Lev Zinovievich Kopelev

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Lew Kopelew at a reading in Bad Münstereifel in the 1980s

Lev kopelev ( Russian Лев Зиновьевич Копелев , scientific. Transliteration Lev Zinov'evič Kopelev ; March 27 * . Jul / 9. April  1912 greg. In Kiev ; † 18th June 1997 in Cologne ) was a Russian German scholar , writer and humanist .

Life

Youth and education

Lev Kopelew was born in Kiev in 1912 as the son of a Jewish agronomist . At an early age he became familiar with the German language , which was often spoken around him during his childhood (the family had German nannies, and his first love was the daughter of a German family).

After primary school, he worked first in a locomotive factory and later as a teacher at an adult school. He was an avid communist in his youth , but received negative attention due to his proximity to Trotskyist ideology. In order not to become a victim of the Stalinist purges as a deviator , he tried to prove his communist loyalty by a certain over-zeal.

He studied German , history and philosophy from 1933 to 1938 . After receiving his doctorate , he worked as a lecturer .

Second World War

In 1941 he volunteered for the army, where he became an "instructor for reconnaissance work in the enemy army" because of his good knowledge of German. Later he was employed in a propaganda department and worked there with members of the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD) to persuade soldiers of the German Wehrmacht to defend themselves on the Soviet side. He took part in various battles during the war, including the Battle of Moscow and the 1944 Soviet summer offensive called Operation Bagration . During the invasion of the Red Army to Germany in January 1945, he witnessed numerous atrocities against the civilian population of East Prussia that shook him to the core and triggered a strong sense of shame in it. With his attempts to prevent the unfair treatment of NKFD members and other atrocities, he earned incomprehension and hostility from his comrades and superiors and was therefore reported to the Soviet military intelligence service SMERSCH . He was sentenced to ten years in a camp for “propagating bourgeois humanism , pitying the enemy and undermining the political and moral stance of the troops”. He initially succeeded in refuting the allegations against himself, so that he lived again in freedom for a few months after his pre-trial detention. After that time, he was arrested again and sentenced to camp detention again. This time he was actually sent to a gulag labor camp.

Prison camp

In the prison camp, Kopelev met Alexander Solzhenitsyn , among others , who made him appear as Lev Rubin in his book The First Circle of Hell . However, the terrible experience of the prison camp did not shake his communist ideals so much that he fundamentally turned away from communism . In 1954, a year after Stalin's death, he was finally released.

Career of a dissident

After his release, he started writing again. He soon met his second wife, Raissa Orlowa ; in 1956 they married. Lew Kopelew was rehabilitated and was able to work and publish as a literary scholar and Germanist . Kopelew got a position as a lecturer in international press history. He worked from 1961 to 1968 at the Moscow Institute for Art History , wrote a Bertolt Brecht - Biography and history of German theater studies .

Since the mid-1960s, he increasingly campaigned for those who think differently, such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, as well as for the Prague Spring . As a result, he came into ever stronger opposition to the re-hardening regime . He lost faith in communism more and more and was punished , when he protested against the invasion of other communist countries into Czechoslovakia and the brutal destruction of all reform successes, with exclusion from the party, a writing ban and the loss of his position at the Institute for Art History. This ended the last hopes he had placed in communism for him.

Prominent dissident

The Kopelew-Orlowa couple's apartment in Moscow quickly became a meeting point for dissidents and foreign correspondents , including Fritz Pleitgen and Klaus Bednarz . During this time, his exchange with Heinrich Böll , whom he had met in the 1960s and with whom he had a deep friendship, intensified . The close relationship with Böll would later have a decisive influence on his life.

exile

Kopelev was interested in going abroad, but feared the danger of expatriation and did not want to go into exile . An invitation from Böll and Marion Countess Dönhoff to a study trip to Germany followed in 1980. After Kopelew and other intellectuals had campaigned for Andrei Sakharov at the beginning of this year , he and his wife were surprisingly given permission to leave the country in October. The couple arrived in Cologne in mid-November. The approval was preceded by a long diplomatic struggle for a return guarantee.

However, in early 1981 the couple was expatriated. After a trip to the USA , Kopelew and his wife Raissa Orlowa settled in Cologne, Kopelew became a German citizen shortly afterwards. Orlowa reported in a book about the difficulties in getting used to Germany.

Humanist and citizen of the world

In Germany, Kopelev strongly advocated reconciliation between Russians and Germans and worked in a scientific project on the Russians 'image of Germany and the Germans' image of Russia in order to uncover the old connections between the two peoples through mutual understanding and to create new ones, and at the same time through them Propaganda and ideological disputes to dismantle created enemy images .

During this time he worked intensively as an author, speaker, interview and discussion partner, drew attention to human rights violations and intervened where it was necessary to promote international understanding and mutual respect.

After martial law was imposed on Poland on December 13, 1981, his apartment in Cologne became a meeting point for human rights activists from Poland. Kopelew spoke Polish very well and he regularly read the exile magazine Kultura, which was published in Paris . After the political change of 1989/90 he took part in conferences of the KARTA center in Warsaw, which, like the Moscow group Memorial , had dedicated itself to coming to terms with history that had been concealed or distorted by communist censorship .

Kopelew initiated a research project on the history of German-Russian mutual perception from the beginnings to the 20th century at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal . The results are documented in a total of ten volumes under the title "West-Eastern Reflections".

Moscow again

Due to Gorbachev's perestroika , Kopelev received permission in 1989 to visit his old hometown, Moscow, on his 77th birthday. In 1990 he was able to visit Russia a second time. He traveled the country and visited old friends, but the country had become foreign to him. Since his wife Raissa had died in 1989, he finally returned to Cologne to continue his work on the reconciliation of the peoples.

Lew Kopelew died on June 18, 1997 in Cologne. His urn was transferred to Moscow, where the ashes were buried in the Donskoy cemetery next to his wife Raissa Orlowa.

Aftermath

The Lew-Kopelew-Weg in Cologne

In his memory, his friends, the WDR and the Kreissparkasse Köln founded the Lew Kopelew Forum in 1998 in the premises of the Kreissparkasse am Neumarkt , which provides information about his life and work and offers a program of events and exhibitions for German-Russian understanding. The forum is funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Since 2001 the forum has awarded the undoped Lew Kopelew Prize .

On January 26, 2009, Lew-Kopelew-Weg was inaugurated on Neuenhöfer Allee in Cologne, right next to the house where the Kopelews have lived since 1984. The path leads to the Beethoven Park.

Works

  • Brecht (1966), (Брехт)
  • Two Epochs of German-Russian Literary Relations (1971)
  • Related and alienated. Essays on the literature of the Federal Republic and the GDR (1976)
  • Prohibits the prohibitions! In Moscow in search of truth. Foreword by Max Frisch (1977)
  • Keep it forever! Afterword by Heinrich Böll (autobiography part 2) (1976), Хранить вечно
  • And created an idol for me (autobiography part 1) (1979), И сотворил себе кумира.
  • Comfort my grief (Autobiography Part 3) (1981), Утоли моя печали
  • A poet came from the Rhine. Heinrich Heine's Life and Sorrows (1981)
  • Children and stepchildren of the revolution. Untold Tales (1983)
  • The Holy Doctor Fyodor Petrovich - The Story of Friedrich Joseph Haass (1984)
  • In the will of truth. Analysis and Appeals. Foreword by Gerd Ruge (1984)
  • Words become bridges. Articles, lectures, discussions 1980–1985. With a contribution by Marion Gräfin Dönhoff (1985)
  • The wind blows where it wants. Thoughts about poets. With an afterword by Werner Keller (1988)
  • And still hope. Texts from the German Years (1991)
  • Gun Word (1991)
  • Laudations (1993)
  • Russia, a difficult homeland (1995)

Together with his wife Raissa Orlowa he published:

  • Boris Pasternak . "Image of the world in words" (1986)
  • We lived in Moscow (1987), Мы жили в Москве (1)
  • Contemporaries, masters, friends. With a foreword by Klaus Bednarz (1989), Мы жили в Москве (2)
  • We lived in Cologne. Notes and Memories (1996), Мы жили в Кёльне (2003)

Joint publications with Heinrich Böll:

  • Why did we shoot each other? (1981)
  • Anti-Communism in East and West. Two Conversations (1982)
  • Heinrich Böll - Lew Kopelew. Correspondence. With an essay by Karl Schlögel . Edited by Elsbeth Zylla (2011)

(Initiator and editor :) West-Ostliche Spiegelungen, ten volumes, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1985 to 2006. Series A, ed. from Lew Kopelew and Mechthild Keller:

  • Vol. A1: Russians and Russia from a German perspective. 9-17 Century (1985)
  • Vol. A2: Russians and Russia from a German perspective. 18th Century: Enlightenment (1987)
  • Vol. A3: Russians and Russia from a German perspective. 19th century: from the turn of the century to the founding of the empire (1991)
  • Vol. A4: Russians and Russia from a German perspective. 19./20. Century: From the Bismarck Period to the First World War (1999)
  • Vol. A5: Germany and the Russian Revolution 1917–1924 (edited by Lew Kopelew and Gerd Koenen ) (1998)

Row B, ed. by Lew Kopelew and Dagmar Herrmann

  • Vol. B1: Germans and Germany from a Russian perspective. 11-17 Century (1988)
  • Vol. B2: Germans and Germany from a Russian perspective. 18th Century: Enlightenment (1992)
  • Bd. B3: Germans and Germany from a Russian perspective. 19th Century: From the Turn of the Century to the Reforms of Alexander II (1998)
  • Vol. B4: Germans and Germany from a Russian perspective. 19./20. Century: From the Reforms of Alexander II to the First World War (2006)
  • Special Volume B: Germans and Germany in Russian Poetry of the Early 20th Century (1988)

German-Russian encounters in the Age of Enlightenment (18th century). Traveling exhibition through Germany and Russia. Documentation. Edited by Lew Kopelew, Karl-Heinz Korn, Rainer Sprung (1997)

Awards

Exhibitions

  • 2012: "Words become bridges". Lew Kopelew 100th birthday (an exhibition by the Heinrich Böll Archive in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Berlin, and the Lew Kopelew Forum , Cologne), Cologne Central Library (world of literature)

literature

Web links

Commons : Lew Kopelew  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lev Kopelew; Keeping forever ; Steidl-Verlag Göttingen 1996; ISBN 3-88243-378-7
  2. ↑ [1] The mirror
  3. ↑ [2] russland.news
  4. ↑ Gazeta Wzborcza, April 8, 2002, p. 20.
  5. ↑ http://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/sixcms/media.php/1290/1981_kopelew.pdf
  6. ↑ see award winner 1991
  7. ↑ http://www.stadt-koeln.de/1/presseservice/mitteilungen/2012/06841/
  8. ↑ Review by Gemma Pörzgen in Deutschlandfunk Andruck - Das Magazin für Politische Literatur from June 12, 2017 , accessed on June 18, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Kopelew, Lev Zinovievich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Копелев, Лев Зиновьевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiev
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1997
Place of death Cologne