Wilhelm Girnus

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Wilhelm Girnus (left) with Werner Hartke (center) and Robert Havemann at a student congress against nuclear armament in 1959

Wilhelm Karl Albert Girnus (born January 27, 1906 in Allenstein , East Prussia , † July 10, 1985 in Berlin ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism , literary scholar , publicist and politician ( SED ). He was State Secretary for higher education and technical schools in the GDR .

Life

Girnus was born as the only child of the tanner and later civil servant Karl Girnus and his wife Johanna. From 1925 he studied at the State Academy for Art and Applied Arts in Breslau and the Higher Trade School at the Polytechnic in Kassel , and from 1926 also German and French literature and art history in Breslau , Paris and Königsberg . In the summer of 1928 he finished his studies at the state art school in Berlin, then completed a two-year legal traineeship and then worked as a teacher.

Girnus, who had been a member of the Red Aid since 1926 , joined the KPD in 1929 . After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, he was arrested and in the concentration camp Quednau , Brandenburg prison and concentration camp Oranienburg detained. He escaped in 1934, but was arrested again in 1935 and later sentenced to five years in prison. After serving his prison sentence, he was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and from there with other prisoners transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp in November 1942 . During the evacuation of Flossenbürg on a death march on the way to the Dachau concentration camp, he managed to escape with a fellow prisoner.

Wilhelm Girnus (right) with engineer Werner Möhring in front of the control panel of the newly established Berliner Rundfunk (1949)

After the end of the war, Girnus headed the higher education system in Thuringia from August 1945. In November 1945 he took part in the rebuilding of radio in the Soviet occupation zone and in 1946 became deputy director of the Berlin radio . From 1949 to 1953 he was editor of the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland . In 1953 he was presented with the topic “Goethe. The greatest realist of the German language. Attempt at a critical presentation of his aesthetic conceptions. ” PhD . From 1953 to 1955 he acted as head of the department of beautiful literature and art in the Central Committee of the SED and from 1955 to 1957 as secretary of the committee for German unity. From February 28, 1957 to July 4, 1962, Girnus held the post of State Secretary for Universities and Technical Schools.

From 1962 to 1971 he was professor for general literary studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin. From November 1963 he was also editor-in-chief of the magazine Sinn und Form and remained so until December 1981.

Awards

Works (selection)

  • Lines of the future: reflections on the theory of socialist realism. (Volume 44 of On the Critique of Bourgeois Ideology) Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1974.
  • On the “Aesthetics” by Georg Lukács: Two thousand years of falsification of the Aristotelian “Poetics.” Art and history. Volume 13 of On the Critique of Bourgeois Ideology. Marxist sheets publishing house, 1972.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Selected philosophical texts: with an essay “Goethe's worldview” (Volume 2 of Philosophical Heritage) Dt. Verl. D. Sciences, 1962.
  • From the papers of Germain Tawordschus: incomplete report on a life experience Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 1982. (autobiographical novel)
  • Who makes history ?: On the criticism of the fascist falsification of history. People and Knowledge, Berlin 1946.
  • François Marie Arouet de Voltaire. (Short biographies, life and work). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1947
  • The hour of liberation of the Promethean spirit. (Volume 6 of Das Hochschulwesen) Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1957.
  • Literature in the GDR: Conversations with Wilhelm Girnus and Stefan Heym (Volume 4 of European Ideas) Hrsgg. by Andreas W. Mytze. 1974

literature

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Girnus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ How they became "Dr." (XV) - Wilhelm Girnus, Dr. phil . In: Die Zeit of February 13, 1970, issue 7.
  2. ↑ Volkhard Knigge: Sacrifice, Act, Rise - From Buchenwald Concentration Camp to the GDR National Memorial and Memorial . In: Petrified Commemoration: the Buchenwald memorial from 1958, Volume 2 , p. 63
personal data
SURNAME Girnus, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Girnus, Wilhelm Karl Albert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary scholar, editor and communist
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Allenstein
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 1985
Place of death Berlin