Wassil Bykau

Cyrillic ( Belarusian )
	Васіль Уладзімaравіч Быкаў
Łacinka :	Vasil Uładzimiravič Bykaŭ
Transl. :	Vasil 'Uladzimiravič Bykaŭ
Transcr. :	Wassil Uladsimirawitsch Bykau
Cyrillic ( Russian )
	Василь Владимирович Быков
Transl .:	Vasil 'Vladimirovič Bykov
Transcr .:	Wassil Wladimirowitsch Bykov

Wassil Uladsimirawitsch Bykau (born June 19, 1924 in Bychki, Vitebskaya Woblasz , Belarusian SSR ; † June 22, 2003 in Minsk ) was a Belarusian writer.

Youth and Military Service

Wassil Bykau in Romania in 1944

Wassil Bykau was born in 1924 in the Belarusian village of Bychki into a poor farming family. He attended the Vitebsk Art School, Sculpture Department and the Infantry School in Saratov . In 1941 he went to the front as a volunteer and joined the Red Army . He fought as an artillery officer in Ukraine , Bulgaria , Yugoslavia and Hungary . He experienced the end of the war in Austria . He was wounded twice.

In Hrodna he worked as a journalist for a short time and then served as an army officer in the Far East, Sakhalin and the Kuriles .

Writing activity

From 1955 he lived solely from his writing activity. His early stories deal with the events of the war, their protagonists are soldiers and officers of the Red Army . Bykau became known with his 1962 story The Third Light Ball ("Трэцяя ракета"). In the 1960s, published his became known internationally stories Alpine ballad ( "Альпійская балада") and The dead have no pain ( "Мёртвым не баліць"), in the 1970s the sling ( "Сотнікаў") The Obelisk ( " Абеліск "), go and not return (" Пайсці i не вярнуцца "). Bykau wrote in his native Belarusian language , but translated many of his works into Russian himself .

Works in German translation

• The third flare . Culture and progress, Berlin 1964
• The dead are in no pain . Propylaea, West Berlin 1967
• An alpine ballad. Story of a love . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1970
• The noose . People and World, Berlin 1972
• Novellas , 2 volumes. People and World, Berlin 1976
  • Vol. 1: The third flare , one night , the trap , Alps ballad , The bridge of Kruhljany
  • Vol. 2: The noose , the obelisk , hold out until morning! , Wolf pack
• Alarm . Damnitz, Munich 1977
• Selected short stories . Reclam, Leipzig 1978
• The Obelisk / His Battalion . People and World, Berlin 1980
• Signs of calamity . People and World, Berlin 1984
• The gravel pit . People and World, Berlin 1988
• In the fog . People and World, Berlin 1990

Film adaptations

• The third flare . Director: Richard Wiktorow, 1963
• Alpine ballad . Directed by Boris Stepanow, 1965
• The crane's cry . Director: Alexander Karpow, 1975
• Survive till morning . Director: Viktor Sokolow, 1975
• Wolf pack . Director: Boris Stepanow, 1975
• Ascent . Director: Larissa Schepitko, 1976
• The obelisk . Director: Richard Wiktorow, 1976
• Signs of calamity . Directed by Michail Ptaschuk, 1986

His story Der Nebel ("У тумане") from 1988 was filmed in 2012 by Sergei Loznitsa and was released in German cinemas in November 2012 under the title Im Nebel .

Posts and awards

Bykau was also active as a journalist and increasingly politically, although he was initially quite loyal to the line. From 1972 to 1978 he was secretary of the Hrodna Department of the Writers' Union of the Belarusian SSR . In 1974 he received the State Prize of the USSR , in 1980 he was awarded the title “National Writer of Belarus ”, and in 1986 he received the Lenin Prize for his story “ Signs of Doom ” (“Знак бяды”) .

In 1984 he was named a hero of socialist labor .

The Vasily Bykov class of the Russian naval fleet bears his name.

Political activities, emigration, illness and death

Wassil Bykau's grave in the East Cemetery in Minsk

At the end of the 1980s Bykau participated in the activities of the pro-democratic political forces of Belarus ( Belarusian Popular Front ) and was one of their founding members. Between 1989 and 1991 he campaigned vehemently for the independence of Belarus and was committed to the victims of Stalinism . In 1994 he supported their candidate Sjanon Pasnjak in the presidential election, which, however, was won by the former kolkhoz boss Aljaksandr Lukashenka .

At the end of 1997 Bykau left Belarus because of increasing repression of state power under President Lukashenka. Among other things, he was banned from publishing and negative press campaigns were carried out against him. In 1998 he settled in Helsinki at the invitation of the PEN Club before emigrating to Germany with his wife in February 2000. He initially lived in the Brandenburg Castle in Wiepersdorf . To finance the stay, the Auschwitz Committee , the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the graphic artist Klaus Staeck asked for donations. Bykau later lived in Berlin-Koepenick . As part of the City of Refuge Initiative , he stayed in Frankfurt am Main from January 2001 to summer 2002 . From the end of 2002 he lived in the Czech Republic . His health situation got worse and worse since the mid-1990s. In the Czech Republic he underwent cancer surgery on his stomach. During a stay in Belarus, where he wanted to recover from the operation, he died on June 22, 2003.

literature

• Васіль Буран: Васіль Быкаў. Нарыс творчасці. Мінск: Мастацкая литаратура 1976. ( Belarusian )
• Лазарь Ильич Лазарев: Василь Быков. Очерк творчества. Москва: Художественная литература 1979. ( Russian )
• Алесь Адамовіч: Васіль Быкаў = Василь Быков. Мінск: Беларусь 1986. ( Belarusian, Russian )
• Dagmar Kassek: On the genesis of parabolic narration in Vasil 'Bykau. Journal of Slavic Studies, 1988, vol. 33, n.4, p. 523.
• Joseph Mozur: Vasil 'Bykau: Exhuming the Belorussian Past. In: World Literature Today , 1990, vol. 64, n. 2, p. 251. ( English )
• Zina J. Gimpelevich: Vasil Bykau's Belarusan Pilgrimage. In: Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2000, vol. 42, n.3, pp. 343-363. ( english )
• Zina J. Gimpelevich: Vasil Bykau: His Life and Work. Montreal [u. a.]: McGill-Queen's University Press 2005. ISBN 0-7735-2900-4 . ( english )

Web links

Commons : Wasil Bykaǔ  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Vasilʹ Uladzimiravič Bykaŭ in the catalog of the German National Library
• 2003: Rainer Lindner: Obituary in the German-Belarusian Society

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Dirk Holtbrügge : Belarus. 2nd ed., Munich, Beck, 2002. pp. 117f.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Dirk Holtbrügge : Belarus. 2nd ed., Munich, Beck, 2002. p. 119.
3. ^ Bykau in Berlin in Neues Deutschland from February 4, 2000
4. ↑ The beautiful myths of war in Die Tageszeitung from January 6, 2001
5. ↑ The guest authors 1998-2017 in Litprom