Ruth Weiss (journalist, 1924)

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Ruth Weiss in the Protestant Lindenkirche , Berlin-Wilmersdorf (October 23, 2006)

Ruth Weiss (born July 26, 1924 in Fürth ) is a German business journalist and writer.

biography

childhood

Ruth Weiss was born as Ruth Loewenthal in Fürth in 1924 . In 1927 the family went to Hamburg until 1931 , then to Rückersdorf near Nuremberg and two years later back to Fürth. In 1936 the mother and two daughters followed their father, who had already emigrated, to South Africa via Hamburg . The Loewenthal family ran a grocery store in Johannesburg .

Life after emigration

After high school , Ruth Loewenthal worked for two years as a clerk in a law firm until, from 1944, she worked in her husband's bookstore, Hans Weiss, for four years. Her husband always sent her to appointments when he didn't want to attend. The first research trip leads to Tanganyika . Your reports on the conditions in South Africa are increasingly being circulated internationally. Her marriage to Hans Weiss, who brought her off her planned law degree, later breaks up.

After another four years in an insurance office, she moved to London , worked at Elek Books and after two years went back to South Africa, now alongside her renewed job in insurance, her husband's assistant as a correspondent for German media.

In 1960 she got into the journalistic profession herself and was business editor at Newscheck in Johannesburg for two years , then she went to Financial Mail until 1965 . From 1966 to 1968 she was the head of the Financial Mail office in Salisbury in what was then Rhodesia . From there she went back to London and worked for The Guardian and Investors Chronicle . In 1971 she became business editor for the Times of Zambia and correspondent for the Financial Times . In Zambia , she befriends President Kenneth Kaunda .

From 1975 to 1978 Ruth Weiss and her son Sascha (* 1965) lived in Cologne, where she was the head of the Africa editorial team at Deutsche Welle . Four years as a freelancer followed , again in London. One of the priorities there was reporting on the Lancaster House talks and the establishment of the journalists' group Link-up . In 1980 she accompanied the independence of Zimbabwe and organized the first media seminar for the local information ministry. In 1982, shortly after a trip to Angola with representatives of the European Parliament , Ruth Weiss moved with her son to Harare to work for the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust and as a trainer for business journalists at Harare Polytechnic .

In the next few years she worked as a freelance journalist, in 1988 she founded and built up the Southern African economist in Harare ( SADCC Press Trust) and worked on various books and films, combined with lecture tours and seminars in Europe on the situation in southern Africa. In 1989 she began building a new research center for the Cold Comfort Farm Trust in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Institute for Southern Africa .

In June 1990 she visited Johannesburg for the first time since 1966. In 1992 the company moved to England on the Isle of Wight , followed by another move to Lüdinghausen in Westphalia in 2002 .

Late work

Today she primarily no longer writes non-fiction books, but novels, some of which have been included in the literary canon of schools. The book “Meine Sister Sara” was an exam reading at the secondary schools in Baden-Württemberg in the 2006/2007 school year and will be used again for the 2017/2018 exams.

Ruth Weiss became known to a wider public in early 1994 when her life was the focus of two episodes of the renowned ZDF series Witnesses of the Century . In June 2014 Ruth Weiss was presented as a contemporary witness by the weekly magazine Der Spiegel in a detailed "conversation about anti-Semitism and apartheid, homelessness and her life between work and child".

Honors

attitude

Ruth Weiss campaigned against racism and apartheid in South Africa early on . In the early 1960s she was put on a "black list" and faced direct personal persecution. She was officially declared persona non grata and could no longer enter South Africa. It was only removed from the "black list" in 1991.

She was in close contact with Nelson Mandela , whom she met in 1960, and with many other leaders of the African freedom movements. She has long been considered one of the most important African voices against racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism. She also had to leave Rhodesia at the end of the 1960s, as she was all too open about how the government managed to circumvent the UN sanctions.

Works

  • Ruth Weiss, William Minter, Hans Detlef Laß: Rhodesia's future is Zimbabwe: between colonialism and independence . ( ISSA ) Verlag Otto Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 1977 ISBN 3-87476-054-5
  • A song without music: political autobiography . Maier Verlag , Ravensburg 1983 ISBN 978-3-473-38865-3
  • The Women of Zimbabwe . Nehanda Publishers, Harare 1986 ISBN 978-0-908305-01-8
  • The seeds come up - Zimbabwe's agriculture (1987)
  • Feresia (1988)
  • People Throw Shadows (1989)
  • Paths in the hard grass. Memories of Germany, South Africa and England . Peter Hammer Verlag , Wuppertal 1994; 2nd edition 1995, ISBN 3872946226 . (Autobiography)
  • The Trip to Gaborone (1997)
  • Sascha and the nine old men (children's book; 1997)
  • Land Divided (1997)
  • Night of Treason (2000)
  • My Sister Sara (2002)
  • Bloodstones (2003)
  • The Jewish Way (2004)
  • The Emergency Baptism (2006)
  • Mitzi's Wedding (2007)
  • I wasn't invited - thoughts during a journey (2008)
  • Miss Moore's Birthday (novel; 2008)
  • Memory's diary. A story from Zimbabwe . Roman, trafo, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-896267-75-7 .
  • The Jewish crusader . Roman, Thiele , Mainz 2014, ISBN 978-3-95518-019-5 .
  • A path through hard grass. A Journalist's Memories of Exile and Apartheid . Basler Africa Bibliographien, Basel 2014. 276 pp. ISBN 978-3-905758-39-9 . (Autobiography; expanded edition compared to the autobiography published in 1994), with a foreword by Nadine Gordimer
  • Zimbabwe's dictator: the pearl that lost its shine . Verlag Edition AV, Lich 2016 ISBN 978-3-86841-175-1 .
  • Paths in the hard grass. Memories of Germany, South Africa and England. With an afterword by Nadine Gordimer . Verlag Edition AV, Lich 2016, ISBN 978-3-86841-162-1 .

Quotes

“Afterwards, Ruth Weiss grew up in a country where the brand of the victim was not the yellow star, but the black color of the skin. As a white woman, she could have been content to enjoy those full civil rights in South Africa that blacks were denied. Even if the immigrant family lived in poverty, they involuntarily had a right to better education reserved exclusively for whites. As a white woman, she would have been able to accept the privileges that were automatically due to her for the rest of her life and were also denied to black people: special means of transport, separate libraries, theaters, hotels or the freedom to choose where she lived, her job and where she wanted to work . But in the soft voice of this credible and impressive autobiography we encounter a girl, a woman, who just assumed responsibility for the conditions in her country of immigration as if she had been born into these conditions. In a way that very few whites have done. "

- Nadine Gordimer : 1994

"An exemplary biography of the 20th century: Ruth Weiss is born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1924. In 1936, she arrives in South Africa with her family and experiences the development of apartheid. She defies the system with her typewriter, quietly but with determination, in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Europe. She does research, reports, forms friendships, participates in projects to overcome racism. Her strongest quality: she listens. Listening is the basis for understanding, understanding paves the way to reconciliation - a model for peace that can be applied globally. "

- From the reasons for the nomination of Ruth Weiss for the Nobel Peace Prize : 2005

“Maybe it's just that some people need something they can hate profoundly. And maybe a book like "My Sister Sara", which tells the story of an individual human fate, can help to remove the ground a little from this hatred. "

- Dietmar Schönherr : 2007

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tobias Prüwer: "Judaism means warmth" Writer, anti-apartheid fighter, devout Jew: Ruth Weiss turns 90 . Article of July 24, 2014 in Jüdische Allgemeine, online at www.juedische-allgemeine.de
  2. ^ A b Claus Stäcker: Ruth Weiss - a German-African witness of the century . on www.dw.com
  3. ^ National Library of Australia : bibliographic evidence
  4. ↑ Gustav-Mesmer-Realschule, Münsingen : To prepare for the final exam 2018: My sister Sara . www.gustav-mesmer-realschule.de
  5. ↑ "... and there was Mandela" . Spiegel talk with journalist Ruth Weiss by Klaus Brinkbäumer and Katja Thimm. In: Der Spiegel , No. 27 of June 30, 2014, pp. 40–43.
  6. ↑ Iris Nölle-Hornkamp et al .: Ruth Weiss (née Loewenthal). From the reason for Ruth Weiss' nomination for the project »1000 women for the Nobel Prize« 2005 . on www.juedischeliteraturwestfalen.de
  7. ↑ Ruth Weiss and the life in between. Feature, WDR 5, January 28, 2012.
  8. ^ Cape Jewish Chronicle: Ruth Weiss exhibition at SA Jewish Museum . Article of October 1, 2014 in Cape Jewish Chronicle at www.cjc.org.za (English)
  9. ↑ Anonymus: A busy month at the SA Jewish Museum ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Cape Jewish Chronicle, Vol. 31, No. 8 of September 2014 ( Rosh Hashanah), online at www.cjc.org.za (English), PDF document p. 36 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cjc.org.za
  10. ↑ Werner Storksberger: Honor for Ruth Weiss: "We need people like you" . Article of December 12, 2014 in Westfälische Nachrichten , online at www.wn.de
  11. ↑ DNB: bibliographical evidence
  12. ↑ DNB: biographical evidence
  13. ↑ DNB: biographical evidence
  14. ↑ DNB: biographical evidence
  15. ↑ DNB: biographical evidence
  16. ↑ DNB: biographical evidence
personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Ruth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Fuerth