Rolf Bongs
Rolf Bongs (born June 5, 1907 in Düsseldorf ; † November 20, 1981 there ) was a German writer .
Life
Rolf Bongs was the son of District Administrator Rudolf Bongs. He grew up in Düsseldorf and already learned the journalistic trade as a schoolboy while working on the Düsseldorf school newspaper . After he had passed his matriculation examination in 1928, he studied German, art history and philosophy at the universities in Munich, Berlin and Marburg. During this time he was a co-founder of the Marburg leaflets and made the acquaintance of the work of André Gides , which had a great influence on bongs.
In 1934 Rolf Bongs earned his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Marburg with a thesis on Heinrich von Kleist . His volume “ Gedichte ” from 1935 was banned by the censors of the Third Reich shortly after its publication, and the author was temporarily banned from writing . In the following years, Bongs, who had been married since 1937, exercised various activities; Among other things, he was a commercial clerk, sports teacher and journalist, and finally archivist and librarian . In addition, the Rabenpresse of the publisher VO Stomps in particular offered him an opportunity to publish his texts. From 1938 Bongs was employed by the Volksbund für das Deutschtum Abroad , for which he published two publications in 1942 about the resettlement of ethnic Germans from Soviet-occupied Poland, from the Generalgouvernement and from Bessarabia after the end of the raid, as agreed in the German-Soviet border and friendship treaty Poland described and justified. From 1941 to 1942 he was in charge of the Rheinisches Dichter-Archiv , in which manuscripts and materials by contemporary authors from the Prussian Rhine Province were collected. From 1942 he took part as a soldier in the Waffen SS and SS war correspondent in the Second World War in the Soviet Union, Italy and France.
After his release from a short American captivity, Bongs returned to Düsseldorf in 1945, where he worked as a journalist and critic and from 1955 as a freelance writer. He traveled to Greece and the United States several times. In 1971 he was a visiting professor for contemporary German-language poetry at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst . Bongs, who increasingly suffered from a severe rheumatic disease in the last years of his life , committed suicide in 1981.
Rolf Bongs' work includes poems, short stories, novels, essays, dramas and radio plays. Bongs' early poems tend towards New Objectivity , but an outspoken cult of ancient Greece, athletics and the male body also play an important role in his poetry . After his participation in the National Socialist propaganda apparatus during the Second World War and as a result of his vehement rejection of the current literary movements of the early Federal Republic , Bongs led a literary niche existence after 1945. It was only of importance for the reception of the work of André Gide, whom he admired, in post-war Germany. Bongs' estate rests in the Heinrich Heine Institute in Düsseldorf .
Awards
- 1956 advancement award for the Heinrich Droste literature award
- 1957 the price of the Hermann-Hesse-Foundation
- 1958 the price of the Rudolf-Alexander-Schröder-Foundation
- 1966 the Willibald Pirckheimer Medal
Works
- About the body , Marburg 1932
- The shepherd's song , Berlin 1933
- The runner , Marburg 1933
- Singing , Berlin 1934
- The Metamorphosis , Leipzig [u. a.] 1934
- The valuation and validity of Kleist at the time of Romanticism , Leipzig [u. a.] 1934
- Poems , Berlin 1935
- Poems for townspeople , Düsseldorf 1935
- The runners , Berlin 1935
- Diary 1937 , Düsseldorf 1937
- Accountability , Düsseldorf 1939
- Shots 1811 , Leipzig [a. a.] 1939
- A village is relocating , Berlin 1942
- Hard, wonderful road to the west , Berlin 1942
- Holy Juno , Düsseldorf 1942
- Tears and smiles , Berlin 1942
- Two poems , Gaiswaid / Westf. 1944
- Ernst Heimrath in memory , Düsseldorf-Oberkassel 1946
- On life in the shine of the secret , Düsseldorf 1947
- Venice , undated undated
- Conversation with André Gide , Düsseldorf 1950
- Flight through the night , Düsseldorf 1951
- The face of André Gide , Düsseldorf 1953
- The fiery pillar , Emsdetten 1953
- Rhenish picture book , Berlin 1954
- Cock crow , Düsseldorf 1955
- Wilhelm Buller Collection , Düsseldorf 1955
- Düsseldorf merchants collect modern art , Düsseldorf 1956
- Heart and time , Emsdetten / Westf. 1956
- A footprint in Taranowka , Düsseldorf 1957
- In the valley of the flight lane , Offenburg [u. a.] 1957
- Crash , Emsdetten 1958
- Monologue by a victim , Stuttgart 1961
- The big eyes of Greece , Emsdetten 1963
- Accountability , Emsdetten 1964
- Zurich poem , Munich 1965
- Judgment on a common soldier , Emsdetten 1966
- Ascent to Kilimanjaro , Munich 1968
- The London manuscript , Hamburg [a. a.] 1969
- Tomorrow in Opatija , Darmstadt 1969
- A to plus minus Zett , Darmstadt 1972
- A man walks through the city , Düsseldorf 1972
- Insel , Duisburg 1973 (together with Otto Piene)
- Oberwelt , Düsseldorf 1977
- An American girl , Emsdetten 1980
- Poems , Munich 1981
- I saw that the trees were beginning to go , Düsseldorf 1984
- Evenings at Spoerri , Emsdetten 1989
- Correspondance avec Rolf Bongs , Lyon 1994 (together with André Gide )
- First sun
Editing
- Leib und Leben , Wittingen 1933 (published together with Thilo Scheller and Johannes Vogel)
literature
- Lothar Huesmann (Ed.): Encounters with Rolf Bongs , Emsdetten 1967
- Willi Schäferdiek: Rolf Bongs, a contemporary writer , Munich 1970
- Ursula Bongs: Rolf Bongs , Düsseldorf 1972
- Wolfgang Paulsen: Experiment on Rolf Bongs , Darmstadt 1973
- Agnieszka Rajewska-Perzyńska: Rolf Bongs. Dissociation of a writer in the field of tension between self-stylization and adaptation . Frankfurt a. M. 2009
Web links
- Literature by and about Rolf Bongs in the catalog of the German National Library
- Martin Hollender | Oh lick the grass and Böll. Rolf Bongs.
- Rolf Bongs , biography and estate in the portal rheinische-literaturnachlaesse.de
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Bongs, Rolf |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German poet, writer and journalist |
DATE OF BIRTH | June 5, 1907 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Dusseldorf |
DATE OF DEATH | November 20, 1981 |
Place of death | Dusseldorf |