Karel Trinkewitz

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Karel Trinkewitz (born August 23, 1931 in Mečeříž , Jungbunzlau district ; † March 14, 2014 in Hamburg ) was a German-Czech collagist , draftsman , painter and author . At the end of the 1970s he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany , lived briefly in Essen and from 1980 to 2005 in Hamburg.

Life

His mother's family came to the Czech Republic from East Prussia in the late 1920s / early 1930s , while his father's family came from South Bohemia .

"My whole life followed the laws of the persecution of the Jews ... The Jewish part of my family came from East Prussia to what was then Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis."

At the age of seven, after the occupation of the remains of the ČSR in March 1939, the racial madness (declared in the “Nuremberg Laws” ) of the Nazis and their local collaborators reached him, but the “half-Jewish” family escaped the deportations.

"As a half-Jew I was not allowed to go to school, I was tutored at home, mainly from my mother, who taught me Czech."

The family, this time "half-German", escaped the expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia after 1945 (explained in the Beneš decrees ). But he too, a fourteen-year-old, is affected by his “otherness”, like many others.

"I had German citizenship."

From 1949 to 1951, Karel Trinkewitz attended the ceramic technical college in Teplice-Šanov for two years , where he passed his Abitur in 1952 and learned the profession of porcelain lathe at the same school. In the same year he began his studies at the Faculty of Law at Charles University in Prague , even though he originally wanted to study philosophy.

"So I tried law at Charles University in Prague, but after the third semester there was already trouble."

In 1954 he was banned from studying because of his opposition to communist ideology. After that he worked in a wide variety of professions - construction worker, accountant, copywriter, graphic artist.

"I made my way as a construction worker, then I was a parcel carrier at the post office ... Because I had already written a few texts, I was allowed to start in the post office's advertising area."

At the end of the 1950s - the political thaw of the early 50s also reached the Czechoslovak Republic from Moscow (but it was already fading in Moscow) - he applied to the magazine “V srdci Evropy” (“In the Heart of Europe”), its editor-in-chief was a Jewish concentration camp survivor. His deputy was a Jew who was married to a Serb.

"As Titoists in the Stalinist ČSR you had been in jail for two years - now that the time of reparation [which] came in the Prague Spring [culminated] , we had better cards."

For a decade Karel Trinkewitz worked in the editorial department as an author, graphic artist and caricaturist, and from 1961 also as an editor for various cultural magazines. Soon after August 21, 1968 , like many others, he lost his job. As a visual artist, he is no longer allowed to exhibit.

"When the tanks rolled, the dream was over."

Because of his active participation in the Prague Spring , he was also banned from working as a journalist . Two years after signing Charter 77 , he was forced to emigrate .

"I first went to Essen, where I had friends and ran a gallery there ... Hamburg has always been a symbol of freedom for Czechs, a port city from which one could travel all over the world."

He lived in Hamburg until 2005, at times also in Ticino, Switzerland, and after the fall of the Wall in November 1989 again in Prague . In 1989 his friend and first foreign minister of the CSFR after the fall of the Wall, Jiří Dienstbier , appointed him consul in Hamburg.

"Together with ... Václav Havel and ... Henning Voscherau , I arranged the twinning between Hamburg and Prague."

He rejected the wild privatization, with all the accompanying forms of a “rogue country”, symbolized by Václav Klaus , and got involved with the Social Democrats of his friend Miloš Zeman , but there too he encountered corruption and nepotism and resigned.

"On New Year's Eve 1989 I discussed it with Václav Klaus, telling him we had to learn from the Americans to set up an anti-Mafia department - he just laughed because he already knew what he was going to do with his privatization."

"We were concerned with freedom, with socialism with a human face - now we have capitalism with a human face, globalization in favor of the super-rich ... That is why Europe has always been a danger for Klaus, he does not want to be controlled ... The [a lot of money from Brussels] is stolen by the people in high positions - in Africa that's 90 percent, in our country it's only 40 percent. Justice can be bought, for me the Czech Republic is a rogue country today. "

Since 2005 he has set up a refuge in the small town of Rabí in the Pre-Bohemian Forest so that he can devote himself to his artistic work undisturbed.

Artist

Artistically he initially pursued surrealism , later he began to deal with writing and calligraphy . Since the mid-sixties of the 20th century, he has been developing drawings in which the influence of calligraphy is combined with visual representations of poetic images (literaryism).

“Even as a student at the ceramic school, I liked the pictures by Salvador Dalí. That was forbidden, it was considered degenerate art. "

Since 1965 he worked in the group of experimental artists united around Jiří Kolář . He became a founding member of the group " Klub der Konkretisten " ( Czech. "Club concreteistů"). Since the late sixties he has been working on a theory of the novel and collage.

"Such a comprehensive theory is a process that will never be finished."

His artistic work has produced a diverse and extensive literary work: he wrote prose, essays and poems, illustrated, drew and devoted himself to political caricature.

"I collect everything, objects with writing, letters in balls, shaking rhymes in German and Czech."

In Germany he was in close contact with the circle around Max Bense . Karel Trinkewitz was a participant in documenta 11 and created the "Emder Kuh" for the world exhibition Expo 2000 in Hanover .

In the Czech Republic he got involved, again and again, also as an artist.

"I wrote a musical against Klaus, but unfortunately it wasn't played - the great flood flooded the theater and saved Klaus from being ridiculous."

Awards

Among many other awards, he received the Hamburg Biermann-Ratjen Medal in 1994 and was awarded the Order of the White Lion .

literature

Web links

credentials

  1. ↑ Hamburg authors mourn Karel Trinkewitz. Kulturport.de, March 17, 2014, accessed on June 10, 2018 .
  2. ^ Matthias Gretzschel: The artist Karel Trinkewitz is dead. The Czech died at the age of 82 in Hamburg , Die Welt , March 17, 2014
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Karel Trinkewitz in Capitalism with a Grimace , October 17, 2011
  4. ↑ a b c Karel Trinkewitz in Wortplayer drinks jokes , October 18, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Trinkewitz, Karel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech artist
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Mečeříž
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 2014
Place of death Hamburg