Kurt Barthel

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Cuba 1954
Kuba (left) and Stephan Hermlin , 1952

Kurt Walter Barthel (born June 8, 1914 in Garnsdorf ; † November 12, 1967 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German writer , poet , playwright and dramaturge . He was known by his pseudonym "Kuba", which had been recommended to him by his sponsor Louis Fürnberg in order to avoid confusion with the Nazi-affiliated author Max Barthel .

Life

Barthel was born in 1914. He never got to know his father; the railroad worker was shot by an officer before Kurt was even born. From 1928 to 1932 Kurt Barthel was trained as a decorative painter in Chemnitz. Politically active at an early age, during this time he founded local groups of youth organizations such as the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) and the Socialist Youth of Germany - Die Falken . In 1933 he joined the Social Democratic Party , a (SPD) and emigrated after the Nazi seizure of power in Czechoslovakia , where he Louis Fürnberg met who attested him an "aggressive intelligence". At his suggestion, he wrote his first poems and reports for Die Rote Fahne , and he worked with him in the amateur play group “Das neue Leben”. Politically, he was active in the youth work of the left Social Democrats and helped other emigrants to illegally cross the border. From 1937 he was editor of the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ) in Prague. In 1939 he fled further to Great Britain . There he earned his living as a farm and construction worker, wrote natural poems in English and became a member of the Free German Youth (FDJ). In 1940 he was temporarily interned as an enemy alien .

In 1946 Barthel returned to Germany and joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). From 1946 to 1948 he was editor of the Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin and from 1949 a freelance artist. Like many artists and scientists, he lived in the so-called intelligence settlement at Straße 201 in Berlin-Schönholz and had the house there next to Erich Weinert , after whom the settlement is named. From 1956 until his death in 1967 he was chief dramaturge at the Rostock Volkstheater .

Functions

From 1950 to 1958 he was a member of the People's Chamber with the mandate of the Kulturbund der DDR . In 1952 he also became 1st Secretary of the German Writers' Union and a member of the Central Committee of the SED . In 1953 he became a full member of the German Academy of the Arts . At the 6th SED party congress in 1963, Barthel was one of the agitators and called SED-critical colleagues "literary black painters".

Criticized texts

Barthel's cantata on Josef Stalin and his public “shame” for the uprising of June 17th are well known . In it he declared the workers immature. For this he got himself the biting mockery of Bertolt Brecht , who wrote about Barthel: “After the uprising of June 17, the secretary of the writers' association in Stalinallee had leaflets distributed that said the people were forfeiting the government's trust and could only recapture it by doubling the workload. Wouldn't it be easier if the government dissolved the people and voted for another? "Barthel called this statement in 1965" a wonderful bon mot "and added in front of West German listeners that" he had absolutely no desire and no reason to be with (the one who died in 1956). Bert Brecht to start a controversy here ”. Barthel made himself ridiculous with his text adaptation of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco , where he deleted the sentence “Judah will soon be freed from the tyrant's yoke” on the grounds that Verdi was not concerned with the “Jews in Babylon”, but with the "liberation" of South Tyrol. With such statements, Barthel became one of the most hated GDR authors in the West. The literary historian Hans Mayer insulted Barthel as “an extremely disgusting figure”, Alfred Kantorowicz even spoke of a “new Horst Wessel ”.

death

During a performance of the Revolutionary Revue 50 Rote Nelken , with which the Rostock Volkstheater was a guest at an event organized by the August Bebel Society, there was "tumult" by "students, from the police" in front of 1,100 spectators in the Frankfurt Zoo Society House on November 12, 1967 referred to as 'Mao followers' ”. Kurt Barthel, who had been ill for some time, collapsed and died of cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital. He was buried in the New Cemetery in Rostock . The Kurt Barthel Medal in the GDR was named after him, an award for those working in culture.

Honors

  • In 1949 he was awarded the GDR National Prize for his poem about people .
  • In 1957 he received the Literature Prize of the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB) and the Erich Weinert Medal .
  • In 1958 he was awarded the GDR National Prize for designing the festival program for the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution and the festival program for the Baltic Sea Week.
  • In 1959 Barthel (as a collective) was awarded the GDR National Prize for the Störtebeker ballad .
  • In 1960 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Rostock.
  • After his death, streets and schools were named after Cuba.
  • On April 2, 1979, the Kurt Barthel Medal was donated in the GDR.
  • On February 26, 1981 the naval helicopter squadron 18 of the Volksmarine stationed in Parow near Stralsund received its name.

Works

  • Poem from man. 1948.
  • Cantata on Stalin. 1949.
  • Thoughts on the fly. 1950 (reports on the Soviet Union)
  • Poems. A selection. 1952.
  • East glowing. 1954 (reports on the People's Republic of China)
  • Klaus Störtebeker . (Dramat. Ballad), 1959.
  • Poems. 1961.
  • Bread and wine. Poems, songs, adaptations. 1961.
  • terra incognita. (Dramat. Poem), 1964.
  • March of the Dynamo Athletes , poem. 1983.

Works published posthumously

  • The song grows word for word. Poems. 1970.
  • Locks and Katen. 1970.
  • Witches. 1970.
  • Don't forget my wives. Movie counts. 1974.
  • Zack argues with the whole world. Stories. 1982.

Film adaptations

literature

  • Günter Albrecht, Kurt Böttcher, Herbert Greiner-Mai, Paul Günter Krohn: German Writer's Lexicon - From the Beginnings to the Present. Fourth, supplemented and revised edition. Volksverlag Weimar, Leipzig 1963, pages 385/386.
  • Dieter Schiller: The political poetry of the poet Kuba (Kurt Barthel). 1934-1947. Berlin, Humboldt-U., Phil. Faculty, dissertation from Nov. 3, 1965. Berlin, 196, 422 signed Bl.
  • Erhard Scherner: The writer Kuba: to basic positions of his artistic work. Berlin 1973 (Berlin, Institute for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED , Diss.)
  • Erhard Scherner: I have often seen the morning coming ... On the poetics of the poet Cuba. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1975.
  • Louis Fürnberg : Cuba (Kurt Barthel). Work and effect today. Studies on topicality, points of view, confessions. Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic. Compilation and editing: Peter Liebers. Henschelverlag Kunst u. Society [in Komm.], Berlin 1976, 202 pp. (Workbooks / Academy of the Arts of the German Democratic Republic; 20: Literature and Language Maintenance Section).
  • 30 years of the GDR - writers who helped shape our path. Central house for cultural work in the GDR . Leipzig.
    • Cuba (Kurt Barthel). Published on the occasion of his 65th birthday on June 8, 1979 (15 pages).
  • Gottfried Hamacher , with the assistance of André Lohmar: Against Hitler - Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement. Short biographies. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin. Volume 53. ISBN 3-320-02941-X ( PDF ).
  • Leonore Krenzlin , Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Barthel, Kurt Walter . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Roman Guski, Johanna Jawinsky, Hannelore Rabe: Memorials for victims and persecuted persons of the Nazi regime in the new cemetery in Rostock. Published by the VVN-BdA Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-300-0350-375 .

Web links

Commons : Kurt Barthel  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of June 7, 2004, Kurt Barthel Thälmann, Traudl and Störtebecker [1] accessed on March 22, 2019
  2. ↑ Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of June 7, 2004, Kurt Barthel Thälmann, Traudl and Störtebecker [2] accessed on March 22, 2019
  3. ^ Kurt Barthel in the database Britain, Enemy Aliens and Internees
  4. ^ Max Lingner Foundation
  5. ↑ GDR CUBA - Hard to take. Making literature is party work. Cuba. In: Der Spiegel 48/1967, Nov. 20, 1967.
  6. ↑ Cuba Ashamed of myself (page 7) ( Memento from November 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ GDR CUBA - Hard to take. Making literature is party work. Cuba. In: Der Spiegel 48/1967, Nov. 20, 1967.
  8. ↑ Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of June 7, 2004, Kurt Barthel Thälmann, Traudl and Störtebecker [3] accessed on March 22, 2019
  9. ↑ GDR CUBA - Hard to take. Making literature is party work. Cuba. In: Der Spiegel 48/1967, Nov. 20, 1967.
personal data
SURNAME Barthel, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cuba; Bartel, Kurt; Barthel, Kurt Walter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, poet, playwright, dramaturge, cultural politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Garnsdorf near Chemnitz
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1967
Place of death Frankfurt am Main