Jurek Becker

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Jurek Becker, 1993

Jurek Becker (* probably thirtieth September 1937 in Lodz , Poland , as Jerzy Bekker ; † 14. March 1997 in Sieseby , Schleswig-Holstein ) was a German writer , screenwriter and DDR - Dissident .

Life

Childhood and youth

Jurek Becker was born in Łódź in Poland. His date of birth is unknown because his father gave him older than he was in the ghetto in order to save him from deportation. Later he couldn't remember the correct date of birth. Jurek Becker was probably a few years younger than is recorded everywhere.

Becker's parents were Jews; his father Max Becker, born Mieczyslaw Bekker (1900–1972), worked as an employee and later as an authorized signatory in a textile factory. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 , Jurek Becker and his parents were deported to the Łódź ghetto . In 1944 he came with his mother, Anette Bekker, first to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and later to Sachsenhausen or the Königs Wusterhausen satellite camp . There he was liberated by the Red Army on April 26, 1945.

After the end of the war, his father, who had survived in the Königs Wusterhausen subcamp, found him again with the help of UNRRA . His mother had died of malnutrition - already in freedom - and about 20 other family members had been killed. An aunt who had fled the US before the German invasion, as well as Jurek and his father Max, were the only survivors of the family.

In 1945 Becker moved with his father to Lippehner Strasse 5 (today Käthe-Niederkirchner-Strasse) in East Berlin . The father justified this decision with the fact that anti-fascists came to power in the Soviet occupation zone and that nowhere was there such thorough action against anti-Semitism as at the point where it was most pronounced. Max Becker later also made a strong distinction between himself and the Germans.

Becker lived in East Berlin after 1945, among other things in a shared apartment with Manfred Krug , whom he had known since 1957, on Cantianstrasse in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg .

In 1955 Jurek Becker graduated from high school and then volunteered for two years for the Barracked People's Police , the forerunner of the National People's Army . He also became a member of the FDJ . Against the will of his father, who wanted him to become a doctor, he decided to study philosophy in 1957 and became a member of the SED . In 1960, Becker took a leave of absence from his studies and thus preceded a dismissal by the university, which disapproved of his frequent “disciplinary violations” and his “attitude” and regarded them as “unworthy of a student at a socialist university”.

writer

Jurek Becker (2nd from left in the picture) at the panel discussion of the (East) "Berlin Encounter for Peacebuilding", December 1981, together with Günter Grass (left), Grigorij Baklanow (2nd from right) and Daniil Granin ( right)

In 1960 he began a short film scenario study at the GDR film center Babelsberg and wrote several cabaret texts. In 1962 he was a permanent screenwriter at DEFA and wrote several television plays and scripts. When his screenplay Jakob the Liar was rejected in 1968 , he reworked it into his first novel, which appeared in 1969 and was made into a film in 1974. In 1971 he received the Heinrich Mann Prize and the Charles Veillon Prize .

His most famous book, Jacob the Liar , has been filmed twice so far. The film adaptation by DEFA was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign film (1974, DEFA-Studio of the GDR, director: Frank Beyer , actors: Vlastimil Brodský , Erwin Geschonneck , Henry Hübchen ).

In 1972 his father died. In 1973 his second novel, Misleading the Authorities, was published . He was also elected to the board of the Writers' Union. In 1974 he received the literature prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen for misleading the authorities and in 1975 the GDR national prize for literature, 2nd class. In 1976, the politically committed Jurek Becker and eleven other writers signed a letter against Wolf Biermann's expatriation , which was punished with expulsion from the SED and from the board of the GDR Writers' Association. The novel The Boxer was published.

In 1977, Jurek Becker resigned in protest against Reiner Kunze's expulsion from the Writers' Association and, with the approval of the GDR authorities, moved to the West, as his books were no longer published in the GDR and film projects were rejected. For this he received from the GDR authorities from 1977 initially a permanent visa for two years and from 1979 another permanent visa for ten years, which must have been so unique. It enabled him to live in the West, but still enter the GDR if necessary.

From 1978 to 1984 two further novels were published ( Schlaflose Tage 1978 and Aller Welt Freund 1982) and a collection of stories ( After the First Future 1980). Jurek Becker was visiting professor at universities and gave several programmatic lectures.

The novel Bronstein's Children was published in 1986 . In that year he also began writing the scripts for the successful television series Liebling Kreuzberg , for which he was awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize with gold in 1987 together with Manfred Krug and Heinz Schirk and in 1988 with the Adolf Grimme Prize with silver has been. In 1992, Becker's last novel, Amanda Heartless, was published .

Private

Jurek Becker has three sons. Two with his first wife Erika, with whom he was married from 1961 to 1977, another - Jonathan, born in 1990 - with his second wife Christine, whom he met at a reading in 1983, who was honored as Bergen City Clerk . He was 45 at the time and she was 22 years old. The couple married three years later, and the marriage lasted until Becker's death.

In the meantime, from 1978 to 1983, Becker was in a relationship with a student from the USA, who was born in 1959 and with whom he lived for years in an apartment in Berlin-Kreuzberg, while - still having a permanent GDR visa - he became an integral part of the West Berlin art scene.

Becker died in 1997 of colon cancer , which was diagnosed in December 1995 at an advanced stage. His grave is at his own request in the cemetery in Sieseby.

Works

Scripts (selection)

Radio plays (selection)

  • 1973: Jakob the Liar , adaptation: Wolfgang Beck , director: Werner Grunow , Rundfunk der DDR
  • 1983: Speech and counter-speech , director: Friedhelm Ortmann, WDR
  • 1996: The fairy tale of the sick princess (from: Jakob the Liar ), editor: Bettina Baumgärtel, director: Justyna Buddeberg-Mosz, Bayerischer Rundfunk
  • 2002: Jakob the Liar , editing: Georg Wieghaus, director: Claudia Johanna Leist, WDR

Sound carrier

Awards

literature

Overviews and introductions

Biographies

Anthologies

  • Karin Graf, Ulrich Konietzny (Ed.): Jurek Becker . Workbook literature, Iudicium 1991, ISBN 3-89129-068-3 .
  • Irene Heidelberger-Leonard (Ed.): Jurek Becker . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-518-38616-6 .
  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Jurek Becker . In: Text + Criticism. Volume 116, 1992, ISBN 3-88377-416-2 .
  • Karin Kiwus (Ed.): "When I look back on my previous work, I have to say unfortunately". Documents on life and work from the Jurek-Becker archive . Academy of Arts, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-88331-064-6 .
  • Olaf Kutzmutz (ed.): The border crosser. On the life and work of Jurek Becker. Wolfenbüttel 2012, ISBN 978-3-929622-53-9 .
  • Jurek Becker: The suspect. In: Günter Lange (Ed.): Texts and materials for teaching. German Short Stories II. Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-015013-2 , pages 83-92.

Others

  • Jennifer L. Taylor: Writing as Revenge: Jewish German Identity in Post-Holocaust German Literary Works, Reading Survivor Authors Jurek Becker, Edgar Hilsenrath and Ruth Klüger , UMI, Ann Arbor, MI 1995, DNB 957132182 (Dissertation Cornell University Ithaka, NY 1998 , XI, 289 pages, 23 cm).
  • Herlinde Koelbl : Jurek Becker . In: Herlinde Koelbl, Maike Tippmann: When writing at home - How writers go about their work - Photographs and conversations . Knesebeck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-89660-041-9 , pp. 16-21 (photo documentation and interview on Becker's workplace, personal environment and his way of working).
  • Joanna Obrusnik: Jurek Becker. Born Jew, self-proclaimed atheist, German writer (= Jewish miniatures . Volume 12), Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin, Centrum Judaicum , Hentrich & Hentrich , Teetz 2004, ISBN 978-3-933471-57-4 .
  • Beate Müller: Stasi - censorship - power discourses. Publication stories and materials on Jurek Becker's work (= studies and texts on the social history of literature , volume 110). Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006, ISBN 3-484-35110-1 .
  • Olaf Kutzmutz: Key to reading. Jurek Becker: Jakob the Liar . Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 978-3-15-015346-8 .
  • Olaf Kutzmutz: Jurek Becker: Jakob the liar . Interpretations . Reclam, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-15-950053-9 .

Web links

Commons : Jurek Becker  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Memorial days - September 30, 2012: Jurek Becker, 75th birthday ( Memento from October 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b c d Manfred Krug (Ed.): Jurek Beckers News. To Manfred Krug and Otti. Econ-Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-430-11213-3 .
  3. ^ Jurek Becker protests in 1976 , jugendopposition.de.
  4. ↑ Rainer Traub: BIOGRAPHIES: A SAD HUMORIST . In: Spiegel Special from 2002-10-01 . No. 4 , 2002.
  5. ↑ Andre Glasmacher: The riddle. In: juedische-allgemeine.de. May 23, 2007, accessed April 12, 2020 .
  6. ↑ 42. Jurek Becker in Oberlin. In: richard-zipser.com. September 14, 2018, accessed April 12, 2020 .
  7. ↑ online
personal data
SURNAME Becker, Jurek
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź , Poland
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1997
Place of death You by