William Totok

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William Totok (born April 21, 1951 in Comloşu Mare ( German  Groß-Komlosch ), Romanian People's Republic ) is a German writer and publicist .

William Totok, 2010

life and work

Totok is of Romanian German origin and comes from the ethnic group of the Banat Swabians . He studied German and Romanian at the Faculty of Philology and History at the University of Timișoara . In 1971 he was expelled from the communist youth organization Uniunea Tineretului Comunist (UTC). Totok was a founding member of the " Action Group Banat " (1972–1975). He was imprisoned from 1975 to 1976 because of the "dissemination of anti-state poems". From 1982 to 1985 he worked as an editor at the Neue Banater Zeitung .

In the course of the Romanian Revolution in 1989 , Totok had a telephone contact in Timișoara when demonstrators were shot there, and reported about it the following day on Radio Free Europe in Romanian .

William Totok has lived in Berlin since 1987 and writes for the daily newspaper (taz) , among others . He has published numerous poems, essays, historical studies, film and theater chronicles, reviews, literary criticism and essays. He is a member of the “Working Group for History and Culture in East Central and Southeastern Europe”, member of the editorial team of the “Half-year publication for Southeastern European history, literature and politics” and oversees the online edition of this publication. Totok was a member of the “Romania Human Rights Committee” in the Heinrich Böll Foundation and was a member of the Wiesel Commission for Research into the Romanian Holocaust , which was headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel and which presented its final report in 2004. Since it was founded in 2005, he has been a member of the scientific advisory board of the State Institute for Research on the Holocaust in Romania - "Elie Wiesel" (Romanian: Institutul Național pentru Studierea Holcoaustului din România "Elie Wiesel" ). Since May 2013 he has also been a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Remembrance of the Romanian Exile ( Romanian Institutului de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului si Memoria Exilului Romanesc , IICCMER ).

Publications

Poetry books

  • The socialization of feelings, Bucharest, 1980.
  • Friendly strangeness, Timișoara, 1984.
  • The prompt intervention of the case master when a dog tries to stand on its hind legs on its own initiative, Mainz, 1987.
  • Ice Age, East Berlin, 1987.
  • ... anger rots on the flagpoles, Ludwigsburg, 2016.

Essays, studies and journalism

  • The compulsions of memory. Records from Romania, Hamburg, 1988.
  • Aprecieri neretuşate. Eseuri, articole și interviuri 1987–1994, Iaşi, 1995, German: Unmade up views. Essays, articles and interviews 1987–1994 ; in Romanian language.
  • Marcel Pauker. A résumé. Jewish fate in Romania 1896–1938. With a documentation about Ana Pauker. Eds. William Totok and Erhard Roy Wiehn, Konstanz, 1999.
  • Andrei Voinea: hourglass made of stones. Jewish forced laborers in Romania 1940–1944. William Totok: The revisionist discourse , Ed. Erhard Roy Wiehn, Konstanz, 2000.
  • Constrângerea memoriei. Însemnări, documente, amintiri. Iaşi, 2001, German: Urgent memory. Records, documents, memories , in Romanian.
  • Episcopul, Hitler și Securitatea. Procesul stalinist împotriva “spionilor Vaticanului” in România. Iași, 2008, German: The Bishop, Hitler and the Securitate. The Stalinist trial of the "Vatican spies" in Romania . Istorii subterane 4
  • Între with şi bagatelizare. Despre reconsiderarea critică a trecutului, Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu şi rezistenţa armată anticomunistă din România. Iaşi, 2016 (together with Elena-Irina Macovei), German: Between myth and trivialization. About the critical coming to terms with the past, Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu and the armed, anti-communist resistance in Romania .
  • Franz Xaver Kappus între isterie de război şi pacifism moderate ( German: Franz Xaver Kappus between war hysteria and moderate pacifism ), in: Franz Xaver Kappus, Biciul disprețului. Povestea unui stigmatizat / The whip in the face. Story of a drawn man. Prefaţă, tabel cronologic şi ediţie bilingvă îngrijită de William Totok. Traducere din limba germană de Werner Kremm , Editura Muzeul Literaturii Române, Bucureşti, 2018.
  • The influence of the Securitate on historical-political influence on foreign countries, in: Florian Kührer-Wielach / Michaela Nowotnick (ed.), From the poison cabinets of communism. Methodological questions on dealing with surveillance files in Central and Southeastern Europe, Regensburg, 2018.

Contributions to numerous edited volumes and anthologies

  • Point time. German-language poetry of the eighties. Edited by Michael Braun / Hans Thill , Heidelberg, 1987.
  • What kind of times are these. German-language poems from the eighties. Ed .: Hans Bender, Munich, 1988.
  • Obituary for Romanian German literature. Edited by Wilhelms Solms, Marburg, 1990.
  • The fall of the tyrant. Romania and the end of a dictatorship. Edited by Richard Wagner / Helmuth Frauendorfer, Reinbek near Hamburg, 1990.
  • A pronoun has been arrested. The early years in Romania. Texts by the Banat Action Group. Edited by Ernest Wichner , Frankfurt am Main, 1992.
  • The country at the next table. Texts and signs from Transylvania, the Banat and the places of attempted arrival. Edited by Ernest Wichner, Leipzig, 1993.
  • In the language of the murderer. A literature from Chernivtsi, Bukowina. Edited by Herbert Wiesner / Ernest Wichner, Berlin, 1993.
  • Romania versus Romania, Ed. Gabriel Andreescu, Bucharest, 1996.
  • Dosar Mihail Sebastian, ed. Iordan Chimet, Bucharest, 2001.
  • Yearbook for Historical Research on Communism 2005, Eds. Hermann Weber, Ulrich Mählert, Bernhard H. Bayerlein a. a., Berlin, 2005.
  • Co-author of the final report of the international commission for research into the Romanian Holocaust, edited by the commission headed by Elie Wiesel, electronic rum. and engl. Version, Bucharest, 2004: Raport final. Eds. Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu, Iasi, 2005.
  • Foreword to: Romulus Cristea: Revolutia 1989 , Bucharest, 2006.
  • Holocaust on the periphery. Jewish policy and murder of Jews in Romania and Transnistria 1940–1944. Edited by Wolfgang Benz , Brigitte Mihok, Berlin, 2009.
  • Handbook of Anti-Semitism . Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Vol. 2, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, Vol. 7, Ed. Wolfgang Benz, De Gruyter Saur, Berlin, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014.
  • Introductory study: Studiu introductiv. Actualitatea trecutului: cazul lui Nicolae Paulescu, German: The actuality of the past. The case of Nicolae Paulescu. In: Peter Manu, Horia Bozdoghină: Polemica Paulescu: știință, politică, memorie , German: The Paulescu-Polemic: Science, Politics, Memory , Bucharest, 2010.
  • In the sights of the Securitate for twenty years. In: Bernd Florath (Hrsg.): The year of revolution 1989. The democratic revolution in Eastern Europe as a transnational turning point. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011.
  • Editor (together with Detlef Stein): The Churches in Eastern Europe under Communism , Edition Südosteuropa-Forschungen III, OEZ Verlag, Berlin, 2011.
  • "Political Extremism in Romania". In: Bálint Balla / Wolfgang Dahmen / Anton Sterbling (eds.): Democratic developments in the crisis? Political and social upheavals in Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria , Krämer Verlag, Hamburg 2015.
  • Co-editor (together with Johann Böhm and Georg Herbstritt ) of the half-yearly publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics , AGK-Verlag, Dinklage bei Vechta

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Half-yearly publication for Southeastern European history, literature and politics: Unmasking 2 - demascare 2 , September 7, 2012 (→ Halbjahresschrift.blogspot.ro online )
  2. ↑ "The Truth" / "Neue Banater Zeitung" In: Eckard Grunewald (Red.): Reports and Research - Yearbook of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe . Volume 11 Munich 2003, p. 156.
  3. ^ Europa Liberă: Broadcast from Radio Free Europe
  4. Jump up ↑ Our Legacy, Nothing , Die Zeit, October 14, 1988
  5. ↑ Institutul Naţional pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România "Elie Wiesel" ( Memento of February 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ INSHR-EW ( Memento from October 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
  7. ↑ Hotnews: Adrian Cioroianu, Zoe Petre si Cristian Parvulescu, in Consiliul Stiintific al IICCMER , May 27, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Totok, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian-German writer and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Comloșu Mare , People's Republic of Romania