems, letters, documents. 1945-1958. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1991, ISBN 3-7466-0041-3 .
• Lilly Becher, Gert Prokop: Johannes R. Becher. Picture chronicle of his life. With an essay by Bodo Uhse. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1963.
• Alexander Behrens: Johannes R. Becher. A political biography. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-412-03203-4 .
• Jens-Fietje Dwars : Abyss of contradiction: the life of Johannes R. Becher. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1998. ISBN 3-351-02457-6 .
• Jens-Fietje Dwars: Johannes R. Becher. Triumph and decay. A biography. Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-7466-1953-X .
• Memories of Johannes R. Becher. Edited by the Johannes R. Becher Archive of the German Academy of the Arts in Berlin. Reclam, Leipzig 1974 (= Reclam's Universal Library 445).
• Horst Haase: Johannes R. Becher, life and work (= contemporary writers. 1) People and knowledge, Berlin 1981.
• Reinhard Müller (ed.): The cleansing. Moscow 1936. Georg Lukács, Johannes R. Becher, Friedrich Wolf and others, shorthand of a closed party meeting. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-499-13012-2 .
• Johannes R. Becher: Letters 1909–1958. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1993, ed. by Rolf Harder.
• Letters to Johannes R. Becher 1910–1958. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1993, ed. by Rolf Harder.
• Hermann Weber: Heinrich Becher - Councilor at the Bavarian Supreme Court and father of the first Minister of Education in the GDR. Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, Verlag CH Beck, Munich and Frankfurt a. M., year 2008, pp. 722-729.
• Academy of Arts of the GDR (ed.): Sense and Form. Issue 3/1988. Berlin (East) 1988.
• Matias Mieth: People who are not tortured are not brought up. Johannes R. Becher and the violence of Stalinism , in: Weimar Contributions 37 (1991) 5, pp. 764–772.
• Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Becher, Johannes R. (obert) . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Second, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

estate

• Johannes R. Becher Archive of the Berlin Academy of the Arts

Web links

Commons : Johannes R. Becher  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Johannes R. Becher  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Johannes R. Becher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Johannes R. Becher  in the German Digital Library
• Johannes R. Becher in the Bavarian literature portal (project of the Bavarian State Library )
• Works by Johannes R. Becher in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available for users from Germany )
• Johannes R. Becher. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
• Andreas Baumann: literary streets: Johannes R (obert) Becher. In: Ceryx.de. October 2003.
• Nikolaus Brauns: Johannes R. Becher - Discrepancy between poetry and ideological commitment. In: Raeterepublik.de. Munich 1994.
• Annotated link collection of the university library of the FU Berlin ( Memento from May 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (Ulrich Goerdten)
• Johannes R. Becher archive in the archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin

References and comments

1. ↑ Johannes R. Becher's autograph curriculum vitae from 1950, quoted in according to Behrens p. 5.
2. ↑ Behrens p. 6.
3. ↑ See Behrens p. 12.
4. ↑ Both the name Fuß and Fuchs can be read in Becher biographies. See Dwars 2003 p. 18f.
5. ↑ Today: § 21 StGB
6. ↑ Michael Rohrwasser, The way up, Frankfurt / M., Stroemfeld / Roter Stern 1980
7. ↑ Cf. Dwars 2003 p. 27.
8. ↑ See Behrens p. 30.
9. ↑ See Behrens p. 50.
10. ↑ Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, Mann für Mann, Frankfurt / M., Suhrkamp Taschenbuchverlag 2001, p. 110ff.
11. ↑ Behrens p. 35.
12. ↑ Behrens p. 54.
13. ↑ Dwars 2003 p. 62.
14. ↑ See Behrens p. 54 and p. 59.
15. ^ Letter from Johannes R. Becher to Harry Graf Kessler, November 15, 1918. Becher Letters p. 77.
16. ↑ Behrens p. 60.
17. ↑ Cf. the chapter Church, Crises, Conversion in Behrens, pp. 57–76.
18. ^ Letter from Johannes R. Becher to Katharina Kippenberg, October 30, 1919. Becher Letters p. 82.
19. ↑ Johannes R. Becher: Diary entry from May 2, 1950 . In: Adolf Endler , Tarzan am Prenzlauer Berg. Sudel Blätter 1981–1993 . Leipzig: Leipzig, 1994. p. 178 f.
20. ↑ See Behrens p. 72.
21. ^ Letter from Johannes R. Becher to Eva Herrmann, May 17, 1923. Becher Briefe p. 118.
22. ↑ See letter from Johannes R. Becher to Eva Herrmann, April 8, 1923. Becher Briefe p. 116.
23. ^ Frankfurter Zeitung September 1923, quoted in after Behrens p. 84.
24. ↑ See the chapter on Proletarian Culture and Proletarian Art. Pp. 187-214. in: Trockij, Lev: Literature and Revolution. Translation based on the Russian first edition from 1924 by Eugen Schäfer and Hans von Riesen. Arbeiterpresse Verlag, Essen 1994.
25. ↑ Behrens p. 94.
26. ↑ See Behrens p. 97.
27. ↑ See Behrens p. 96.
28. ↑ See letter from Johannes R. Becher to Oskar Maria Graf, 1927/28. Mug of letters p. 128
29. ↑ See Behrens, p. 121.
30. ↑ See Behrens p. 113.
31. ↑ See Behrens p. 116.
32. ↑ Behrens p. 129.
33. ↑ See letter from Hans Lorbeer to Johannes R. Becher, May 23, 1930. Letters to Becher, pp. 36f.
34. ^ Journalism I p. 231.
35. ↑ See Behrens p. 146.
36. ^ Letter from Johannes R. Becher to Hans Carossa, February 27, 1947, Becher Briefe p. 325.
37. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger, Volume 1: Lists in chronological order . De Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 4 (reprinted 2010).
38. ↑ Valentina Choschewa: Voice of Russia celebrates its 85th anniversary. In: Voice of Russia, October 28, 2014. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
39. ↑ Cf. the chapter Organizer of the literary united front in Behrens, pp. 147-189.
40. ^ Letter from Johannes R. Becher to Ernst Ottwalt, February 4, 1934. Becher Briefe p. 175.
41. ↑ See Behrens p. 180.
42. ↑ See Behrens p. 188 f.
43. ↑ See Behrens p. 196.
44. ↑ See Müller p. 112.
45. ↑ Sinn und Form 3/1988 p. 544.
46. ↑ See letter from Klaus Mann to Johannes R. Becher, December 16, 1936. Letters to Becher p. 100.
47. ↑ See Behrens p. 213.
48. ^ Reprinted in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 19, 2015, p. N3.
49. ↑ Quoted from Behrens, p. 213.
50. ↑ See Behrens p. 225.
51. ↑ See letters from 1945–1947, Becher Briefe p. 266 ff.
52. ↑ See Behrens p. 235.
53. ↑ See Behrens p. 249.
54. ↑ See Behrens p. 252.
55. ^ The struggle against formalism in art and literature, for a progressive German culture. Draft of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany on March 15, 16 and 17, 1951. In this document the resolutions of the III. Party congress listed again. quoted after Behrens p. 262.
56. ↑ Bobrowski p. 23.
57. ↑ See the chapter The Poet as Minister of Culture 1954–1958 in: Behrens pp. 272–302.
58. ↑ See letter from Walter Jankas to Johannes R. Becher, November 3, 1956. Letters to Becher, pp. 536ff.
59. ↑ See Behrens p. 294.
60. ↑ See Weber p. 48 f.
61. ↑ See Behrens p. 297.
62. ^ Poems, letters, documents p. 153 f.
63. ^ New Germany of October 12, 1958, p. 1.
64. ↑ Cf. Dwars 1998 p. 12 f
65. ↑ Presentation of the CD on the publisher's website

predecessor	Office	successor
-	President of the Kulturbund der DDR 1945–1958	Max Burghardt