Paul Elgers (writer)

Paul Elgers (actually Paul Schmidt-Elgers ; born March 23, 1915 in Berlin ; died June 7, 1995 in Rudolstadt ) was a German writer.

Life

Elgers was the son of a music teacher Paul Elgers . From 1933 to 1936 he completed an apprenticeship as a druggist and worked in pharmaceutical wholesale until 1940. From 1940 he was a soldier and in 1944 was taken prisoner by the Soviets, from which he returned in 1948. Then he was a correspondent for the Daily Rundschau in Berlin. From 1957 to 1959 he was assistant director of the German concert and guest performance management in Erfurt and from 1961 to 1965 he was first editor and then chief editor of Greifenverlag in Rudolstadt , where many of his works later appeared. From 1966 he worked as a freelance writer.

The first prose works appeared from 1954. In the story Gold im Urwald Elgers deals with the search for Paititi , the legendary “lost city” of the Inca . In 1959 he worked as a writer for the Thuringian VEB Maxhütte , where his novel It began in summer was written, which describes the life and work of three young people and the development of a socialist brigade based on a conflicted love story . In the years that followed, historical novels and stories as well as detective novels - in which a West German detective was allowed to be the protagonist due to the lack of real detectives in the GDR - formed the focus of Elger's literary work, with historical detective novels and stories being a mixture of the two genres. Examples are the novel The Marquise von Brinvilliers , in which he explores the extravagance and immorality of the French court of Louis XV. represents, the two-volume novel Jungfrau Johanna , in which he questions the legend of Joan of Arc , the case of Kaspar Trümpy , where a piece of medical history of the 19th century is the subject, and finally the detective novel Deadly Business , the Contergan- Has scandal as a background. Posthumously published in 2010 in the shadow of Napoleon on Joseph Fouché , Napoleon's Minister of Police.

Appreciations

• 1961 Literature Prize from the Free German Trade Union Federation for It began in the summer

Works

• Gold in the jungle. Story of the adventurous search for the gold land Paytiti. Berlin 1954.
• Eldorado. Narrative. Berlin 1955.
• Alarm in the port. Narrative. Berlin 1958.
• It started in the summer. Novel. Rudolstadt 1960.
• One too many in business. Novel. Rudolstadt 1962.
• The Marquise of Brinvilliers. Novel based on files from the Bastille. Historical novel. Rudolstadt 1964.
• Virgin Johanna. Historical novel. 2 vols. Rudolstadt 1972.
• The cat with the blue eyes. Detective novel. Rudolstadt 1974.
• The Kaspar Trümpy case. Novel about a criminal trial. Historical detective novel. Rudolstadt 1976.
• Virgin Johanna. Novel. Rudolstadt 1977.
• The stranger from Collegno. Historical crime story. Rudolstadt 1980.
• A toadstool for the Empress. Assassin Report. Rudolstadt 1983.
• Deadly business. Detective novel, Halle 1985.
• Masaniello or the great fishermen's revolt of Naples. Historical novel. Rudolstadt 1987.
• The fake murder. Rudolstadt 1989.
• In the shadow of Napoleon: Joseph Fouchè - master of the intrigue Roman. Rudolstadt 2010.

editor

• The dead highway taker. Anthology. Rudolstadt 1965.
• The fake murder. 4 historical criminal cases. Rudolstadt 1989.

literature

• Living story. Paul Elgers on his 80th birthday. Edited by Günter Gerstmann. Rudolstadt 1995.
• Heidemarie Stegmann-Meißner: Elgers, Paul. In: Wilhelm Kühlmann (Ed.): Killy Literature Lexicon . Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area. 2., completely revised Ed. De Gruyter, Berlin 2008, vol. 3, p. 251.
• Dieter Fechner : Personal encounters with Thuringian authors in the 20th / 21st Century . Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2014, ISBN 978-3-86777-718-6 , Paul Elgers (1915-1995). Author of historical books, p. 43-49 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Elgers in the catalog of the German National Library
• Paul Elgers in the lexicon of German crime writers