Kurt Chicken

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Kurt Huhn (born May 18, 1902 in Elbing , West Prussia , today Elbląg, Poland , † September 16, 1976 in East Berlin ) was a German writer and publicist . He was significantly involved in the development of a socialist national literature in the GDR .

Life

Kurt Huhn was born on May 18, 1902, to a working-class family. His father was a metal worker, his mother a kitchen maid before marriage; later she contributed to the family income as a harvest helper. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Berlin-Neukölln because the father had lost his job because of participating in a wage strike in the shipyard that employed him . In 1908 Kurt Huhn started school in the 17th community school in Neukölln. After leaving in 1916, he began an apprenticeship as a locksmith at Siemens . In 1917 he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ). Immediately after the KPD was founded in 1919 , he became a member of the Communist Youth Association. He successfully completed his apprenticeship as a locksmith in 1920, but only found work as a cart pusher in a machine factory . At the same time he attended a folk high school course on language style . The 18-year-old's first literary works were published in the Rote Fahne .

Affected by general unemployment , he soon moved through Germany as a migrant worker , working bread on farms, in the mine, in the coking plant and as a packer, and finally as a book trade assistant. In 1923 he joined the KPD. In the same year he published the collection of poems Rhythmus der Zeit in the Berliner Werktat Verlag. In 1924 he found work as a locksmith in the engine factory of AEG Berlin. As a freelancer, he wrote numerous articles for Die Rote Fahne , Die Rote Front , Die Linkskurve , Das Rote Sprachrohr , Welt am Abend , Berlin am Morgen , The Opponent , Der Strom etc., some under the pseudonym KH Elbing. At the beginning of 1925, his volume of poetry, Kampfruf , which had already been compiled in 1923, was published by the Junge Garde Berlin publishing house, and in April 1925 all literary works were confiscated along with charges under the Republic Protection Act , which was used particularly hard in KPD propaganda . The trial was discontinued exactly one year later. In 1928 Huhn was a founding member of the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers (BPRS). He headed the poetry section.

He took the step to become a freelance writer in 1930. From 1930 to 1932 he worked on the novel Blood and Iron . The manuscript planned for printing in 1933 was already in the publishing house and was confiscated and destroyed there by the now ruling National Socialists and could therefore no longer be published. One copy remained with Huhn. During the same period he was the editor in charge of the magazine Der Steinklopfer published by Heinz Elm-Mann and Kurt Zube . Reputation of the working people . In the illegality submerged, he wrote in 1933 article for the unauthorized magazine culture and art . As a locksmith and surface grinder, he was hired in 1934 at the machine factory Kärger AG and in 1938 at HH Klüssendorf in Spandau . In November 1938 he was arrested and taken to the police prison on Alexanderplatz . In January 1939 he was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp , from where he was transferred in March 1939 to the "Political Department" of Neuengamme concentration camp . He was released from there in October 1940. The imprisonment was supposed to bring about a re-education , the release - so it was speculated later - enable the introduction to comrades by means of surveillance . From 1940 to 1944, Huhn worked as a fitter, surface grinder and technical auditor. Since his company evaded the Berlin hail of bombs to Spremberg , he escaped renewed access by the Gestapo . But he wasn't safe there either, and that's why he went underground again in January 1945 until May 1945 brought the end of Nazi rule .

In 1945 Huhn became a municipal employee in Berlin . In 1946 he joined the SED . The German farmers' publishing house, which published the Bauernecho , hired him in 1947 as its culture editor. His volume of stories, Flügelschlag der Epochen , published in 1948, describes "small, often seemingly unimportant incidents" from the years 1919 to 1947 on the topics of work, love, war and post-war privation. In the novel Die Stahlernen Harfen , published in 1950, the protagonist, who was ordered into the armaments industry , transforms himself into an “opponent of the imperialist war” in a “conflict-ridden act” according to socialist jargon. From February 1957 until the end of its publication on July 25, 1962, Huhn was editor-in-chief of the magazine Die Schatulle , an entertainment magazine of the Berlin publishing house that promoted young writing workers.

Kurt Huhn was a freelance writer and publicist in Berlin until his death. He sometimes used his pseudonym KH Elbing (after his place of birth) and the pseudonym Heinz Wölk (after his mother's maiden name). He was active in the field of songwriting and travel reporting , wrote the " Impressionist concentration camp report" in 1960 while the heart beats and in 1962 published the largely original version of Blood and Iron under the title Peter does not give up . At the end of the 1960s he was a member of the Central Revision Commission of the German Writers' Association (DSV). Bernd Heimberger wrote of the selected volume 22 stories , published in 1973 : "The 22 stories as a whole are the valid account of a writer's life, they are a piece of the mosaic of German socialist literature."

Works

Poetry

  • 1923: the rhythm of time. Werkat Verlag, Berlin.
  • 1923: Act freed. Speaking chorus (= Landfahrer-Bücher . No. 6). Landfahrer Berlin Inner City.
  • 1925: battle cry. Verlag Junge Garde, Berlin.
  • 1958: Only the step in step of the comrades sings ... poems (= answer us! Volume 17). Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin.
  • 1961: The world goes left. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle.
  • 1980: Kurt Huhn (= poetry album. No. 156). New Life Publishing House, Berlin.

Anthologies (selection)

  • 1959: 8 poems in: Edith Zenker (Hrsg.): We are the red guard. Proletarian Revolutionary Literature 1914–1933. Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig.
  • 1960: 4 poems in: Rudolf Hoffmann (Ed.): Rotes Metall. German socialist poetry 1917–1933. Construction publishing house, Berlin.
  • 1969: 3 poems in: René Schwachhofer , Wilhelm Tkaczyk (Ed.): Mirror of our Becoming. Man and work in German poetry from Goethe to Brecht. Verlag der Nation, Berlin.

prose

  • 1946: The daily bread. Gebrüder Weiss Verlag, Berlin.
  • 1948: Wings beat of the epochs. Gebrüder Weiss Verlag, Berlin.
  • 1950: The steel harps. Novel. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle.
  • 1955: description of a path. In: hammer and pen. German writers from their lives and work. Verlag Tribüne Berlin, Berlin, pp. 160–181.
  • 1960: As long as the heart beats. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle.
  • 1962: Peter doesn't give up. Novel. Dietz Verlag, Berlin.
  • 1973: 22 stories. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle.

Travel reports (selection)

  • 1955: meeting the Dedinské Divadlo. Travel report from the ČSR. In: Neues Deutschland , November 19, 20 and 22, 1955, continuation on p. 4.
  • 1956: Bratislava romance. In: Sunday , July 29, 1956, p. 2.
  • 1961: October stroll through Bucharest. In: Die Schatulle , May 31, 1961, pp. 16-18.

Songs

  • Let's change life, let's make the world a better place (Music: Jean Kurt Forest )
  • Miner, luck on! (Music: Joachim Werzlau )
  • Berlin, Berlin will be more beautiful (also udT we sing and we whistle ; music:?)
  • The grain stands like a high forest (translation; original text: T. Burin, music: Paraschkew Chadschiew )
  • The women's hands (music: Willibald Winkler )
  • Flag song of the combat groups (music: Willibald Winkler)
  • Happy couple (music: Willibald Winkler)
  • In the winter forest (music: Heinz Lötner)
  • Song of the Bulgarian Youth (Translation; Original Text: T. Burin, Music: Parashkew Khadschiev)
  • Song of the Country (Music: Helmut Rahnsch)
  • Sang of the sewing machines (Music: PW Kömme)
  • See the flags on the towers (music: Joachim Werzlau)
  • Dance, Sigrid (music: Hans Naumilkat )
  • Our bread (music: Willibald Winkler)
  • Our school is beautiful (music: Hans Naumilkat)
  • Forward, colleagues! (Music: Paul Noack-Ihlenfeld )
  • We miners (music: Ottmar Gerster )
  • Confidence (Music: Jean Kurt Forest)

reception

Kurt chicken was mainly in the GDR rezipiert . In 1959, Der Spiegel once printed an article by Huhn from New Germany , without comment, with the note “From the press of the Soviet zone”.

Georg W. Pijet characterized the early poems: "They are words of struggle and accusation, deep tones of longing for freedom and liberation from the proletarian fate." In the narrow volume of poetry Kampfruf there are "verses in concentrated anger and cutting accusation against the ruling society" , said Heinz Rusch . Adolf Endler called the same verses " pathetic ". Only later did Huhn's poetry mature. Rusch also recognized weaknesses in this, because in addition to a pleasant renunciation of worn-out empty phrases, there are sometimes angular, brittle, clumsy verses throughout with the fiery youthful zeal.

Huhn retained his passion for working people in his later poetry, HJR summarized his impressions for the Free Press in Zwickau. His now powerful and precise language made socialist life pulsate. Rusch expressed this in more detail: “[The] subject has changed with social changes, the expressive tone of his earlier poems has given way to a sure, but no less passionate, partisanship for the working class. The forms have become clearer, stricter. "

“Huhn's thoughtful, strongly meditating lyrical prose supports the popular simplicity of his poems,” wrote Charlotte Hermerschmidt in New Germany in 1962. Franz Hammer also made a thoughtful leisurely pace : “Kurt Huhn's linguistic music and visual power often reminds us of the Soviet poet Konstantin Paustowski . His narrative style also resembles him in other ways: not driving forward, creating tension, but more contemplating, compelling to think - to a certain extent admonishing the reader to get to the bottom of things, stubbornly, without being too hasty… ”Irmfried Hiebel emphasized the“ lyrical tone ”in the Narrative work, which Heinz Rusch explained as follows: "His prose is deeply poetic, yes, sometimes almost breaking the laws of prose, with a decidedly lyrical basic sound, without losing any of its realistic expressiveness."

Bernd Heimberger characterized Huhn's style on Sunday in 1973 : "Huhn's prose has its own idiosyncratic linguistic style that reveals situations and moods, known and unknown facts, with unusual, often astonishing word combinations for the first time or new." Twenty years earlier Günter de Bruyn had revealed in his article Kurt Huhn or The Rottenness of Language and Style in New German Literature Huhn sharply criticized. In April 1947, PF remarked in the SED newspaper Vorwärts about The Daily Bread of 1946 : “Certainly the language is not always free from stylistic violations, nor is the author struggling with the final artistic form: but what he achieved with this work is still So far only a few authors have succeeded in shaping and condensing questions from the recent past and the present in such a way that the impression arises that, in this interpretation, they will still move readers after 50 years. "

When Franz Hammer compared the style with Konstantin Paustowski, the reviewer of the Nacht-Express felt reminded of John Dos Passos when the wings flap of the eras (1948) : “With a technique reminiscent of Dos Passos , the author creates a series of sketches for fast literary newsreel recordings , Stories and reports from the time after 1919. "For as long as the heart beats , the former DSV secretary Erwin Kohn wrote:" The lyrical-subjective conception of the material is very obvious and distinguishes the book from many other literary representations of the concentration camps. "

The 22 stories published in 1973 were extensively discussed in the GDR press. Franziska Arndt called the stories in the BZ in the evening impressions, which were sometimes fleeting and sometimes profound. Irmfried Hiebel ( Neues Deutschland ) emphasized the “method of presentation”, “which is rich in reflections and poor in action elements” and is “characterized by a sophisticated linguistic design”. Georg W. Pijet recalled the distinctive lyrical component in the Berliner Zeitung : "Poetry and travelogue, biographical recollection and reflection complement each other in Huhn's stories to a new artistic form in which his pictorial poetry ultimately prevails."

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h René Schwachhofer: True to his way ... On the 60th birthday of Kurt Huhn . In: Central Institute for Librarianship . VEB Bibliographisches Institut (ed.): The librarian . No. 5/1962 , May 1962, pp. 488-490 .
  2. ↑ a b c Irmfried Hiebel: Poetry in prose . In: New Germany . March 14, 1973, literature supplement.
  3. ↑ Gerda Zschocke: A working-class writer about his life. On Kurt Huhn's “22 Stories” . In: grandstand . No. 92 , May 11, 1973.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Georg W. Pijet: Kurt Huhn . Ed .: Ingeborg Klaas-Ortloff (=  poetry album . No. 156 ). New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1980 (biography on inner cover, before p. 1).
  5. ↑ a b c Volker Hanisch: Chicken . In: Lutz Hagestedt (Ed.): German Literature Lexicon . The 20th century. Biographical and bibliographical manual . Founded by Wilhelm Kosch . Volume 21 Huber - Imgrund. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-023167-0 , Sp. 319-321 .
  6. ↑ a b Kurt Huhn: Description of a way . In: Karl Grünberg , Peter Kast , Peter Krüger, Willi Meinck , Heinrich Ernst Siegrist (eds.): Hammer und Feder. German writers from their lives and work . Verlag Tribüne Berlin, Berlin 1955, p. 160-181 .
  7. ↑ Georg W. Pijet: The life paths of active people designed. On the death of the poet and storyteller Kurt Huhn . In: New Germany . 17th September 1976.
  8. ↑ Georg W. Pijet: Let's improve life, let's change the world. Remembering Kurt Huhn on his 75th birthday . May 1977 (without precise indication of the source).
  9. ↑ George W. Pijet: At 12, he wrote Indian stories. Kurt Huhn on his 75th birthday . In: Märkische Volksstimme . Potsdam May 20, 1977.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Günter Albrecht, Kurt Böttcher, Herbert Greiner-Mai , Paul Günter Krohn : Lexicon of German-speaking writers from the beginning to the present . 3. Edition. Volume I / A-K. VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1974, Huhn, p. 405-406 .
  11. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Kurt Huhn Archive. Short biography / history of the institution. In: adk.de. Retrieved June 27, 2017 .
  12. ↑ a b c d e f g h Heinz Rusch: As long as his heart beats. On the work of the poet Kurt Huhn . In: The casket . No. 26/1960 , December 28, 1960, pp. 6-8 .
  13. ↑ a b c Franz Hammer: He warned to get to the bottom of things. Kurt Huhn would have turned eighty today . In: New Germany . May 18, 1982.
  14. ↑ a b c d Georg W. Pijet: The Schlosserstift von Neukölln. For Kurt Huhn's 70th birthday . In: People's Watch . June 2nd 1972.
  15. ↑ a b c d e f g h Georg W. Pijet: The worker poet Kurt Huhn . In: New Germany . No. 210/1946 , December 29, 1946.
  16. ↑ a b c d Detlef Holland: Chicken . In: Wilhelm Kühlmann (Ed.): Killy Literature Lexicon . Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area . 2nd, completely revised edition. tape 6 Huh - Krf. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021393-5 , pp. 1 .
  17. ↑ a b Victor Weimer: As long as the heart beats. Concentration camp impressions by Kurt Huhn . In: Berliner Zeitung . July 22, 1960.
  18. ↑ Kurt Huhn . In: Berliner Stadtbibliothek (Hrsg.): Bibliographical calendar pages of the Berlin City Library. May 1962 . 4th vol. 5, May 1962, May 18, pp. 15-17 .
  19. ↑ W .: "As long as the heart beats". By Kurt Huhn (Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 208 pages, 4.80 DM) . In: BZ in the evening . East Berlin September 3rd 1960.
  20. ↑ Congratulations on Kurt Huhn's 70th birthday . In: Democratic Peasant Party of Germany (Ed.): Bauernecho . May 18, 1972.
  21. ↑ In memory of Kurt Huhn . In: Bauernecho . No. 224/1976 , September 20, 1976, pp. 4 .
  22. ↑ At the age of 74, the poet and narrator Kurt Huhn died on September 16 . In: Sunday . September 26, 1976, commemoration.
  23. ↑ a b Bernd Heimberger: Twenty-two stories . In: Sunday . July 1, 1973.
  24. ↑ When the blackbird flutes itself. From the press of the Soviet zone . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17/1959 , April 22, 1959, Soviet Zone, p. 75 ( spiegel.de [accessed June 27, 2017]).
  25. ^ Adolf Endler: Three socialist poets . In: Sunday . No. 11/1959 , March 1959 (date of publication unknown).
  26. ^ HJR: battle cry. “Only the step in step of the comrades sings”. By Kurt Huhn . In: Free Press . No. 102/1960 . Zwickau April 30, 1960.
  27. ↑ Charlotte Hermerschmidt: Callers against injustice. For Kurt Huhn's 60th birthday on May 18th . In: New Germany . May 19, 1962.
  28. ↑ Günter de Bruyn: Kurt Huhn or The rotten language and style . In: German Writer's Association (Hrsg.): New German Literature . No. 8/1953 , August 1953, discussion about language, p. 160-162 .
  29. ^ PF: About the dear daily bread. A confession book by the working-class poet Kurt Huhn . In: Forward . No. 78/1947 , April 2, 1947, pp. 3 .
  30. ^ W .: Wings of the Epochs . In: Night Express . East Berlin April 26, 1949.
  31. ↑ Erwin Kohn: Kurt Huhn: As long as the heart beats . In: Sunday . No. 40/1960 , October 10, 1960, reviewers read, p. 14 .
  32. ↑ Franziska Arndt: Dreaming and Reality. Kurt Huhn […] In: BZ in the evening . East Berlin March 24th 1973.
  33. ↑ Georg W. Pijet: A poet tells stories. Comments on 22 stories by Kurt Huhn . In: Berliner Zeitung . March 25, 1973.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Chicken, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Elbing, KH (pseudonym); Wölk, Heinz (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Elbing , West Prussia
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1976
Place of death East Berlin