Máté Zalka

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Máté Zalka [ ˈmaːteː ˈzɒlkɒ ], actually Béla Frankl , (born April 23, 1896 in Matolcs , Hungary , † June 11, 1937 in Huesca , Spain ) was a Hungarian writer and revolutionary. In the Spanish Civil War by the nickname General Lukacz commander of the Twelfth International Brigade , he fell on his way to the front of a grenade victim.

Life

Zalka attended the citizen school in Mátészalka . The school was named after him after the Second World War, but has since been renamed again. At the age of 18 he published his first volume of short stories, but his father insisted on a military career, so that Zalka joined the Hungarian army as a volunteer. During the First World War he fought as a hussar officer in Italy (described in his novel Doberdo ) and on the Russian front, where he was captured in 1917. After the end of the war, he remained a staunch communist in Russia, where he married his wife Vera (their only daughter later died due to complications after the Chernobyl reactor accident in 1987). During the Russian Civil War in 1918 he set up a Hungarian Red Guards unit in Khabarovsk . As regimental commander, he fought in the Crimea and the Ukraine .

Zalka had already organized theatrical performances in the prison camp. From 1925 to 1928 he was director of the Theater of the Revolution in Moscow (later the Mayakovsky Theater ). He also wrote agitation literature and finally, shortly before leaving for Spain, Doberdo .

He joined the International Brigades in Spain in 1936. As a very popular "General Lukacz" he commanded the 12th International Brigade and then the 45th Division. In 1937 he died in a bombing in Huesca . Details can be found both in Ilja Ehrenburg and in the memoirs of Gustav Regler , who at the time was political commissioner of the 12th Brigade and was seriously wounded when Zaltka's car was shot at. "General Lukacz" is also mentioned in some of Ernest Hemingway's works .

Decades later, Zalka's body was transferred to a military cemetery in Budapest by his nephew, who was invited by the Spanish king to a ceremony to mark the end of the civil war. Ehrenburg writes: "How often did he say to me: The war is a terrible mess ."

Literary adaptations

  • Karl Grünberg : The gold treasure in the Taiga ( small youth series ; born 1961, issue 12). Publishing house culture and progress, Berlin 1961 (biographical story).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ilja Ehrenburg: People, Years, Life. Memoirs, Vol. 2 . Kindler Verlag, Munich 1965, page 480.
  2. ^ Ilja Ehrenburg: People, Years, Life. Memoirs, Vol. 2 , page 481.
  3. ^ Ilja Ehrenburg: People, Years, Life. Memoirs, Vol. 2 , pp. 479-485.
  4. Gustav Regulator: The ear of Malchus. A life story . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1985, ISBN 3-462-01702-0 (reprint of the Cologne 1958 edition), pages 371, 396, 400, 413 (death).
  5. ^ Ilja Ehrenburg: People, Years, Life. Memoirs, Vol. 2 , page 483.

Web links

Commons : Máté Zalka  - collection of images, videos and audio files