Thomas Harlan

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Thomas Harlan, 2007

Thomas Christoph Harlan (born February 19, 1929 in Berlin , † October 16, 2010 in Schönau am Koenigssee ) was a German author and director in French and German.

life and work

Harlan was the son of the director Veit Harlan and the actress Hilde Körber . He spent his childhood in Berlin. Since his father enjoyed a high reputation with the National Socialist regime , he got to know Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels through his parents . At the age of eight he was taken to visit Adolf Hitler . In 1941 he became a leader in the Navy Hitler Youth . In 1942 he was evacuated to Zakopane / Poland, then to the Bonin family estate in the Schlawe district . In 1945 he returned to Berlin.

In 1947 Harlan began studying philosophy in Tübingen and met Michel Tournier .

When he received a three-month scholarship for the Sorbonne in 1948 - Harlan was the first German student at the time who was allowed to study in Paris after the war without having been in the Maquis - he emigrated to France and continued to study philosophy and mathematics in Paris away. He began working for French radio, lived with Gilles Deleuze at Michel Tournier's, later with Pierre Boulez, and met Armand Gatti and Marc Sabathier-Levêque, life's great friend . Together with Klaus Kinski he went on a trip to Israel in 1952 . The following year, Harlan published his first play Bluma and toured the Soviet Union . The first poems in German followed in 1955. Harlan co-wrote the screenplay of Der Fall Sorge (later: Verrat an Deutschland , director: Veit Harlan). The collaboration with his father failed, his work on the script was distorted. Together with Klaus Kinski and Jörg Henle , Harlan founded the Junge Ensemble in Berlin in 1958 . The world premiere of his play I Myself and No Angel - Chronicle from the Warsaw Ghetto turned into a scandal, which the author Hans Habe later dealt with in his novel Christoph und seine Vater .

1959 Harlan received the first of a series of defamation suits , including by the then FDP - Bundestag member Ernst Achenbach and Franz Alfred Six . Harlan had started research on the extermination camps Kulmhof , Sobibór , Bełżec and Treblinka in Poland , where he had lived since 1960 . By 1964, Harlan contributed to the initiation of over 2000 criminal proceedings against war criminals in the Federal Republic of Germany through his work in the Polish archives, from which he unearthed thousands of documents on German war crimes . Since 1960 he has been supported by the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli . A friendship developed with the Hessian attorney general Fritz Bauer . At the same time, Harlan worked on broadcasts in German for Warsaw Radio. Due to the publication of his archival research, he was placed under house arrest for one year in Poland in 1963 for betrayal of secrets . In 1964 , Hans Globke also filed charges against him in the Federal Republic of Germany for treason based on the use of interrogation protocols of the German judiciary in Polish publications. He was not convicted, but did not receive a German passport for 10 years and could not legally stay in the Federal Republic during this time.

Harlan had a love affair with Krystyna Żywulska in Warsaw , which Andrzej Szczypiorski commented thirty years later : It is difficult to imagine a more foolish love than that which an aging Jew has for a crazy young German . Harlan suddenly broke off his work in Warsaw in 1964. A book planned with Feltrinelli about the German war criminals never came about. He became "a rare species of human being: an international German revolutionary". The death of his father brought Harlan to Italy. He joined the left-wing group Lotta Continua and began literary work, which, in addition to his travels and filmmaking, shaped the following years. In 1974 Harlan traveled to Chile , Bolivia and the USA . He was involved in the Chilean resistance movement against the dictator Pinochet . During the " Carnation Revolution " in Portugal in 1975 , Harlan began filming Torre Bela as a member of the Revolutionary Committee (premiered in 1977 at the Cannes International Film Festival ). From 1978 to 1984 he worked on the film Wundkanal . The American director Robert Kramer documented the shooting with the film Notre Nazi . The premieres of Wundkanal and Notre Nazi at the Venice International Film Festival in 1984 and the screening at the 1985 Berlinale led to violent reactions and another scandal.

In 1987 he traveled through the Russian Far East to prepare for the film project Katharina XXIII, which was not realized . In addition to the new translation of the book Job by Guido Ceronetti into German, Harlan began in Haiti in 1988 with Creole language studies and work on the film Souverance , which premiered at the 1990 Rotterdam International Film Festival . Further trips to Russia followed. Harlan wrote the screenplay for the also unrealized film Cinematograf . His first novel Rosa was published in 2000 .

Since 2001 Harlan has lived in the Berchtesgadener Land clinic in Schönau am Königssee . Since that time he was married to the documentary filmmaker Katrin Seybold . In 2003 the collaboration with Christoph Hübner began on the film project Wandersplitter , which lasted until 2006. In the same year Harlan also published his novel Heroes' Cemetery . The short story volume Die Stadt Ys followed in 2007 . Thomas Harlan died on October 16, 2010 in Schönau am Königssee. He was the brother of the actress Maria Körber . See also: Harlan (family) .

Works

Thomas Harlan wrote poems, plays and scripts, among others for Wolfgang Staudte . He has made several award-winning, partly highly controversial films (including Torre Bela in light of the Carnation Revolution and wound channel in which he the of joint murder of at least 6,800 people to lifelong prison convicted SS - Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Filbert interviewed and was filmed there).

theatre

  • 1953: Bluma
  • 1958: I myself and no angel - Chronicle from the Warsaw Ghetto (under the title I myself and no angel - Dramatic Chronicle from the Warsaw Ghetto. , Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1961)
  • 1964: Lux. Description of a play

Movies

  • 1955: betrayal of Germany
  • 1975: Torre Bela
  • 1984: wound canal. Execution for four votes. ( Wundkanal. DVD. Edition Filmmuseum , 2009)
  • 1991: souvenance
  • 2007: Am Ararat (published on the DVD "Wandersplitter")
  • 2007: The organizational charts (published on the DVD "Wandersplitter")

Fiction

Radio plays

  • 2001: Rosa - the Rosa Peham files , radio play of the month April 2001. With Manfred Zapatka , Heiko Raulin, Bernd Moss, Axel Milberg , Sophie von Kessel, Karin Anselm . Editing: Michael Farin , composition: Helga Pogatschar , director: Bernhard Jugel. BR radio play and media art / WDR 2001. CD: Strunz Enterprises, Erding and Indigo Vertrieb, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-934847-13-7 . As a podcast / download in the BR radio play pool.
  • 2001: Rosa - the journey to Kulmhof , two-part radio play with Sabine Kastius, Katja Amberger , Christiane Roßbach, Kornelia Boje , Stephan Rabow, Günther Maria Halmer . Composition: Helga Pogatschar , arrangement: Michael Farin , director: Bernhard Jugel. BR radio play and media art 2001. As a podcast / download in the BR radio play pool.
  • 2006: Heroes' Cemetery. The novel by Enrico Cosulich (BR Radio Play and Media Art 2006), adaptation: Michael Farin. Director: Ulrich Lampen
  • 2006: Heroes' Cemetery. I am no longer in me - the life of Enrico Cosulich (BR radio play and media art 2006), arrangement: Michael Farin. Director: Ulrich Lampen
  • 2011: Veit , with Thomas Thieme . Director: Bernhard Jugel, BR Radio Play and Media Art 2011. ( Radio Play of the Month March 2011). As a podcast / download in the BR radio play pool.

Autobiographical

  • (with Jean-Pierre Stephan) The face of your enemy. A German life. Eichborn, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-8218-0763-6 .
  • Sieglinde Geisel: "Only what you can sing is audible". Conversation with Thomas Harlan . In: Sinn und Form 1/2012, pp. 61–71.

Literature and films about Thomas Harlan

  • Hans Habe . Christoph and his father . Desch, Munich 1966. (Novel in which Thomas Harlan provides the template for the main character Christoph Wendelin)
  • Jesko Jockenhövel / Michael Wedel: "Something like the truth". Additions to Thomas Harlan . Munich: edition text + kritik 2017.
  • Notre Nazi , documentary 1984, directed by Robert Kramer (about the work on Wundkanal .)
  • Liane Dirks : And love? I ask her. The unwritten story of Krystyna Żywulska . Roman, Amman Verlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-250-10338-1 . (The novel is based on memories of Krystyna Żywulska. Thomas Harlan is the model for the figure of Andreas Herking )
  • Thomas Harlan. Wandering splinter. An "anti-biography". Film by Christoph Hübner and Gabriele Voss (2006/2007)
  • Harlan - In the shadow of Jud Suss . 2010. Documentary by Felix Möller about Veit Harlan and the relationship between his relatives and descendants, including Thomas Harlan.
  • Sieglinde Geisel: Universe of Centrifugal Forces. On the literary work of Thomas Harlan. In: Sinn und Form 1/2012, pp. 53–60
  • Jean-Pierre Stephan: On the creation of Thomas Harlan's “Veit” . In: Sinn und Form 1/2012, pp. 72–75

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to the discharge certificate, Thomas Harlan was born as Thomas Barth. Hitler was my dowry , p. 11.
  2. ↑ According to his own statement, he has not used German since the 1950s, for political reasons. In: Dschungel, supplement to Jungle World from February 18, 2010, pp. 9–13, here p. 9 [1]
  3. ↑ Helmut Böttiger : Veitstanz , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 5, 2011
  4. ↑ Dance of Death in Scheffelstrasse DER SPIEGEL 15/1949
  5. ↑ Biographical information on Thomas Harlan at realfictionfilme.de
  6. ^ Andrzej Szczypiorski: Love and Memory . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1999 ( online ).
  7. ↑ The fight continues , Die Weltwoche, No. 43/2006
  8. ↑ Obituary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung from 23./24. September 2010
  9. ↑ On the death of Thomas Harlan - What nobody wanted to know . Süddeutsche Zeitung on October 18, 2010.
  10. ^ BR radio play Pool - Harlan, Rosa - the Rosa Peham files
  11. ^ BR radio play Pool - Harlan, Rosa - the journey to Kulmhof
  12. ^ BR radio play Pool - Harlan, Veit
  13. ↑ Harlan. Happiness of the profession . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1966, pp. 154-157 ( online ).
  14. ↑ Nazi pupil against his will. Doe World, September 16, 2000
  15. ↑ Thomas Harlan: Wandersplitter on YouTube
personal data
SURNAME Harlan, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harlan, Thomas Christian (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and director
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 2010
Place of death Berchtesgaden