Richard Zach

Stumbling block for Richard Zach

Richard Zach (born March 23, 1919 in Graz ; † January 27, 1943 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison ) was an Austrian resistance fighter and poet.

Life

Zach was the second son of a Styrian working-class family, the mother was social-democratic and the father, a cooper, was unionized. From 1926 to 1930 Richard Zach attended elementary school and then for four years the secondary school in Graz. Later contacts and friendships with older classmates and friends, such as the young communist Josef Martin Presterl and the former socialist secondary school student Adolf Strohmaier, led to the founding of a group around Richard Zach in 1935, soon after joining the teacher training college. During the time of the Austro-Fascist corporate state , anti-fascist work was organized within the framework of a political and cultural activity in the Christian labor movement.

With the beginning of the National Socialist rule in Austria , information and agitation activities were carried out in addition to educational and training work. The group expanded around a permanent core and, during the Nazi era, comprised up to 50 young people who were organized in small groups, cells. Then Zach was called up and served as a gunner and chauffeur during the raid on Poland . While on vacation in Graz at the beginning of 1940 he faked an accident and was admitted to the hospital, which he only left after a year with a certified “unfit for service” due to his persistence with the doctors. The meetings at his sickbed were also used for new contacts. The group began to have a stronger external impact, wrote pamphlets and printed and distributed scattered notes with the hammer and sickle emblem in front of large industrial companies in Graz.

In the spring of 1941 a wave of arrests began, which also included the people around Richard Zach. On October 31, 1941, Zach was arrested on suspicion of smeared communist slogans and arrested in the Graz police prison. His friend Hermine Kohlhauser, who was able to visit him often in prison at first, only suspected when she picked up her boyfriend's laundry from the prison that she was taking more than just his clothes to the Zach's apartment. The first stenographically held receipts that were found in the elastic band of the garments are warning letters to friends who have meanwhile been drafted into the Wehrmacht. When Alois Geschwinder was admitted to the police prison on December 17, 1941 , he was put in the cell next to his friend's. From then until mid-January 1942, Richard Zach had opportunities for more direct communication. In addition to conversations at the cell windows, information was later morsed through the wall. Geschwinder transmitted the messages. In this way, some of Zach's poems were also put on paper.

At the beginning of April 1942, Zach was transferred to Berlin-Moabit. During the months of his imprisonment in Berlin, Zach lost almost 20 kg of body weight. On August 18, 1942, the Reich Court Martial sentenced Richard Zach to death for " undermining military strength ". At the beginning of December 1942, Richard Zach was brought back to Graz to testify at a hearing with a friend. The condemned man once again used his stay in his hometown and the transport from Graz via Vienna to Berlin in January 1943 to write and pass on receipts. Zach was executed in the evening hours of January 27, 1943.

plant

In the one and a quarter years of his imprisonment in Graz and Berlin-Moabit, the imprisoned writes in the face of physical and psychological distress as if in a creative fever. While around 600 of his poems in Berlin-Moabit can be written with permission to write and appear predominantly apolitical, in Graz and Berlin-Moabit around 200 poems are written on a total of 80 traditional receipts . The texts are moored through the wall into the next cell or even secretly written down; Small and very small pieces of paper are sewn into the bundles of clothing, passed on to visitors with a handshake or smuggled out into freedom in some other way. “You shouldn't see us tremble” is just one of those clear, defiant thoughts with which the twenty-three year old confronts his executioners.

Richard Zach's legacy, which consists of literary and non-literary parts, comprises around 1500 pages in various forms (diaries, notepads, workbooks, single sheets, etc.), half of which are lyrical or prosaic notes; about 1000 pages were written before the poet's imprisonment. A total of around 900 poems with 56 second versions are available, of which around 120 were written before the prison term and almost 800 during the prison term. The main epic and prosaic writings date from the time before the imprisonment. a. a 350-page fragment of a novel or an almost 200-page verse epic. If one can speak of a life's work at all in the case of the young Richard Zach , it ranges from the delicate nature and love poem to the blaring pamphlet, from the lyrical design of individual human fates to almost hymn-like hymns of praise for life, from concise slogans to comprehensive ones philosophical poem. Richard Zach knew how, consciously and unconsciously, to pick up on various currents and traditions of German-language literature and, taking into account the current socio-political developments, often shape them fruitfully in new ways. He tried different forms of verse, rhyme and rhythm design, which evidently never emerged independently of the respective poem content. He also loved language experiments that are expressed, for example, in linguistic new creations or derivations.

The thought, which pervades almost all poems or themes in different ways, is about constant criticism of being blind, deaf and lame and the invitation to look, listen and be active. The activity forms the connecting central moment when these two elements are represented in their development context as real conditions or possibilities. Richard Zach's many poems also follow the tradition of the literature of the labor movement.

meaning

The fact that Richard Zach is not forgotten today is thanks to his brother and his friends and former comrades-in-arms who also secured his writings. His name can be found today on the International Memorial in the Graz Central Cemetery as well as on a plaque in the stairwell of the former teacher training institute (today: University of Education) on Hasnerplatz in Graz . In 1977 the Kinderland-Junge-Garde-Heim in St. Radegund was named after Richard Zach, and even a short stretch of street in Graz-Andritz is now called Richard-Zach-Gasse . Above all, the brother, Alfred Zach, is responsible for the fact that after 1945 a number of readings took place on Austrian radio; also that Richard Zach's poems have filled several volumes since 1945 or were included in anthologies such as the Reader of World Literature . While he was described in a literary essay in 1982 as "probably the most important poet among those sentenced to death" and his name was mentioned by the then French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas in 1985 as an example of the Austrian resistance to National Socialism, the Salzburg Germanist Ulrich Müller wrote in 1987 in a letter that Richard Zach was "'in times like these' a really presentable Austrian, especially abroad!" Richard Zach's estate, processed from 1989 to 1992 as part of a research project of the Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research according to scientific criteria, is now in the documentation archive of the Austrian Resistance in Vienna. On October 26, 2013, the Austrian national holiday, a sculpture designed by the sculptor Rudolf Hirt was unveiled by representatives of the KPÖ and Kinderland in the garden of the children's holiday home named after Zach in St. Radegund near Graz. Richard Zach's former partner Herma Planner also attended the celebration.

literature

Richard Zach: Scatter the ashes in the wind! Selected poems, edited by Christian Hawle, Stuttgart 1988. (= Stuttgart works on German studies 198) ISBN 3-88099-202-9 .
Christian Hawle: Richard Zach - “I lived!” Vienna 1989. (= Biographical texts on the history of the Austrian labor movement 3) ISBN 3-85364-207-1 .
Richard Zach: The beautiful words fall withered and strange ... Cashier texts, poems and letters, ed. v. Christian Hawle, Weitra: Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz , 1993. ISBN 3-900878-92-7 .
Christian Hawle: The question of being human. Monograph on Richard Zach (1919-1943) . Dissertation, University of Salzburg 1993.
Richard Zach: Went the other way. Selected poems. Edited and with an afterword by Karl Wimmler, Graz 2017. ISBN 978-3-902542-52-6 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Zach, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian resistance fighter and poet
DATE OF BIRTH	March 23, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH	Graz
DATE OF DEATH	January 27, 1943
Place of death	Brandenburg-Görden prison