Sabine Brandt

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Sabine Brandt in the 1980s

Sabine Brandt (actually Sabine Rühle ; born April 18, 1927 in Berlin ; † November 10, 2018 in Cologne ) was a German writer , journalist and critic . Sabine Brandt became known through her novel Once Berlin, Easy (1991) and the biography of the writer Erich Loest Vom Schwarzmarkt nach St. Nikolai (1998). Brandt has published numerous newspaper articles and literary reviews. Above all, she was regarded as a special connoisseur of literature in the GDR .

Life

Sabine Brandt grew up in Berlin-Lichterfelde , Hindenburgdamm , in house 128, in which her novel is also set. Her father was the physicist Erich Brandt. In Lichterfelde she attended the Goethe -Oberschule from 1937 to 1945 (from 1938 to 1945: " Karin-Göring -Oberschule"), where she passed her Abitur in 1946 (now Goethe-Gymnasium ). After the Second World War , she began studying German, philosophy and English at what is now the Humboldt University in East Berlin. During this time, the first articles on various cultural and political topics were published, especially in the Berliner Zeitung and on Sonntag .

After completing her studies, Brandt worked as a journalist for the Berliner Zeitung in East Berlin in the 1950s , but still lived in the western part of the city ( Lichterfelde and later Moabit ). In September 1950 she married Jürgen Rühle , and in August 1951 their son Dietrich was born. From mid-1954 onwards, the couple came to the realization that it was becoming less and less possible to express one's own opinions in writing from day to day. From March 1955 they avoided the eastern sector of Berlin for security reasons. But even West Berlin was not a safe place for opponents of the East German regime. The East German Ministry for State Security constantly shadowed the family (up to and including the son's attendance at kindergarten) and fates like that of Walter Linse , who was kidnapped from the West and later executed in Moscow, were in view. Finally, the Rühle family moved to Cologne by air in early 1958 .

In Cologne she was about 1959-1964 with her husband Jürgen Rühle member of the Congress for Cultural Freedom ( Congress for Cultural Freedom , CCF), temporarily managing director of the Cologne section. The Congress for Cultural Freedom campaigned in Germany for the freedom of political prisoners, especially those in the GDR , e.g. B. Günter Zehm , Heinz Brandt and Siegfried Ihle. Here she worked closely with Heinrich Böll , Manès Sperber , Marcel Reich-Ranicki , Wolfgang Leonhard , Friedrich Torberg , François Bondy , Gerd Ruge , Carola Stern and many others. The Rühle couple were among the participants in the founding meeting of the German section of Amnesty International . The German section of Amnesty International was founded in Cologne at the end of July 28, 1961 and was the first section to be entered in the register of associations on September 25, 1961 under the name "Amnesty Appell" (rewritten to the new name Amnesty International at the end of September 1962) .

Sabine Brandt wrote countless newspaper articles and literary reviews, including book reviews for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for around half a century . From 1973 to 1988 she worked as an editor in the “Eastern Europe” department and later in the “Politics and Economy” department at the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle in Cologne.

Her novel once Berlin, simply published in 1991, is of particular importance , in which she describes the path of a girl born out of wedlock who, before the First World War , came to Berlin on adventurous routes from the far east of what was then the German Reich to become a nurse , married a doctorate there and later lost her son in World War II. The basis of this novel is the life story of her mother Else Brandt, albeit artistically alienated (for example, the author herself does not appear in the story, and while her brother Dietrich actually fell on the Eastern Front, the heroine's son returns in the novel just not going back). The peculiarity of the novel is the detailed reproduction of the time with its bourgeois, anti-Semitic and other currents, which means that the book also has documentary value.

After the divorce from Jürgen Rühle in December 1975, she kept the name Rühle, but continued to publish under her maiden name Sabine Brandt, under which she had also published during the marriage. From 1981 until his death in 1998 she lived in Cologne with Theodor Arnold, editor of Deutsche Welle. She lived and worked there until her death in November 2018 at the age of 91.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Jürgen Rühle: The writers and communism in Germany . Special edition for the Ministry for All-German Issues, 1960, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Berlin / Cologne.
  • with Jürgen Rühle: Literature and Society in the GDR. Central German lectures. 1969, Kammerwegverlag.
  • Once in Berlin, simply . Novel. Luebbe Verlagsgruppe, Bergisch Gladbach 1991, ISBN 3-7857-0487-9 (1993: 3-404-11982-7; 1996: 9783785704875).
  • From the black market to St. Nikolai - Erich Loest and his novels . Linden Verlag, 1998, ISBN 978-3-86152-000-9 .

literature

  • Lutz Hagestedt (Ed.): German Literature Lexicon. The 20th Century , Volume 3. ISBN 978-3-11-023161-8 , p. 597.
  • Frank Möller: The book Witsch. The dizzying life of the publisher Joseph Caspar Witsch. A biography . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-462-04130-9 .
  • Stefan Creuzberger , Dierk Hoffmann: Intellectual danger and immunization of society. Anti-Communism and Political Culture in the Early Federal Republic . Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-74708-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hubert Spiegel: Once Berlin, on the death of the committed journalist Sabine Brandt , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 13, 2018, page 11
  2. ^ Sabine Brandt: From the black market to St. Nikolai , a review by Jan Eik.
  3. ^ Report on the school year ... - 1938/1939. Library for Research on Educational History, accessed October 21, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Harald Hensel (ed.): Lichterfelde-West after 1945: people - experiences - memories . Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2014, ISBN 978-3-7357-5737-1 ( books.google.de ).
  5. ↑ In the 1950s, the East German Ministry of State Security kidnapped around 600 to 700 people from the West to the GDR in the course of various arrests against "enemy agents".
  6. ↑ Files of the Ministry for State Security, GDR, copy of the BStU, archive no. 4220/71, volume no. 6; the GDR then saw the absence of the Rühle couple as "RF" (= escape from the republic).
  7. ↑ Frank Möller: The book Witsch . Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-462-04130-9 , p. 460.
  8. ↑ Gerd Laudert: The red doctor . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86331-494-1 , p. 141 ff .
  9. ↑ Carola Stern : Double Life . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, ISBN 978-3-462-02981-9 , p. 167 f.
  10. ↑ Gerd Laudert: The red doctor . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86331-494-1 , p. 143 ff .
personal data
SURNAME Brandt, Sabine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rühle, Sabine (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, journalist and critic
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 2018
Place of death Cologne