Werner Ilberg

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Werner Ilberg (born July 20, 1896 in Wolfenbüttel ; died December 30, 1978 in East Berlin ) was a German writer.

Life

Ilberg was the son of Jewish parents. He attended high school and did an apprenticeship as a textile merchant , then fought in World War I and was then a partner in his father's textile business, which went bankrupt due to the inflation . In 1925 he joined the SPD , but was soon expelled from the party as a communist. From 1932 he worked as a critic for the communist press in Berlin and became a member of the League of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers . After the National Socialists came to power, he worked in illegal writing groups. After being imprisoned twice, he emigrated to Czechoslovakia in 1933 and on to England in 1939, where he contributed to the anti-fascist magazines Das Wort in Moscow and Free German Culture in London . During his emigration he became a member of the KPD . In 1947 he returned to Germany and initially settled in his home town of Wolfenbüttel. In 1949 he was convicted by a British military court for distributing the novel Die Fahne der Widow Grasbach , published in 1948 in the Soviet Zone , among friends. In 1956 he moved to the GDR and lived there as a freelance writer in Berlin. From 1971 to 1974 he was Secretary General of the PEN Center in the GDR . He died in East Berlin in 1978 at the age of 82.

The flag of the widow Grasbach is considered to be his most important work . In the novel with an autobiographical background, written in 1935 but not published until 1948, he describes the KPD's struggle against the looming fascist threat and the failure of the SPD, including issues of Zionism, to which he adhered in his early years. For this novel he received the second prize in 1935 from the Swiss Book Guild , which was independently re-established in Switzerland after the Gutenberg Book Guild was brought into line in 1933.

Awards

Works

  • The flag of the widow Grasbach. Berlin (East) 1948.
  • Restless years. Stories. Berlin (East) 1948.
  • Dream and deed. Romain Rolland in his relationship with Germany and the Soviet Union. Hall 1950.
  • Romain Rolland. Essay. Berlin (GDR) 1951.
  • Our Heine. Essay. Berlin (GDR) 1952.
  • Liberation from prison. Narrative. Berlin (GDR) 1955.
  • The hard way. Life and work of Romain Rolland. Essay. Schwerin 1955.
  • Bernhard Kellermann in his works. Biography. Schwerin 1959.
  • Hans Marchwitza. Picture biography. Leipzig 1971.

literature

  • Günther Albrecht, Kurt Böttcher, Herbert Greiner-Mai , Paul-Günter Krohn: writers of the GDR. 2nd unchanged edition. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1975, sv
  • Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990. Volume 1: Abendroth - Lyr. KG Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11176-2 .
  • Helmut Blazek: Ilberg, Werner. In: Wilhelm Kühlmann (Ed.): Killy Literature Lexicon . Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area. 2., completely revised Ed. De Gruyter, Berlin 2009, vol. 6, p. 41.
  • Jonathan Ross: “Crossing Borders”. The Life and Works of Werner Ilberg (1896–1978). In: Ian Wallace (Ed.): German-speaking Exiles in Great Britain. Vol. 1. 1999, pp. 95-115.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ilberg, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grebly, Martin (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Wolfenbüttel
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1978
Place of death East Berlin