Lenka Reinerová

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Lenka Reinerová (born on May 17, 1916 in Prague ; died on June 27, 2008 there ) was a German- and Czech-speaking writer and journalist of Czech nationality. Reinerová was the last representative of German-language literature in Prague. Her friends in Prague between the wars included the authors Egon Erwin Kisch , Max Brod and Franz Werfel .

Lenka Reinerová (2003)

Life

Lenka Reinerová grew up in a multilingual Jewish family as the daughter of a Czech ironmonger and a German-Bohemian . Reinerová worked as a journalist, among other things, for the anti-fascist Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung , which was published by FC Weiskopf and Hermann Leupold in exile in Prague under the name Volks-Illustrierte .

When Prague was occupied by German troops in March 1939 , she was staying with friends in Bucharest and from there went into exile in Paris . She was arrested. Six months in solitary confinement in La Petite Roquette women's prison in Paris followed. She was then interned in the Camp de Rieucros women's camp (southern France, Vichy zone ), and was finally able to escape to Mexico via Casablanca . The German writer Gustav Regulator , who was also on the voyage to Mexico, was on the same ship as her . They kept in touch with each other in the years that followed. In Mexico, Reinerová met the painter couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera . In 1945 she returned to Europe with her husband, the writer and doctor Theodor Balk , first to Belgrade , where their daughter Anna was born in 1946, and only in 1948 to Prague. She was imprisoned for 15 months during the Stalinist purges surrounding the Slansky trial and was not rehabilitated until 1964. She was editor-in-chief of the magazine In the Heart of Europe . After the crackdown on the Prague Spring in 1968, however, it was excluded from the KPČ and was also banned from publication for several years. She lost her publishing job and worked primarily as a simultaneous interpreter until 1989. Numerous memory books and stories have been published since 1989.

Reinerová was a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts . She lived in Prague and spoke typical Prague German right up to the end , which prompted the publisher Klaus Wagenbach to say: "If you want to know how Kafka spoke, listen to Reinerová." On the occasion of the Schiller Ring in 1999, she said herself :

“I got the Schillerring, and I was the first to do so. I am aware of this, I am writing Prague German, I am not writing German German. I am of course pleased that this Prague German is recognized. That's nice."

In 2004, together with František Černý and Kurt Krolop , she founded the Prague House of Literature for German-Language Authors . In 2001 she was awarded the First Rank Medal of Merit by President Václav Havel , and in 2006 Lenka Reinerová received the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

On the occasion of the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 25, 2008 in the German Bundestag as part of the memorial service for the day of commemoration of the victims of National Socialism , actress Angela Winkler read texts from Lenka Reinerovás. The speech and the excerpts from the story The Excursion to Swan Lake could no longer be presented in person to the plenary due to health reasons. Reinerová recalls the role of Czechoslovakia in the thirties as “a longed-for and even accessible land of asylum” for all anti-Nazis, the Holocaust and the annihilation of their entire family, their survival in exile. She believes that the horrors of fascism with the unimaginable mass murder of the Holocaust have largely been overcome, now it is a matter of fighting the new calamity, terrorism. In the story, the first-person narrator commemorates her sister and the ninety-two thousand women murdered in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . In the German-Czech coproduction Bohemian Villages - Česká vesnice by director Peter Zach, she also remembers the cultural diversity and the cooperation between Czech, German and Jewish intellectuals in Prague in the interwar period. The film had its Czech premiere at the 2013 Documentary Film Competition in Pilsen, and its German premiere at the Hof Film Festival in October 2013.

On May 17, 2016, the Prague House of Literature for German-language authors organized a commemorative evening with a panel discussion to mark Lenka Reinerová's 100th birthday. The guests: František Černý, Angela Drescher, Joachim Dvořák, Viera Glosíková and the daughter of Lenka Reinerová - Anna Fodorova.

Honors

Works

  • Border closed. New Life Publishing House , Berlin 1958
  • Once and for all. VEB Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1962
  • The trip to Swan Lake. Aufbau-Verlag , Berlin / Weimar 1983
  • It all started in Melantrichgasse. Memories of Weiskopf, Kisch, Uhse and the Seghers. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1985; New edition 2006, ISBN 978-3-7466-2204-0
  • The release. Memories of a memorable evening at the theater and other incidents. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1989, ISBN 3-351-01180-6
  • A Prague woman's dream café. Stories. Structure of the Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-7466-1168-7
  • Almond scent. Stories. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02838-5
  • At home in Prague - sometimes elsewhere. Stories. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-351-02387-1
  • All the colors of the sun and the night. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-351-02969-1
  • Foolish Prague. A commitment. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-351-03040-1
  • I had a vision of a more just order. In: Martin Doerry (Ed.): Nowhere and everywhere at home. Conversations with survivors of the Holocaust. DVA, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-421-04207-1 (also as CD) pp. 194–203
  • The secret of the next few minutes. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-351-03204-3

literature

  • Martin Doerry, Hans-Ulrich Stoldt: Kisch inspired us all . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 2002, p. 192 ( online - September 30, 2002 , interview).
  • Corinna Schlicht: Lenka Reinerová. The narrative work . Karl Maria Laufen, Oberhausen 2003, (= authors in context - Duisburg study sheets 4), ISBN 3-87468-195-5 .
  • M. Theresia Wittemann: Invitation to a journey into the 20th century. Tribute to Lenka Reinerová. In: Stifter Yearbook, New Series 21, Adalbert Stifter Association eV, Munich 2007, pp. 119–147.
  • Gudrun Salmhofer: What was once remains in us. Memory and identity in the narrative work of Lenka Reinerová . Studienverlag, Innsbruck / Vienna / Bozen 2009. (= Writings of the Center for Jewish Studies. 16.) ISBN 978-3-7065-4708-6 .
  • bridges . Germanistic Yearbook Czech Republic-Slovakia New Series 17, 1-2, 2009. Published on behalf of Steffen Höhne u. a., Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Praha 2009, ISBN 978-80-7422-009-8 . ( Yearbook with article on the thematic focus Lenka Reinerová. )
  • Lenka Reinerová: Grand Dame of German-Czech literature . Special issue Sudetenland. European quarterly for literature and art, 58th year, issue 4, Adalbert Stifter Verein, Munich 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. "Lenka Reinerova died at the age of 92" , dpa / Tagesspiegel , June 27, 2008
  2. The Last German Writer from Prague - A lecture on the media image of Lenka Reinerová in the Prague House of Literature , May 1, 2017, Konstantin Kountouroyanis, prag aktuell
  3. Český rozhlas 7 - Radio Praha: Goethe Medal to Lenka Reinerova
  4. On the 100th birthday of the German-speaking woman from Prague, Lenka Reinerová " , May 17, 2016, Markéta Kachlíková, Radio Praha
  5. Lenka Reinerová (January 25, 2008) Retrieved November 1, 2013.
  6. Fred Filkorn: How Neighbors Find Familiarity . In: Mittelbayerische Zeitung of October 22, 2013.
  7. Lenka Reinerová - The grande dame of Prague literature would be 100 today - An evening of remembrance for the journalist, writer and admonisher who lost a lot of things, but never her courage to face " , May 22, 2016, Konstantin Kountouroyanis, prag aktuell