Karl Mundstock

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Karl Mundstock (born March 26, 1915 in Berlin ; † August 31, 2008 ) was a German writer .

Life

Karl Mundstock was the son of an upholsterer and a seamstress . He was given the opportunity to visit the school farm on the island of Scharfenberg , where he made friends with Hans Coppi . From 1932 to 1934 he was a student at the Karl Marx School in Berlin-Neukölln . After he had joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany in 1933, he was held in " protective custody " for a few weeks by the new National Socialist rulers in autumn 1933 . In 1934 he was arrested again and charged with disseminating an illegal publication. Mundstock was sentenced to two years' youth imprisonment for preparation for high treason . He began writing poetry while in prison .

After his release from prison, he worked as a cutter , packer and passenger. In 1936 he had become a member of the illegal KPD , for which he was active in the resistance against National Socialism in a group of the Red Orchestra . From 1938 to 1939 he completed four semesters of distance learning in mechanical engineering , but was then forcibly de-registered . In 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and had to take part in World War II as a soldier until 1944 . In 1944 he was arrested again, the charge was now on degradation of military strength , but it had no consequences for Mundstock. Shortly afterwards he was taken prisoner by the British . In December 1945 he returned to Berlin , where he has lived as a freelance writer ever since .

Karl Mundstock is the author of novels , short stories , books for young people , reports , poems and scripts . After doing mainly journalistic work for various Berlin newspapers at the end of the 1940s , he became known in 1952 through the novel Helle Nights , which is based on the establishment of the Eastern Ironworks Combine in the newly founded Stalinstadt . In his subsequent books - especially in the volumes Up to the Last Man , The Hour of Dietrich Conradi and the Sun in the Midnight  - Mundstock processed his war experiences. After the drastic representation in the second of the books mentioned had been criticized by the official side, in 1970 Where the rainbow rises , a volume with reports about Eisenhüttenstadt , was withdrawn and pulped at the instigation of the Central Committee of the SED because of Mundstock's allegedly "rough" language . In addition to two volumes of recollections in prose , Mundstock published an autobiography in verse that had already begun in the 1930s under the title Frech und frei .

Karl mouth floor was since 1953 member of the Writers' Union of the GDR and since 1965 the PEN -Zentrums the GDR ; since 1990 he has been a member of the Association of German Writers . He received u. a. The following awards: 1974 the Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver, 1983 the Literature Prize of the FDGB , 1984 the Goethe Prize of the capital of the GDR and 1985 a National Prize of the GDR 2nd class for art and literature.

Up until the old age of 93, Mundstock remained a fighter who attacked the situation, "including the powers that be, such as the professional reformer André Brie ". "Despite all the drasticness, he wrote extremely sensitively and precisely." Fritz Rudolf Fries compared him in the daily newspaper Junge Welt with François Villon , "who carries the 'fire into the palaces', 'his unbroken vitality keeps the verse fresh'."

Works

  • The knife head , Berlin 1950
  • The gas man is coming , Berlin 1951
  • Faster is better , Halle (p.) 1951
  • Bright nights , Halle (Saale) 1952
  • Ali and his adventures , Halle (Saale) 1955
  • Until the last man , Halle (Saale) 1957
  • The hour of Dietrich Conradi , Halle (Saale) 1958
  • Sun in midnight , Halle (p.) 1959
  • The old cards are no longer correct , Halle (Saale) 1960
  • Gespenster-Ede's death and resurrection , Berlin 1962
  • Death at the border , Halle (Saale) 1969
  • Karl Mundstock , Berlin 1970
  • Where the rainbow rises , Halle (Saale) 1970
  • Frech & frei , Halle (Saale) 1974
  • My thousand years of youth , Halle [u. a.] 1981
  • Time of the Sorceress , Halle [u. a.] 1985
  • Letter to Bavaria , Berlin 1999
  • The death of the million hunter. The desert , Berlin 2000
  • The immortal Macke , Egelsbach [u. a.] 2001
  • Get out of the dilemma , Berlin 2003
  • My thousand years of youth , Rostock 2005

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , October 4, 1974, p. 6
  2. ^ Obituary in the Junge Welt, September 5, 2008, p. 12
personal data
SURNAME Mundstock, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 2008