Wolfgang Duncker

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Wolfgang Duncker (born February 5, 1909 in Stuttgart , † November 20, 1942 in Vorkuta ) was a German communist journalist and film critic. As part of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union , he was arrested in 1938 and died in the Vorkuta labor camp .

Life

He was the younger son of the KPD co-founders Hermann Duncker and Käte Duncker . As a student of Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer, his older brother Karl Duncker was a pioneer of Gestalt psychology .

In contrast to his apparently apolitical brother, Wolfgang Duncker was a member of the KPD. From November 1929 to 1933 he wrote film and theater reviews for the Munzenberg newspaper Berlin am Morgen under the pseudonym Mersus . He was also responsible for the newspaper's entertainment supplement.

In 1931 Wolfgang Duncker married Erika Weiss (1907-2003) from Basel . The attempt to gain a foothold as a screenwriter in Switzerland or France after the seizure of power in 1933 failed, also in Switzerland because his wife had lost her Swiss citizenship through marriage. He returned to Berlin in the autumn of 1934. In 1935 he went into exile in Moscow , where he worked as an editor for Mosfilm . He was arrested in 1938 as part of the so-called German operation of the NKVD , and in 1942 he died of exhaustion in the GULag in Vorkuta . His widow Erika Duncker survived as a worker in a tank factory. At the end of 1945 she went to the Soviet occupation zone with her second husband and their surviving children Boris (* 1937 in Moscow) and Rainer . In 1947 she returned to Basel.

literature

  • Rolf Aurich and Wolfgang Jacobsen (eds.): Mersus: The film critic Wolfgang Duncker . With reviews by Mersus and an essay by Carola Tischler. edition text + kritik , (= film and writing , Volume 5), in cooperation with the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum for Film and Television , Richard Boorberg Verlag, Munich 2007. ISBN 978-3-88377-860-0
  • Günter Agde : Fighters: Biography of a film and its makers . The New Berlin, Berlin? 2001 about Karl Duncker, with information about the family
  • Sören Wendelborn: Emigration from Germany during the time of National Socialism - A contribution to the biography of Karl Duncker . In: H. Gundlach (Ed.): Studies on the history of psychology and psychotechnology , Profil-Verlag, Munich 1996 pp. 263-272.
  • Sören Wendelborn: The Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker: biographical reconstructions on the basis of previously inaccessible archive material and statements by contemporary witnesses. (= Contributions to the History of Psychology , Volume 21), Peter Lang 2003.
  • Simone Schnall: Life as the Problem: Karl Duncker's Context
  • Karl Duncker: Appearance and Knowledge of the Human . Articles 1927–1940. Edited with commentary and biographical contributions by Helmut Boege and Hans-Jürgen P. Walter . Krammer-Verlag, Vienna 2008.
  • Gabriele Stammberger , Michael Peschke : Arrived safely - Moscow. The exile of Gabriele Stammberger 1932-1954 . Basisdruck Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-86163-082-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Archives: Hermann and Käte Duncker Estate - Introduction
  2. ↑ Carola Tischler
personal data
SURNAME Duncker, Wolfgang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mersus (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist journalist and film critic
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1942
Place of death Vorkuta