Siegfried Heinrichs

Siegfried Heinrichs (born October 4, 1941 in Alleringersleben near Marienborn , † April 8, 2012 in Berlin ) was a German writer and publisher .

biography

Siegfried Heinrichs is one of the few writers who repeatedly addressed the German-German border. Characteristic for this were initially the childhood in the border area of ​​the inner-German border and then a stay of several years in prison "because of the dissemination and production of writings that are dangerous to the state against the wall, barbed wire and the ban on mouths for dissenters."

Heinrichs began to write in 1963. He sent the texts to his brother, who was a member of the SED and denounced him. As a result, Heinrichs was arrested in February 1964 on the way to work as an employee of a financial institution in Karl-Marx-Stadt. 254 days later, a public prosecutor threatened him with ten years imprisonment for high treason, agitation, and endangering the state. When Heinrichs refused to testify about acquaintances, the public prosecutor W. brought the possibility of the death penalty into play. Heinrichs spent a total of seven and a half months in custody under the Stasi. In the end he was sentenced to three years imprisonment, which he had to spend in Waldheim prison. There he made friends with the painter Sieghard Pohl , also as a "political" man behind bars. Heinrichs was imprisoned for a total of 1096 days and nights.

In 1974 Heinrichs left the GDR and became one of the first expatriate writers and artists in Berlin (West) . He was in contact with Roger Loewig , Sieghard Pohl , Siegmar Faust , Wolf Biermann , Jürgen Fuchs , Utz Rachowski , Axel Reitel and Sarah Kirsch , to whom he dedicated a poem. This begins with the statement: "Sarah, what use is it to write to the king / in the land of forbidden books" and poetically illustrates the demands of the communist dictatorship: "... because even the surf of the sea on the coast is / is guarded, even the The breezes of spring, summer, autumn / winter are cleaned of the smell of other countries before entering the interior of the country, even the flight of birds / is tamed so that you can tell your customer about the tiny size of this / terrible land in the middle of the world / and its cruel size / do not spread, among other things, animals, let alone / humans. "

In 1978 his first volume of poetry was published, My Painful Land . That was the beginning of an extensive work. The foreword by Jürgen Fuchs emphasizes the examples of these texts, which testify to human rights violations in the SED state. In 1979 Heinrichs supported the writer Karl-Heinz Jakobs, who had been reprimanded in the GDR, in a public letter .

In 1985 Heinrichs took over Oberbaumverlag. It remained a one-man company, which he financed through his work as a material warehouse foreman in a Kreuzberg company for sanitary facilities. Sieghard Pohl , Rüdiger Rosenthal & Cornelia Schleime , Utz Rachowski , Kalle Winkler , Wolf Deinert , Jürgen Fuchs and Axel Reitel have published at Oberbaum .

Heinrichs sharpened the profile of the publisher and soon included dissidents from Eastern Europe in the program: Yevgeny Samjatin , Anna Akhmatova , Ossip Mandelstam , Nikolai Gumiljow , Boris Pasternak , Marina Tsvetaeva , Joseph Brodsky , Warlam Schalamow , Miklós Radnóti and Sinaida Hippius . Ali Ahmad Said, who was exiled from Syria and writes under the pseudonym Adonis , also published his German translations with Heinrichs. Books by Ousmane Sembène from Senegal and volumes of poetry by Rajzel Zychlinski are also part of the publishing program.

In 2000 Heinrichs published the diaries and memoirs of Sándor Márai posthumously . As early as 1996 he published his autobiographical novel Confessions of a Citizen . Three years later, Márai's rediscovery was enthusiastically celebrated in the feature pages. For financial reasons Heinrichs had just assigned the rights to Piper-Verlag at the time . The Tagesspiegel reported in detail about the "lively" publisher. Then the media went silent again about him. Siegfried Heinrichs died in 2012 after a long and serious illness.

Works (selection)

• My painful country. Poems. Oberbaum, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-87628-143-1 , ISBN 978-3-87628-143-8
• The eviction or sketches from a socialist prison. Stories. European ideas publishing house, Berlin 1980.
• Seeking the kingdom of love. Poems. Verlag Europäische ideen, Berlin 1980. ISBN 3-921572-52-5 , ISBN 978-3-921572-52-8 .
• The earth needs tenderness. Poems. European ideas publishing house, Berlin 1980.
• The executioners of light. Poems. European ideas publishing house, Berlin 1981.
• Court Geismar elegies. Poems. Verlag Europäische ideen, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-921572-62-2 , ISBN 978-3-921572-62-7 .
• The creation. Poems. Verlag Europäische ideen, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-921572-72-X , ISBN 978-3-921572-72-6 .
• Arrival in a cold country. European ideas publishing house, Berlin 1982.
• Cash register. Stories, with drawings by Sieghard Pohl. Verlag Europäische ideen, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-921572-82-7 , ISBN 978-3-921572-82-5 ,
• Mary or see the birds. Poems. Verlag Europäische ideen, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-921572-92-4 , ISBN 978-3-921572-92-4 .
• Women. Prose. Verlag Europäische ideen, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-921572-87-8 , ISBN 978-3-921572-87-0 .
• Life with the daughter. Poems. Oberbaum Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-926409-01-0 , ISBN 978-3-926409-01-0 .
• Time without memory. Poems and diaries. Oberbaum Verlag, Berlin 2001.
• Late summer day. Poems. Oberbaum Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-933314-55-0 , ISBN 3-933314-55-0 .
• My grandfather's village. Stories, poems. Oberbaum Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 3-938989-05-X , ISBN 978-3-938989-05-0 .

Awards

• 1983: Sponsorship award for the Andreas Gryphius Prize

literature

criticism

• Sigrid Löffler is angry - and is wrong. The dispute over the correct handling of the diaries of the posthumously rediscovered Hungarian writer Sándor Márai . In: Der Spiegel 34/2001, p. 197.
• Marc Neller : Confessions of a Small Publisher. Siegfried Heinrichs recognized the literary importance of Sándor Márais early on - but his flair did not bring him much. In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 30, 2004. online

Literary studies

• Günter Navky: Aspects of National Socialism in volumes of poetry from 1980. Röhrig Universitätsverlag, Saarbrücken 2005, ISBN 3-86110-373-7 , p. 242f.
• René Granzow: To go or stay? Literature and writers of the GDR between East and West. Frank & Timme Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-86596-159-2 , ISBN 978-3-86596-159-4 , pp. 65ff.

portrait

• Gregor Eisenhauer : Siegfried Heinrichs Born in 1941. In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 15, 2012. online

report

• Axel Reitel: Who was Siegfried Heinrichs? Portrait of the East-West German poet and Berlin publisher. RBB kulturradio , October 3, 2012. online

obituary

• Gerold Hildebrand , Utz Rachowski : Siegfried Heinrichs (October 4, 1941– April 8, 2012) A life for literature that was suppressed under communist rule. on-line

Literary figure

• Utz Rachowski: The twelve chairs of Siegfried Heinrich. In: Don't talk to me about Minnigerode. Stories and essays. Thelem Universitätsverlag, Dresden 2006, ISBN 3-937672-46-X , pp. 137–153

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.horch-und-guck.info/hug/archiv/2012-2013/heft-76/heinrichs/
2. ↑ http://www.horch-und-guck.info/hug/archiv/2012-2013/heft-76/heinrichs//ebenda  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective . Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Critic: Sigrid Löffler is angry - and wrong . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 2001 ( online - 22 October 2001 ).