Walter Kaufmann (writer)

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Walter Kaufmann (originally Jizchak Schmeidler ; born January 19, 1924 in Berlin ; † April 15, 2021 there ) was a German-Australian writer .

life and work

Walter Kaufmann was the son of a Jewish saleswoman. In 1926, he was of the Duisburg Jewish lawyer Sally Kaufmann and his wife Johanna adopted , but what he learned only after his return to Germany. He grew up in Duisburg , where he attended the Steinbart high school. His adoptive parents were arrested after the November pogroms in 1938, were taken to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp . In 1939 Kaufmann managed to escape from the German Reich via the Netherlands to Great Britain with a Kindertransport . There he was interned as an " enemy alien "and in 1940 with HMT Dunera to Australia, where he initially worked as a farm worker and fruit picker and served for four years as a war volunteer in the Australian Army . After 1945 he worked as a street photographer, in a shipyard, in the slaughterhouse and as a seaman in the merchant navy . He came into contact with the " Melbourne Realist Writers Group " and began to write his first novel in 1949, which he finished in 1951 and which was published in 1953 in Melbourne. In 1955 he took part in the World Youth Festival in Warsaw as a delegate of the Australian Seamen's Union . He then visited the GDR and the Soviet Union. In 1957 he moved from Australia to the GDR , but retained Australian citizenship. He worked again as a seaman and traveled to South America on ships of the GDR merchant navy. From the end of the 1950s, Kaufmann was a full-time writer. He was married to the actress Angela Brunner ; the actress Deborah Kaufmann is their daughter.

Walter Kaufmann, who usually wrote his works in English and had them translated into German or translated them himself, was the author of novels and stories in the tradition of the Anglo-American short story (which make up a significant part of his work) and of reports . For the material of his stories, Kaufmann drew on experiences from his eventful life in Europe and overseas. His reports mainly dealt with the countries he has traveled to, the USA, Ireland and Israel. Another facet in Kaufmann's work are autobiographical books about his fate as a Jewish emigrant .

Walter Kaufmann was a member of the German Writers' Association from 1955 and of the PEN Center of the GDR from 1975 , of which he was Secretary General from 1985 to 1993; afterwards he was a member of the PEN Center Germany . He received the Australian Mary Gilmore Award in 1959 , the Theodor Fontane Prize of the Potsdam district in 1961 and 1964 , the Heinrich Mann Prize in 1967 and the Ruhr Area Literature Prize in 1993 .

Kaufmann has also acted in several DEFA films, some under the pseudonym John Mercator .

In 2007, Kaufmann and around 50 other anti-fascists founded the Brandenburg State Association of the VVN-BDA in Potsdam .

Right up to his old age, he made contributions to conversations and texts in the left-wing newspaper Junge Welt and elsewhere. He died in Berlin in April 2021 at the age of 97.

Audio

Works in English

  • Voices in the storm. Australian Book Society, Melbourne 1953.
  • The curse of Maralinga and other stories. Seven Seas Publishers, Berlin 1959.
  • American encounter. Seven Seas Publishers, Berlin 1966.
  • Beyond the green world of childhood. Seven Seas Publishers, Berlin 1972.

Works in German

  • Where the person belongs. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1957.
  • The curse of Maralinga. Translated from English by Johannes Schellenberger. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1958.
  • Call of the Islands. Translated from English by Hannelore Sanguinette and Elga Abramowitz. Volk und Welt publishing house, Berlin 1960.
  • Fire on the Suva beach. Translated from English by Hannelore Sanguinette, Bernd Hanisch and Elga Abramowitz. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1961.
  • Ways of the cross. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1961.
  • The creation of Richard Hamilton. VEB Hinstorff, Rostock 1964.
  • Meeting America Today. Translated from English by Helga Zimnik. VEB Hinstorff, Rostock 1965.
  • Under the Australian sun. German military publisher, Berlin 1965.
  • Hope under glass. Translated from English by Helga Zimnik. Hinstorff VEB, Rostock 1966.
  • Stefan. Translated from English by Helga Zimnik. Holz, Berlin 1966.
  • Under the changing moon. Translated from English by Helga Zimnik. Hinstorff, Rostock 1968.
  • Rumor of the end of the world. Translated from English by Wilhelm Vietinghoff. Hinstorff, Rostock 1969.
  • On the way to Angela. Translated from English by Olga Fetter and Erich Fetter. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1973.
  • The disappeared hotel. Translated from English by Olga Fetter and Erich Fetter. Young World Publishing House, Berlin 1973.
  • On the quay of hope. Translated from English by Elga Abramowitz et al. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1974.
  • Kidnapping in Manhattan. Translated from English by Olga Fetter and Erich Fetter. Children's book publisher, Berlin 1975.
  • Patrick. Young World Publishing House, Berlin 1977.
  • Voices in the storm. Translated from English. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1977.
  • We laugh because we cry. FA Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1977.
  • Irish trip. Children's book publisher, Berlin 1979.
  • Three trips to the promised land. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1980.
  • Buy me a crocodile. Edition Holz, Berlin 1982.
  • Escape. Halle / Leipzig, Mitteldeutscher Verlag 1984.
  • Beyond childhood. Translated from English by Helga Zimnik. Children's book publisher, Berlin 1985.
  • Manhattan Symphony. Translated from English by Helga Zimnik and Wilhelm Vietinghoff. Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-327-00371-8 .
  • Death in Fremantle. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Leipzig 1987, ISBN 3-354-00154-2 .
  • Touch the time. Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-928024-73-6 .
  • Each has its time. Re-encounters on three continents. Edition q, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-86124-215-X .
  • In Mecklenburg Castle and elsewhere. Dietz, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-320-01942-2 .
  • About a love in Germany. Dietz, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-320-01960-0 .
  • Lived life. Dietz, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-320-01992-9 .
  • America. Publishing company. BS, Rostock 2003, ISBN 3-89954-044-1 .
  • The world of Markus Epstein. ddp goldenbogen, Dresden 2004, ISBN 3-932434-22-6 .
  • In the flow of time. Dittrich Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-937717-45-6 .
  • Kidnapping in Manhattan - The Vanished Hotel (illustrated by Angela Brunner ). Edition digital, Pinnow 2013, ISBN 978-3-86394-568-8 .
  • It's a shame you're a Jew. (Autobiography) Prospero Verlag, Münster, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-941688-47-6 .
  • My longing is still on the way. A life of traveling. New Life, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-355-01847-0 .
  • That crossed my paths. Encounters from nine decades. Quintus-Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-947215-24-9 .
  • Are you still - Enrico Spoon? About people and places around the world. Edition Memoria, Hürth 2019, ISBN 978-3-930353-38-5 .

literature

Filmography

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Writer Walter Kaufmann died at the age of 97 , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed on April 16, 2021.
  2. ↑ Ludger Heid : Walter Kaufmann turns 90. In: WAZ. January 17, 2014, accessed November 29, 2017 .
  3. ↑ The adventurer Walter Kaufmann review of his autobiography in Ossietzky 3/2014
  4. ↑ Deborah Katz: Shipped To Australia: A Forgotten World War II Saga , jewishpress.com, September 5, 2018, accessed April 16, 2021.
  5. ↑ See for example: What cannot be taught, in: Junge Welt, May 15, 2019.
  6. ↑ Home :: Walter Kaufmann - the film. Retrieved April 9, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Kaufmann, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmeidler, Jizchak; Mercator, John (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Australian writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Berlin