Wilhelm Josef Gerhards

Wilhelm J. Gerhards (born January 21, 1943 in Mönchengladbach- Rheindahlen ) is a German writer and journalist .

Live and act

Gerhards studied, after training at the former industrial insurer Gerling Group, Dusseldorf, with the grant of a foundation in Zurich economics to graduate in business administration , (Title of the thesis : ' corporate culture and ethics in the tension of corporate governance '), journalism and philosophy about José Ortega y Gasset , Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre . He then worked full-time as a 'management consultant for insurance issues'. In 1987 he became a member of the 'DJV - Deutscher Journalisten-Verband', is co-founder of the small communal newspaper 'Stadt- und Landbote', left there in 1993 and worked as a 'freelance' journalist for print media and broadcasting companies and as a lecturer and lecturer for literature and journalism, mainly in Austria and Switzerland (2008 to 2013). He has been working in an honorary capacity for a Swiss foundation since 2014.

Since 1961 he has been writing prose , plays , poetry and later, from 1989 to 2010, socially and socially critical texts, the period of which he describes as the 'epoch of reality'. The book with the title: "Scream, if you can" was created from this time. As a book author, he sees himself as 'off the mainstream '. At the age of 18 his first publications appeared in the Rhein / Ruhr newspaper in Düsseldorf. This was followed by prose publications in newspapers and anthologies across Germany. In the 80s and 90s he gave numerous readings of his prose and poetry in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with a review and discussion of the literary history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Most of the readings were organized as "jazz with / for poetry and prose" and were very popular in the discussion and dialogue between critical and enchanting lyrical language and young music. One recognizes a kinship when Gerhards speaks of the fact that he admires Heinrich Heine because of his literary-critical language and his Francophile lifestyle and worldview. From 1993 to 2002 Gerhards lived and wrote mostly in Paris and reported from there for print media and radio. During this time, based on what he experienced, he used the terms art, "Art is the ability to create new perspectives for our seeing and thinking", and poetry, "Poetry is thinking, feeling, writing beyond the emotions that we dominate, the empathy creates, and only makes being human worth living "redefined for itself. In his "Meditative Interpretations", as he calls them, he then also describes art and general objects, in the sense and spontaneous experience of the viewer, with art without paying attention to "what the artist wants to tell us".

For the part of his critical writing, the press described Gerhard after his readings as an "individualist" but not as an "outsider". His language, including the lyrical, are image-sound meditations, monologues and questions that make the reader an author, Placing in the middle of poetic, but also political thinking.Gerhards also showed this individuality in his hobby, when he took the amateur harness racing test at the age of 38 in order to practice this sport for a few years.

From the 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s, he took part in the legendary literary seminars of the writer Walter Kempowski in his Kreienhoop (= crow's nest ) house near Nartum , where he acted as a lecturer for a literary subject during the seminars.

In 1990 the poetry volume "Atemstoss-Hauchweise" was published, which contains poems from 1961 to 1989 and for which he received the 1991 literature prize from the Weinstadt authors' gallery. Also in 1991 Gerhards received the literary prize of the text competition with the theme: "A new hymn for a 'new' time, for a united Germany, and 'I want to sing a first verse again'."

The text: 1st stanza : "Germany, Germany about everything / everything that my heart worships / if it always teaches us for protection and benefit / brotherly / flow Danube, Main and Isar / proclaim the Oder, Elbe, Rhine: / Germany, Germany about everything / everything my heart desires ". 2nd stanza : "It happened what we hoped for / unity, brothers noble bond / to the obligation for all of us / with Europe as a guarantor / believe what fate taught / what reunited us all: / Blossom in the splendor of this happiness / Germany United fatherland."

Gerhards once described himself in an interview as a representative of the Beat Generation and as a 68-year-old , who, however, due to his philosophical studies, had his own ideas of the movement in relation to ethics and humanity , which he ultimately did not agree with the political ideas of Could bring student movement . In his letter, Gerhards repeatedly admonishes moral values ​​by writing at one point: "In recognizing our perspective , the chance of solving the problems of being human lies in a responsibility of measure and limit. This principle demands ethics and humanity, for a togetherness that declares the higher human values ​​beyond the self to be the measure of all things ". The term perspective (the spatial and linear relationships of objects in space) acquired a special and personal meaning for Gerhards in the context of philosophical epistemology when he saw the first images of the earth from space in the 1960s. In his play "Everywhere is Salinas" he then processes these impressions.

Since November 2011 Gerhards has been politically involved in the political initiative "Voice of the Non-Voters", which wants to bring voters back to the polls and which, with its direction, a social middle class and a wide range of opinions, corresponds most closely to his worldview, as he in a speech says "Where are we? - The political culture and situation in Germany in the second decade of the 21st century". The motto of his political work is: "People are not subject to elections" and "not voting" does not excuse anything. "Gerhards continues to say in an interview on the subject of not voting:" Actually, not voting is a criticism and 'punishment', an expression of disapproval , for bad politics and / or the incompatibility with the political offer within our party spectrum. Since only voters are represented in parliaments, regardless of the turnout of the entire electorate, democracy is permanently harmed by the increasing number of non-voters. Politicians should bear in mind that poverty is growing in Germany - 'the gap between rich and poor' - and that the danger to society always comes 'from the streets'. In 2013 Gerhards and a group of journalist colleagues founded the initiative "Central Council of Non-Voters in Germany", which succeeds the 'Voice of Non-Voters' and of which he is the spokesman. He describes them as the "swarm intelligence of a now far too large proportion of the population", but also as the "finding the limits of a feasible and possible policy in Germany". After a reading, Gerhards announced that the journalist group "Voice of the Non-Voters" split up in 2018, explaining that a possible infiltration by the Chancellor's attitude to the refugee issue is not intended to bring non-voters to the ballot box, and a right turn is to be expected, which one does not want to support.

GERHARDS has been working as a freelance journalist since 1987 (member of the GERMAN JOURNALISTS VERBAND, DJV, since 1987, and REPORTER OHNE GRENZEN eV since 2018) and from 2016 to 2019 as head of the alias group "Anglo-German" for an international investigative Network of journalists from Northern Germany. Political and social issues are dealt with here, e.g. B. u. a. Anti-Semitism, left and right-wing extremism, uncontrolled migration and the consequences in Germany, also critically disclosed, clarified and, if necessary, made accessible to press and / or media. Since his stays in Turkey, Iraq and South Africa (Cape Town), with reporting, he has largely withdrawn from daily journalistic business, as this activity seems to him to be more and more dangerous over time, also for private relationships. He succeeded in "jumping off", as he explained in a press release on February 1, 2019; From July 1, 2019, he will continue to work nationally as a 'freelance journalist' and will deal with the topics of culture and economy, but will focus on his literary writing, prose, theater, poetry, in every form. His lyrical words at the end of a press release were: "Life is beautiful but finite, and one shouldn't put the tiny amount of time we have in relation to eternity" at risk.

Publications

• Wilhelm J. Gerhards: Breaths, breaths. (Selected poems 1961–1989), epilogue by Prof. Dr. Juliane Eckhardt. Aachen 1990, ISBN 3-927854-48-4 .
• Wilhelm J. Gerhards: What the Niers whispers to us . Stories and anecdotes from old Mönchengladbach, Rheydt, Wickrath, Rheindahlen. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8313-1927-5 .
• Wilhelm J. Gerhards: Scream if you can! White Rose 2010 - Better to be like fire and ice / Zyklon-B breaths: Texts from the gas chambers of the zeitgeist. Shaker Verlag , ISBN 978-3-86858-559-9 . (Book with CD)

Awards

• Literature Prize of the Authors' Gallery Weinstadt (1991)
• Literature Prize for Poetry (Bottroper Autorentage, 1991)
• Literature Prize of the Text Competition: New Hymn After Reunification? (1991)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Wilhelm J. Gerhards . City of Mönchengladbach. Archived from the original on October 8, 2012. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 12, 2012. 

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Josef Gerhards in the catalog of the German National Library