Rudolf Leonhard

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Rudolf Leonhard, 1951

Rudolf Leonhard , also Rudolf Leonhardt (born October 27, 1889 in Lissa , † December 19, 1953 in East Berlin ) (alternative names : Raoul Lombat ( nom de guerre ), Roger Lehardon , Robert Lewandowski , Robert Lanzer ) was a German writer and Communist .

Life

Leonhard came from a Jewish family of lawyers and studied law and philology in Berlin and Göttingen . In 1914 he registered as a war volunteer and took part in the First World War. In the course of the war he changed from a supporter to a staunch opponent of the war and was brought before a court martial.

Leonhard joined the USPD in 1918 and actively participated in revolutionary struggles in 1918/19 as a supporter of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg . In 1919 he joined the KPD , which he left again in 1921 to join the left- wing communist KAPD , from which he left after a year. In 1918 Leonhard married the writer Susanne Köhler ; the marriage was divorced after a year.

Freelance since 1919, he was the author of the Weltbühne and worked for the publishing house Die Schmiede as an editor and editor a. a. the important report series " Outsiders of Society ". At the end of November 1925 he initiated and led the group in 1925 . This group was a loose union of 39 predominantly left-wing German writers and artists (including Bertolt Brecht , Alfred Döblin , Albert Ehrenstein , Leonhard Frank , Walter Hasenclever , Walter Mehring and Kurt Tucholsky ). After differences over the profile of the group, Leonhard announced his resignation in January 1927.

In March 1928 he moved to Paris at the invitation of his friend Walter Hasenclever and lived there in his apartment until 1934. In April 1933 Leonhard took part in the founding of the "Ligue des Combattants de la Paix" and became president of the German section with Albert Einstein . In the course of the “ Gleichschaltung” , the “Protection Association of German Writers” was merged into the “Reich Association of German Writers” on July 31, 1933; Leonhard initiated the establishment of the Association for the Protection of German Writers Abroad and was its French section chairman from its establishment on October 30, 1933. On March 29, 1934, the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger published the second expatriation list of the German Reich through which he was expatriated . He processed his experiences of a trip to Spain during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 in the volume of stories "The Death of Don Quixote".

From 1939 to 1944 he was interned in the Le Vernet camp. In 1941 influential French personalities stood up for Leonhard and asked for his dismissal, which did not take place. He was later taken to the Castres secret prison, but was able to escape, was brought back and escaped again and then lived underground in Marseille. As a member of the resistance movement in France , he published resistance poems and pamphlets under the pseudonyms Raoul Lombat, Roger Lehardon, Robert Lewandowski and Robert Lanzer. In 1944 he returned to Paris. In 1947 he took part in the First German Writers' Congress and in 1950, already seriously ill, moved to East Berlin (GDR). As a so-called Western emigrant and legal father of Wolfgang Leonhard (1921–2014), he only played a subordinate role in literary life in the GDR, despite the advocacy of numerous friends and joining the SED .

tomb

He wrote first expressionist poetry, later realistic poetry, dramas and short stories, as well as essays and translations.

He was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg in the Memorial of the Socialists in the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried in Berlin.

Honors

In the Dresden Hechtviertel , in Berlin-Marzahn and Nordhausen , one street each bears his name.

Works

  • Basic questions of the English economy . Together with Theodor Vogelstein , Edgar Jaffé u. Moritz Julius Bonn (1913)
  • Angelic Stanzas (1913)
  • The path through the forest (poems) (1913)
  • Barbarians (Ballads) (1914)
  • Over the battles (poems) (1914)
  • Eons of Purgatory (Aphorisms) (1917)
  • Comments on the Reich Youth Defense Act (1917)
  • Beate and the great Pan (novel) (1918)
  • Catilinarian Pilgrimage (Poems) (1919)
  • Fight against the gun (speech) (1919)
  • Letters to Margit (poems) (1919)
  • The Chaos (Poems) (1919)
  • Limbo (tragedy) (1919)
  • Poems on the theme of 'mother' (1920)
  • Everything and nothing! (Aphorisms) (1920)
  • Spartacus Sonnets (1921)
  • The eternity of this time. A Rhapsody Against Europe (1924)
  • Sails on the Horizon (Drama) (1925)
  • The naked life (poems) (1925)
  • Das Wort (a sensual dictionary of the German language, 1932)
  • The Death of Don Quixote (Tales from the Spanish Civil War, 1938)
  • Le Vernet (cycle of poems, composed 1939–44)
  • That same night (The Dream Book of Exile, written 1939-44)
  • Hostages (tragedy, 1945, German 1946)
  • Our Republic (essays and poems, 1951).
  • Work edition in four volumes (1961 ff.)

Filmography

Radio plays

literature

  • Wolfgang Emmerich:  Leonhard, Rudolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , pp. 251-253 ( digitized version ).
  • Helmut Kreuzer: On early German radio plays and radio play concepts (1924-1927 / 28): Hans Flesch, Alfred Auerbach, Rudolf Leonhard, Oskar Moehring . Siegener Periodicum on International Empirical Literature Studies (SPIEL). 19th year, issue 1/2000. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2000, lmz-bw.de (PDF)
  • Andreas Kölling:  Leonhard, Rudolf . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Jonny Granzow: The breakout of the Spanish fighters from the secret prison: A historical report . edition bodoni, 2012, ISBN 978-3-940781-27-7 .
  • Rolf Tauscher: Literary satire of exile against National Socialism and Hitler Germany . Hamburg 1992, pp. 177-180

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Leonhard  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 4 (reprinted 2010).
  2. ↑ Jonny Granzow: The breakout of the Spanish fighters from the secret prison: A historical report . edition bodoni, 2012, ISBN 978-3-940781-27-7 , p. 221 ff.
  3. ^ Rudolf-Leonhard-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Leonhard, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lombat, Raoul (nom de guerre); Lehardon, Roger; Lewandowski, Robert; Lanzer, Robert (artist and alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and communist
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Lissa
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1953
Place of death East Berlin