Ludwig Renn

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Ludwig Renn (left) with the Polish politician Ignacy Loga-Sowiński (1954)

Ludwig Renn (born April 22, 1889 in Dresden , † July 21, 1979 in Berlin ; actually Arnold Friedrich Vieth von Golßenau ) was a German writer .

Youth, first world war

Ludwig Renn (until 1930 Arnold Vieth von Golßenau) came from the Saxon nobility with headquarters in Golßen (Niederlausitz). His mother, Bertha Julie b. Raspe (1867–1949), was of middle-class origin. Through his father, Carl Johann Vieth von Golßenau (1856–1938), who was a mathematics professor and educator at the Dresden royal court , there was a friendly bond with the Saxon crown prince , Friedrich August Georg of Saxony . In 1910, Ludwig Renn's officer career began in the 1st Royal Saxon Leib Grenadier Regiment No. 100 , where his friend Friedrich August Georg von Sachsen also served. From 1914 to 1918 he fought in the First World War as a company commander , at times also as a battalion commander on the Western Front . After the war he was captain of the Dresden Security Police . In 1920, in the course of the Kapp Putsch , he refused to shoot at revolutionary workers and resigned shortly afterwards.

Studies and travel

From 1920 to 1923 he studied law, economics, art history and Russian philology in Göttingen and Munich . In 1923 he worked as an art dealer in Dresden during the period of inflation . In 1925/26 he went on a foot trip through southern Europe and the Orient . In 1927 he finished his studies in archeology and East Asian history in Vienna . In the same year he returned to Germany and gave lectures on the history of China to workers . In 1928 he became famous with his first book War , a widely read, sober, factual anti-war novel.

Run as a communist writer and fighter against Spain

Joris Ivens and Ernest Hemingway with Ludwig Renn in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War

Attacked by the National Socialists, he gave up his title of nobility, named himself after the hero of his hit novel Ludwig Renn and joined the Communists. After joining the KPD and the Red Front Fighters League , he was also active as a secretary in the League of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers and editor of the communist literary magazines Linkskurve and Aufbruch . Renn was also a member of the “ Aufbruchkreis ”, which was founded by ten officers in March 1931 on the occasion of Lieutenant Richard Scheringer's transition from the NSDAP to the KPD. His books Post War (1930) and Russia Trips (1932) made him the most important German communist writer of the interwar period. In March 1933 he was after the Reichstag fire of Rudolf Diels due to the Reichstag Fire Decree , along with Carl von Ossietzky and Ernst Torgler arrested and brought before the foreign press. In January 1934, Renn was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison, which he served in Bautzen prison. After his release he took up residence in Unteruhldingen / Meersburg and Überlingen on Lake Constance, from where he fled to Switzerland in February 1936 and applied for political asylum. After spending a month with the publisher Emil Oprecht in Zurich, he moved to the canton of Ticino . Renn secretly left Switzerland in mid-August 1936 and went to Spain , initially incognito. When at the end of October 1936 the XI. International Brigade was founded, Renn took over command of the Ernst Thälmann battalion and from December 1936 as Chief of Staff - together with Commander Hans Kahle - the command of the brigade.

After the defeat of the Republicans in Spain, Renn ended up in exile via England and the United States to Mexico , where he worked as chairman of the “Free Germany” movement and promoted the world auxiliary language Esperanto .

Race in the Soviet Zone / GDR

In 1959, Ludwig Renn signed his book Trini for young people
Grave of Ludwig Renn in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin

Renn returned to Germany in 1947, settled in the Soviet Zone and became a member of the SED . He was director of the cultural studies institute and professor at the Technical University of Dresden . He later moved to the Humboldt University in Berlin . Renn was a member of the 1st People's Council of the Soviet Zone.

From 1952 he wrote as a freelance writer military historical and political treatises, travel and life reports as well as children's books. He stayed strictly on the party line.

The homosexual race has lived with Max Hunger (1901–1973) from Dresden since returning from exile in Mexico. Hans Pierschel (1922–1994) joined both in 1949. From 1952 until his death, Renn lived with his friends in Berlin-Kaulsdorf .

He and his partner were buried in a joint grave in the "artist department" at the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin, which is a listed building.

Awards and honors

In the GDR, Ludwig Renn was not only honored as a writer, but also as an anti-fascist and resistance fighter.

In addition to children's book awards from the GDR Ministry of Culture , he received the GDR National Prize twice and the Karl Marx Order in 1969 . In 1959 he received the German Peace Medal . On May 1, 1979 he was awarded the Great Star of Friendship of Nations .

1969–1975 he was honorary president of the Academy of Arts .

In Berlin-Marzahn Ludwig-racing road and is in his hometown of Dresden named Ludwig-racing avenue after him.

There is also a Ludwig-Renn-Straße in the Weißenborn district of Zwickau (Sachs) . From October 1927 he gave lectures for workers on the history of China and Russia at the adult education center in Zwickau - for the first time under his pseudonym Ludwig Renn.

A children's library on Leipziger Strasse in Berlin, which is now closed , also bore his name. Even today, a primary school in Potsdam is named after Renn. A deep-sea trawler (ROS 337) of the GDR fishing fleet was also named after him.

Works

  • War . Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, Frankfurt am Main 1928
    • New edition: War: with a documentation. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1989 ISBN 3-351-01402-3
    • New edition, epilogue Günther Drommer: Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2001 ISBN 3-360-00976-2
    • Excerpt: In the front line. From the Aisne-Champagne Battle of 1917 . Diesterweg, 1929
  • Post war. Agis, Berlin 1930 full text
  • Russia trips. Lasso, Berlin 1932
  • Before great changes. Oprecht, Zurich 1936. New edition: Structure, Berlin 1989 ISBN 3-351-01478-3
  • Death without battle. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York and M. Secker & Warburg, London 1937
  • Warfare. The relation of war to society. Oxford University Press, New York and Faber & Faber, London, 1939
  • Nobility in decline . El Libro Libre, Mexico 1944
  • Morelia . A university city in Mexico. Construction, Berlin 1950
  • From old and new Romania. Construction, Berlin 1952
  • Trini. The story of an Indian boy . Children's book publisher, Berlin 1954. National Prize of the GDR 1955
  • The Spanish War. Construction, Berlin 1955; again (unabridged): Das Neue Berlin, 2006 ISBN 978-3-360-01287-6
  • The negro Nobi. 1955, since 8th edition 1962 under the title Nobi , again: Eulenspiegelverlag, Berlin 2001 ISBN 3-359-01427-8
  • Herniu and the blind Asni. 1956
  • War without battle. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1957
  • My childhood and youth . 1957
  • Herniu and Armin. 1958
  • On the ruins of the empire . Structure, Weimar 1961
  • Camilo. 1963
  • Inflation . Structure, Weimar 1963
  • On foot to the Orient. Structure, Weimar 1966
  • Way out. Structure, Weimar 1967
  • Warrior, mercenary and soldier. (together with Helmut Schnitter) Children's book publisher, Berlin 1976
  • In Mexico. Structure, Berlin 1979
  • Impetus in my life. Structure, Berlin 1980 (autobiography)
as translator
  • Ermilo Abreu Gómez: Stories from the Maja Indians. Construction, Weimar 1948; Partial reprint : Jacinto Kaneck, in The Most Beautiful Stories in the World. House book of immortal prose. Preface by Thomas Mann . Kurt Desch, Munich 1956, Part 2, pp. 806 - 828 ( Héroes Mayas : Zamná , Cocom . Canek. Mexico 1942)

literature

Web links

Commons : Ludwig Renn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Ludwig Renn  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007 ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 p. 480.
  2. ↑ Erich Günthart, Romy Günthart: Spanish opening 1936. Red Zurich, German emigrants and the fight against Franco . Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-0340-1375-8 , p. 21-41, 125-137 .
  3. ↑ In his book on Spain he treated Ernest Hemingway , with whom he had met several times in Spain, as a non-person, because he was criticized as a late bourgeois modernist in the GDR until the mid-1950s. He only spoke of an "American". (The Spanish War, Berlin 1956, p. 250).
  4. ↑ Berlin State Monument List: Ludwig Renn grave
  5. ^ Ludwig-Renn-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Renn, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gloßenau, Arnold Friedrich Vieth von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1979
Place of death Berlin