Leib Kwitko

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In the forest . Children's book illustrated by Issachar Ber Ryback . Berlin, 1922

Leib Kwitko ( לייב קוויטקאָTranscription Lejb Kwitko ; also: Lew Moissejewitsch Kwitko or Leyb Kvitko, Russian Лев Моисеевич Квитко or Лейб Квитко ; born [date uncertain] October 3rd jul. / October 15,  1890 greg. or 1893 in "Goloskow" - either Podolia Governorate , Russian Empire , today Holoskiw , Chmelnyzkyj Oblast , or Cherson Governorate , Russian Empire, today Holoskowo near Odessa , today both Ukraine ; died August 12, 1952 in Moscow ) was a Soviet author and one of the most important Yiddish poets of the 20th century.

Life and work

Leib Kwitko came from a very poor Jewish family and was an orphan at the age of ten. He received the traditional upbringing in the cheder . At the age of 17 he went to Kiev , where he later - encouraged in his work by David Bergelson - became one of the leading poets of the Kiev group with David Hofstein and Perez Markisch . His enthusiasm for the revolution was only tarnished for a short time when he learned about the anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine under Petlura , whom he denounces with great hatred in his writings. From 1921 to 1925 he lived in Weimar , joined the German Communist Party and wrote poems that earned him great admiration from critics.

In 1925 Kwitko returned to the Soviet Union and settled in Moscow. He was there u. a. active as chairman of the Jewish section of the Soviet Writers' Union. In 1926 he accepted the post of editor of the Kharkiv journal Di rojte welt . At this time he wrote, among other things, children's books and poetry, which were in accordance with the requirements of socialist realism and which were popular in kindergartens and schools. He was also one of the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and was co-editor of theאײניקײַטTranscription of Eynikayt (publication of the Committee) and fromסאָװעטיש הײמלאנדTranscription Soviet Hejmland . In 1929, however, he wrote a sharp satire on Mojsche Litwakow , the doyen of Soviet Yiddish literature at the time, whereupon he was pulled by the Communist Party of the counterrevolution, lost his job at the Rojtn welt and had to accept one as a mechanical engineer at the Kharkiv tractor factory. In 1933, however, he was rehabilitated thanks to the efforts of leading Russian children's author Kornei Chukovsky . The selection edition of his works from 1937 was entirely dedicated to the praise of Stalin . In 1939 he became a member of the Communist Party . In 1939 he received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor . Leib Kwitko, Jizchak Katzenelson and Isaak Nusinov together gave the anti-Hitler pamphlet Dos blut calls tsu nekome! ( The blood calls for vengeance! ) (Moscow: Emes, 1941), one of the first comprehensive eyewitness accounts of the atrocities of the Nazis in Poland, to which Schachno Epstein from the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee of the Soviet Union (whose members were later murdered by Stalin) a foreword wrote. For the Black Book he prepared various descriptions for printing.

For the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee planned Jewish Crimea - Republic Kvitko was assigned as Minister of Education.

Leib Kwitko was arrested in 1948 and shot in 1952 on the night of the murdered poets on Beria's orders along with around thirty other Jewish personalities, including the most famous Yiddish writers and artists of the Soviet Union, in the course of the Stalinist "purges" in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow.

Create

Kwitko was the most talented follower of Nister and was one of the most famous Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union , especially as a poet and author of children's books.

His poetry cycle 1919, in which the Ukrainian pogroms are dealt with, is one of the most important works of modern Yiddish literature. The youth book Ljam un Petrik describes the poverty of the time with radical narrative means by describing daily life in fragments that do not give a unity or meaning. Gerangl 's poetic compilation, published in 1929, represents the sum total of his work to date from 1919 to 1929 and is an important witness of the transition from the relatively free epoch of revolutionary idealism of the 1920s to the Stalinist dictatorship of the 1930s. His children's poems were translated into Russian and widely received in Soviet kindergartens and schools.

Works (selection)

  • Grin groz ("Green Grass"), Yiddischer literarischer ferlag, Berlin 1922.
  • 1919 . 1922 [on the pogroms in Ukraine].
  • Lider far kinder ("Poems for Children"), Klal, Berlin 1923.
  • Ukraynishe folksmayses ("Ukrainian fairy tales"), drawings by El Lissitzky , Kniga, Berlin 1922.
  • Jugnt , 1922 ("Youth"; collection of poems).
  • In vald ("In the forest"), drawings by Issachar Ryback , threshold publishing house, Berlin 1922. Contained in Yiddish and in German translation in: David Bergelson , Lejb Kwitko, Peretz Markisch, Ber Smoliar : Der Galaganer Hahn. Yiddish children's books from Berlin. Yiddish and German. From d. Yidd. transfer and ed. by Andrej Jendrusch. Ed. DODO, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-934351-06-9 .
  • Foyglen ("Birds"), drawings by Issachar Ryback, threshold publishing house, Berlin 1922. Contained in Yiddish and in German translation in: David Bergelson, Lejb Kwitko, Peretz Markisch, Ber Smoliar: Der Galaganer Hahn. Yiddish children's books from Berlin. Yiddish and German. From d. Yidd. transfer and ed. by Andrej Jendrusch. Ed. DODO, Berlin 2003 ISBN 3-934351-06-9 .
  • Vaysrusische folksmayses ("Belarusian fairy tales"), drawings by El Lissitzky, Kniga, Berlin 1923.
  • Tsvey khaveyrim. Lyam un Petrik. An adaptation for the school was published by Emes, Moscow 1933.
  • Riogrander fel (“Skins from Rio Grande”), 1928 [contains experiences as a Hamburg dock worker].
  • Klibene Werk ("Gesammelte Werke"), 1937 (selected edition).

literature

Web links

Commons : Leib Kwitko  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

References and footnotes

  1. ↑ a b Gennady Estraykh: Kvitko, Leyb. In: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe . Edited by Gershon David Hundert. Volume I. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-11903-9 , pp. 959 f. ( Online ).
  2. ↑ Russian Исаак Маркович Нусинов
  3. ↑ wordcat.org : Dos Bluṭ rufṭ tsu neḳome! : ṿos gelilṭene dertseyln ṿegn de fashisṭishe akhzories inem oḳupirṭn Poyln
  4. ^ The black book on the criminal mass extermination of the Jews by the fascist German conquerors in the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union and in the fascist extermination camps of Poland during the war of 1941–1945 . Ilja Ehrenburg , Wassili Grossman (ed.). German translation of the complete version, edited by Arno Lustiger : Rowohlt, Reinbek 1994. ISBN 3-498-01655-5 .
  5. ↑ According to Lustiger (2002: 179) the positions for this were distributed as follows: Michoels as President of the Republic; Epstein as head of government; Shimeliovich as Minister of Health; Kwitko as Minister of Education; Trained as Minister of Justice; Yusefowitsch as head of the trade unions; Markisch as chairman of the writers' association.
  6. ↑ a b c Michoel Krutikow: Doß retenisch fun Lejb Kwitko. In: Forwertß , July 2016, p. 26 f.
personal data
SURNAME Kwitko, body
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kwitko, Lejb; Kvitko, Leib; Kvitko, Leyb; Kwitko, Lev Moisseyevich; Лейб Квитко; Лев Моисеевич Квитко
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yiddish-speaking author and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: August 15, 1890 or 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Podolia Governorate , Russian Empire, today Holoskiv, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, or Kherson Governorate
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1952
Place of death Moscow , Soviet Union