Wilhelm Kweksilber

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Wilhelm Kweksilber , also known under the pseudonym Heinz / H. / Henk / Han Wielek (born on March 13, 1912 in Cologne ; died on December 7, 1988 in Amsterdam ) was a stateless , from 1948 Dutch publicist . Due to his Jewish origins and his political commitment, he had to emigrate from Germany to the Netherlands in 1933. Even after the Second World War he stayed in the Netherlands. As a publicist and politician, he made an important contribution to the spread of German films and books in the Netherlands.

Life

Wilhelm Kweksilber was born in 1912 as the son of Estera Perlmutter and the accountant Jakob Kweksilber (originally Jankiel Kwekzijlber). The stateless Orthodox Jewish family came from Poland . When he settled in Cologne, the first and last names were modified.

Wilhelm Kweksilber first attended the Jewish community school in Cologne and passed his Abitur at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Cologne. After graduating from high school, he embarked on a journalistic career and began to be interested in politics. In 1927 he became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth . He wrote literary and film reviews for Westdeutsche Rundfunk AG and the Rheinische Zeitung . In 1930 he joined the General German Trade Union Federation . Through his journalistic and political activities he attracted the attention of the National Socialists . He was denounced in National Socialist writings and threatened several times. After the seizure of power , he went underground. An arrest narrowly avoided, Wilhelm Kweksilber decided in April 1933 to escape to the Netherlands.

He went to Amsterdam and supported the work of the Social Democratic Party in exile . In order to secure his livelihood, he continued his journalistic work, wrote articles for Het Volk and worked as editor of the social democratic exile newspaper Freie Presse . He worked as a book critic at the De Toorts Institute for Worker Development. In 1935, Kweksilber gave himself the pseudonym Heinz Wielek , which he has been using for his journalistic works and essays since that time. Since 1936 he was one of the Social Democrats who campaigned for the establishment of a popular front . Together with Erich Kuttner , Egon Benda, Fritz Saar and others, he formed an exile group of German Social Democrats in Amsterdam. After the German invasion in May 1940 , he first tried to make a living by taking German lessons. At the beginning of February 1942 he took up a position at the branch of the Judenrat , which was in contact with the German authorities. Here he helped Jews who were threatened with deportation and deportation to escape or to go into hiding by issuing papers . In June 1943 his sister Ruth Mayer and his parents, who had also lived in Amsterdam since 1937, were arrested and taken to the Westerbork transit camp . Wilhelm Kweksilber voluntarily accompanied them to the camp. His parents were deported from Westerbork in July 1943 and murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp , his sister Ruth was murdered in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943 . Since Kweksilber was married to a non-Jew, he was able to return to Amsterdam. There he resumed his work at the expositur. In 1944 he went underground and hid in the house of his in-laws. Here he was working on a book about the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands during the German occupation. It appeared in 1947 under the title De oorlog die Hitler won (The war that Hitler won).

H. Wielek (right) with Karel Roskam and Beate Klarsfeld at a meeting of the J'accuse Foundation, Amsterdam 1971

After the end of the Second World War, Heinz Wielek decided not to return to Germany. He turned down a position offered to him at the union on the grounds that he " could not live in the midst of murderers" . He changed his pseudonym to H. Wielek, and later published his journalistic works as Henk and Han Wielek. In January 1948, the stateless Kweksilber took Dutch citizenship . After the war he worked as the director of the educational center "Vrij Nederland" and the cultural department of the Amsterdam social welfare office. Here he took care of a. about the integration of the unemployed and the socially disadvantaged into society. He organized courses, concerts and visits to exhibitions in order to bring the population groups out of social isolation. For a large number of newspapers and magazines, such as De Vlam , Vrij Nederland , Het Parool , De Nieuwe Linie , Chronik der Kunst und Kultur , he wrote numerous reviews, preferably of German post-war literature. He worked as a contributor and editor for the Film Forum and Critical Film Forum . As a critic, Wielek valued the literature from West Germany, in stark contrast to the German post-war films, which he characterized as films full of rubble romance and self-pity. He had been trying to improve German-Dutch relations as early as the late 1940s. He invited writers like Erich Kästner and Heinrich Böll to the Netherlands and gave lectures in the Federal Republic, especially to young people. In the following decades he watched the political developments in Germany: he critically pursued the rearmament and turned sharply against the RAF - terrorism during the German autumn in the late 1970s.

Wielek was a board member of the Dutch Cultural Council and chairman of the Dutch section of the international writers' association PEN. He founded the J'accuse Foundation and a committee set up in early May 1969 for vigilance against a living fascism.

Stumbling stone for Wilhelm Kweksilber in front of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Cologne (Severinstraße 241)

Kweksilber was a member of the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), whose work he viewed critically over the decades. On July 10, 1973, he was elected as a member of the PvdA in the First Chamber of the States General , where he was active as a cultural spokesman. For health reasons, he resigned most of his offices from 1977, and on September 18, 1978 also his seat in the First Chamber. After a long and serious illness, he died on December 7, 1988 at the age of 76. The personal estate of Henk Wielek is today in the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis in Amsterdam. In April 2018, a stumbling stone was laid in front of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Cologne to commemorate Wilhelm Kweksilber.

Private

On August 28, 1937, he married the accountant Johanna de la Court. This marriage allowed him to reside permanently in the Netherlands. The marriage, which was divorced in September 1951 , had two children. On March 7, 1952, he married the translator and publicist Willy Berg. This marriage remained childless.

Works by Heinz (Henk) Wielek (selection)

  • Proletenviertel , Cologne (1928)
  • Nazi German youth education , in "Die Sammlung", 1933/34, issue 5
  • The murderer by John Walker , in "The Collection", 1934/35, issue 1
  • Verses der Emigration , Karlsbad (1935)
  • Kroniek van kunst en kultuur, Amsterdam (1946)
  • De oorlog die Hitler won , Amsterdam (1947)
  • De stern van Europa , Amsterdam (1948)
  • Lof der vacantie: een wandeling met vacantiegangers , Amsterdam (1948)

Involved in:

  • Literature of the Duitse emigrants (1936)
  • Het vroolijke gildeboek , Hilversum (1938)
  • Buitenlandse letterkunde na 1945 , Utrecht / Antwerp, Aula (1964) (with: J.Tans, R. Drain, G. Geers, C.Ypes)
  • Germany: voorbeeld of waarschuwing? Baarn, Het Wereldvenster (1976) (with: Artur Lehning, PH Bakker Schut)

Literature about Heinz Wielek

  • Frederike Zindler: Culture is politics is culture. The emigrant and "Dutchman" H. Wielek (1912–1988) as a mediator in the German-Dutch area. Dissertation Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Praesens, Heft 6, 2017, ISBN 978-3706909174
  • Everhard Kleinertz : The Cologne Authors' Lexicon 1750–2000 , Volume Two : 1900–2000, Mitteilungen des Stadtarchivs, Volume 89, Emons-Verlag, Cologne, ISBN 978-3897051935 , p. 308

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Kweksilber. Retrieved May 14, 2018 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h A.JCM Gabriëls: Wilhelm Kweksilber. November 12, 2013, accessed May 14, 2018 (Dutch).
  3. ↑ a b c W. (Willi) Kweksilber. Retrieved May 14, 2018 (Dutch).
  4. ↑ Jankiel Kwekzylber. Retrieved May 14, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Estera Kwekzylber-Perlmutter. Retrieved May 14, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Ruth Mayer-Kweksilber. Retrieved May 14, 2018 .
  7. ↑ H. Wielek: Waarom ik niet naar Duitsland terugkeer . In: Trouw . Amsterdam 5th March 1966.
  8. ↑ Welkom bij J'accuse. Retrieved May 14, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Heribert Rösgen: Remembrance: In memory of former students . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . ( ksta.de [accessed on May 14, 2018]).
  10. ^ Memories of former pupils: Stumbling blocks at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium . In: rheinische-verbindungenblaetter.de . ( rheinische-verbindungenblaetter.de [accessed on May 14, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Kweksilber, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kweksilber, Willi; Wieklek, Heinz (pseudonym); Wielek, H. (pseudonym); Wielek, Henk (pseudonym); Wielek, Han (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION stateless, later Dutch publicist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH December 7, 1988
Place of death Amsterdam