René Halkett

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George René Halkett ( pseudonym ; born February 5, 1900 in Weimar as Albrecht Georg Friedrich Freiherr von Fritsch ; died March 7, 1983 in Camelford , Great Britain ) was a German-British artist.

Life

Albrecht Georg Friedrich von Fritsch was the son of an officer and chamberlain at the Weimar court ; he had a Scottish grandmother. He attended military school in Naumburg and was the age of seventeen at the end of the First World War with the rank of flags Junkers nor combatants. After the end of the war, he reported to a German-Baltic Freikorps operating in Lithuania . When he adopted the ideas of the youth movement , his family showed no understanding. When he wanted to marry civilly, in accordance with impropriety , he was cut off from family resources. Von Fritsch made a living as a working student . He studied without a degree in Giessen , Heidelberg and Frankfurt am Main and was a student at the Bauhaus Weimar from 1923 to 1925 . In 1927 he was a member of the "Red Stage", a theater group in Berlin that operated political agitation for the KPD . He placed his journalistic work in the bourgeois-liberal Vossische Zeitung and the Frankfurter Zeitung . In the diverse interests of his bohemian existence , von Fritsch was also a glider pioneer in the East Prussian Rossitten , was an adept of Loheland gymnastics and devoted himself to open-air painting in the Rhön . In 1924 he took the pseudonym George René Halkett.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he first tried to emigrate to Ibiza and went to England in 1936. There he first worked in the Dartington Hall School in children's theater and as a painter. In 1939 he published the book The Dear Monster for British readership in the Jonathan Cape publishing house, which was later taken over by Random House , a critical description of the National Socialist movement and the social atmosphere in their time, influenced by personal experiences in the Wandervogel movement and the youth movement of the Weimar Republic Ascent. The book was only published in Germany in 2011. It is highly praised by reviewers. However, Tanya Lieske points out the limits of his portrayal. “In 1939 Halkett played down the danger of German nationalism.” From 1942 to 1945, Halkett worked for the British military in war propaganda. Under Sefton Delmer , he was deployed in German-language propaganda stations operated by the British. Later he was occupied with the denazification of prisoners of war. From 1945 to 1947 Halkett worked as an interpreter for the US armed forces at the war crimes trials in Nuremberg . In 1946 he received British citizenship. Back in London he worked for the German-speaking department of the BBC , from 1956 on with a permanent contract. In 1967 he moved to Camelford in Cornwall and until 1980 he broadcast the "Letters from Cornwall" fortnightly on the BBC.

In the late 1970s, Halkett worked with David J , co-founder of the rock group Bauhaus ., In 1981 Jay produced the single Nothing. Armor based on two poems by Halkett, the cover was also by Halkett.

Fonts (selection)

  • G. R Halkett: The dear monster . Jonathan Cape, London 1939
    • The dear monster. Autobiographical portrait from 1900 to 1939 . From the English and with comments by Ursula C. Klimmer. With a foreword by Diethart Kerbs . Ed. memoria, Hürth 2011, ISBN 978-3-930353-30-9 . Positive review by Walter Hinck in the FAZ .
  • René Halkett , Galerie Jesse, Edition Jesse, Bielefeld 1980
  • Drawings by Rene Halkett , North Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery, 1981
  • René Halkett: retrospective exhibition - paintings and drawings 1921–1979 , S. Holden, Camelford 1981.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tanya Lieske: More atmosphere than analysis , review by dradio , January 26, 2012
  2. ↑ Robert Brammer: "Every digit was a tone". Memories of the painter René Halkett and his collaboration with the band “Bauhaus” at Deutschlandradiokultur, 2006
  3. ↑ Rene Halkett / David Jay: 'Nothing' , at 4AD
  4. ^ FAZ January 10, 2012 online on the pages of Bücher.de [1] , accessed January 12, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Halkett, René
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halkett, René George; Fritsch, Albrecht Georg Friedrich Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British journalist and artist
DATE OF BIRTH 5th February 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Weimar
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1983
Place of death Camelford