Ludwig Detsinyi

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Ludwig Detsinyi (born December 22, 1915 in Budapest , † July 1, 1997 in Beechworth , Victoria (Australia) ; pseudonyms: Dets , Ludwig Adam , David Martin ; official name (since 1953): David Martin ), writer and journalist.

Life

Detsinyi, son of a Hungarian-Jewish family, grew up in Germany . As a youth he joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany and then the KPD . After the “ seizure of power ” by the NSDAP, he emigrated to Holland in 1934, then to Hungary and Palestine. “When the fascists attacked the Spanish Republic,” he later reported, “suddenly everything in my life was mixed up. I really wanted to go to Madrid ”to support the popular front government against the Franco putschists in the Spanish civil war . With some other young men he left Palestine for Spain. Because of his linguistic skills and after receiving first aid training in Palestine, he was deployed as a medic in the Dimitrov and Lincoln battalions of the 15th International Brigade . His literary life began in Spain. Texts of poetry, which he was still writing in German at the time, he attached to trees and telegraph poles - "for the" stretcherbearers and first-aidmen "- but also sent them to German-language exile media. Exile publishers and the publications of the International Brigades distributed them wrote the song from the Jaramafront . It was set to music a little later and world-famous by the worker singer Ernst Busch and is the theme melody of the film Five Cartridge Cases by Frank Beyer . Ernst Busch also adopted other lyrics from Detsinyi. His poems written in Spain were, among others, in the Neue Weltbühne , published in the AIZ , in the international literature edited by Johannes R. Becher and in the magazine Das Wort edited by Brecht , Feuchtwanger and Bredel . At the end of April 1938 Detsinyi left Spain and reached his parents in London via Paris. it is said that at the end of the day he had a great solidarity manifestation in favor of the spani People's government and in view of developments in Germany decided not to continue writing in German. After stops for British newspapers and the BBC , he went to India in 1948/49 and lived in Australia since 1949. In 1951 he joined the Australian Communist Party, from which he left in 1959. Detsinyi worked as a journalist for various Australian newspapers and developed a lively writing activity in various genres (novels, poems, children's books, short stories). He published his experiences in Spain in 1991 under the title "My Strange Friend". That year he also received the "Patrick White Award".

Publications

Selection of German-language titles

  • Dets: Letter from Spain. In: The word. Issue 8, 1937, p. 110.
  • L. Adam: Before the battle. In: The word. Volume 4, 1938, p. 131.
  • L. Detsinyi: Peter. In memory of the paramedic Peter of the Dimitrov Battalion, killed in front of Brunete. In: The word. Volume 5, 1938, p. 77.
  • L. Detsinyi: Fifteen fallen comrades. In: The word. Issue 5, 1938.
  • L. Adam: Do you hear? in: E. Weinert (selected and introduced): The flag of solidarity. German writer in the Spanish Freedom Army 1936–1939. Berlin 1953, p. 9.
  • L. Adam: Jack Sirai. In: E. Weinert (selected and introduced): The flag of solidarity. German writer in the Spanish Freedom Army 1936–1939. Berlin 1953, pp. 304f.
  • L. Adam: Blind comrade. In: E. Weinert (selected and introduced): The flag of solidarity. German writer in the Spanish Freedom Army 1936–1939. Berlin 1953, p. 451.
  • L. Detsinyi: Song from the Jarama Front. In: W. Bredel: Spain War I. ed. by M. Hahn. Berlin / Weimar 1977, p. 233.
  • D. Martin: The stones of Bombay. Novel. Berlin 1954.

English language books

  • 1942 Battlefields and girls
  • 1946 Tiger Bay
  • 1946 The shoes men walk in
  • 1946 The shepherd and the hunter
  • 1949 Birth of a miner
  • 1950 The stones of Bombay
  • 1953 From life
  • 1954 Rob the robber
  • 1958 Poems of David Martin 1938-1958
  • 1961 Spiegel the cat: a story poem (based on Gottfried Keller's Spiegel, das Kitten )
  • 1962 The young wife
  • 1963 Eight by eight
  • 1965 The hero of too
  • 1966 The gift: poems 1959-1965
  • 1967 The King between
  • 1968 The idealist
  • 1969 Where a man belongs
  • 1970 On the road to Sydney
  • 1971 Hughie
  • 1972 Frank and Francesca
  • 1972 Gary
  • 1973 The Chinese boy
  • 1974 The cabby's daughter
  • 1974 Katie
  • 1975 Mister P and his remarkable flight
  • 1977 The devilish mystery of the flying mum
  • 1978 The man in the red turban
  • 1978 I'll take Australia
  • 1978 The mermaid attack
  • 1980 I rhyme my time
  • 1981 Foreigners
  • 1983 Peppino
  • 1984 Armed neutrality for Australia
  • 1985 The girl who didn't know Kelly
  • 1987 Fox on my door
  • 1987 The kitten who wouldn't purr
  • 1988 Clowning Sim
  • 1991 My strange friend: an autobiography
  • 1993 David Martin's Beechworth book: poems

literature

  • FC Weiskopf: Under strange skies. An outline of German literature in exile 1933–1947. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1981, DNB 810886715 .
  • Willi Bredel : Young writers in Spain's trenches. In: W. Bredel: Spain War II. Ed. by M. Hahn. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1977, DNB 780064240 , p. 275f.
  • Exile in the Netherlands and Spain. (= Art and literature in anti-fascist exile 1933–1945 in seven volumes . Volume 6). Leipzig 1981, DNB 810385422 , p. 350f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Correspondence David Martin - Dirk Krüger, in: Dirk Krüger: The poetical paramedic. For the 100th birthday of Ludwig Detsinyi, later David Martin. In: young world. December 23, 2015, p. 15.
personal data
SURNAME Detsinyi, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES David Martin (official name since 1953); Dets (pseudonym); Ludwig Adam (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-Australian writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1997
Place of death Beechworth , Victoria (Australia)