Heinz Rein

Last updated

Heinz Rein
Born(1906-04-09)9 April 1906
Berlin
Died16 January 1991(1991-01-16) (aged 84)
Baden-Baden
Pen nameReinhard Andermann
LanguageGerman
NationalityGerman
Genrenovels, short stories, satires, cabaret texts
Literary movementThe New Literature, rubble literature
Notable worksFinale Berlin

Heinz Rein (pseudonym: Reinhard Andermann) was an influential German novelist writing before and after the Second World War. He became a major figure in the "rubble literature" period, and his famous novel Berlin Finale, published in 1947, was one of the first bestsellers of the German rebuilding period.

Contents

Early life

Heinz Rein worked as a bank clerk in the 1920s after completing a banking apprenticeship. He later worked as a sports journalist. Because of his political commitments, the National Socialist rulers imposed a writing ban on him in 1934; consequently, in 1935, Rein became unemployed [1] [2] During the war, he was subject to compulsory service at the German National Railway [3] and at times Rein was in Gestapo detention. [1]

After the war's end, he worked for the Cultural Advisory Board for Publishing at the East German Administration for Public Education until 1950. The Cultural Advisory Board was initially tasked with removing from circulation work of a fascist or militaristic nature, but evolved to enforce official communist party cultural policy. [4]

Career

Rein wrote literary criticism that was published in 1947/48 in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (GDR) magazine Einheit - Theoretical Monthly Journal for Socialism. [5] In addition, Rein wrote novels and short stories, reflecting contemporary history. In 1949, he published the anthology Unterm Notdach, Berlin Tales.

In 1950, according to preliminary remarks on behalf of the chairman of the Cultural Advisory Board, Erich Weinert, [6] an attempt was made to survey the narrative prose that appeared in Germany after the war and was published under the title The New Literature. In addition to his own contributions, the work contains two reviews of Berlin Finale, by Hans Mayer (pp. 315–319) and by Walter A. Berendsohn (pp. 319–324). Initiated by Johannes R. Becher, [7] a campaign was launched against the new literature in GDR magazines, [8] which led to the publisher taking the book off the market [9] and Rein's membership of the Cultural Advisory Board was suspended. [10] He then lived as a freelance writer in the GDR.

After breaking with the GDR in the early 1950s, he moved to West Germany. There he lived in Baden-Baden until his death. His books on the end of the war and the immediate postwar period in Berlin, made him an East German representative of rubble literature ( Trümmerliteratur). In the GDR, some of his books were printed with difficulty and with a delay. After moving to the West, he wrote mainly short stories, but also satires and cabaret texts.

Fritz J. Raddatz wrote an afterword for the new edition of Berlin Finale in 2015. [1] The novel appeared in a preprint from 6 October 1946 to 16 February 1947 in the Berliner Zeitung, and the book came out in 1947. The book reached a circulation of 100,000 copies in 1951 [11] and was one of the first German bestsellers of the postwar period. [1] The novel has been translated into English three times. In 1952, it was published by MW Books as Finale Berlin in an abridged translation by David Porter, representing about one-third of the German text. In 2015, it was published by Schöffling & Co. as Berlin Finale in a translation by Geoff Wilkes. In 2019, it was published in the Penguin Modern Classics series as Berlin Finale, in a translation by Shaun Whiteside.

Works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johannes R. Becher</span> German politician, novelist and poet (1891–1958)

Johannes Robert Becher was a German politician, novelist, and poet. He was affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) before World War II. At one time, he was part of the literary avant-garde, writing in an expressionist style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ulbricht Group</span>

The Ulbricht Group was a group of exiled members of the Communist Party of Germany, led by Walter Ulbricht, who flew from the Soviet Union back to Germany on April 30, 1945. Composed of functionaries from the KPD and ten anti-fascist prisoners of war, their job was to seek out anti-fascist individuals and prepare the groundwork for the re-establishment of communist organizations and unions in postwar Berlin. There were two additional regional groups, the Ackermann Group in Saxony and the Sobottka Group in Mecklenburg. Many of the group's members later became high-level officials in the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christoph Hein</span> German author and translator (born 1944)

Christoph Hein is a German author and translator. He grew up in the village Bad Düben near Leipzig. Being a clergyman's son and thus not allowed to attend the Erweiterte Oberschule in the GDR, he received secondary education at a gymnasium in the western part of Berlin. After his Abitur he jobbed inter alia as assembler, bookseller and assistant director. From 1967 to 1971 Hein studied philosophy in Leipzig and Berlin. Upon graduation he became dramatic adviser at the Volksbühne in Berlin, where he worked as a resident writer from 1974. Since 1979 Hein has worked as a freelance writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erich Mückenberger</span> East German politician (1910–1998)

Erich Mückenberger was a German socialist politician. He began his political career in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) when the East German branches of SPD and the Communist Party of Germany merged after the Second World War. Mückenberger was one of the most high-ranking former Social Democrats in the German Democratic Republic and held several positions in the SED.

Wolfgang Hilbig was a German writer and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Günter Kochan</span> German composer

Günter Kochan was a German composer. He studied with Boris Blacher and was a master student for composition with Hanns Eisler. From 1967 until his retirement in 1991, he worked as professor for musical composition at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler". He taught master classes in composition at the Academy of Music and the Academy of Arts, Berlin. He was also secretary of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts from 1972 to 1974 and vice-president of the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR from 1977 to 1982. Kochan is one of eleven laureates to have been awarded the National Prize of the GDR four times. In addition, he received composition prizes in the US and Eastern Europe. He became internationally known in particular for his Symphonies as well as the cantata Die Asche von Birkenau (1965) and his Music for Orchestra No. 2 (1987). His versatile oeuvre included orchestral works, chamber music, choral works, mass songs and film music and is situated between socialist realism and avant-garde.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nigel F. Palmer</span> British Germanist (1946–2022)

Nigel Fenton Palmer FBA was a British Germanist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fritz J. Raddatz</span> German writer and journalist

Fritz Joachim Raddatz was a German feuilletonist, essayist, biographer, journalist and romancier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serge von Bubnoff</span>

Sergius Nikolajewitsch von Bubnoff was a geologist and geotechnical engineer with Germano-Baltic ancestry who made important contributions to the rebuilding of geological research in East Germany after World War II. Starting in 1922, he was a professor at the University of Breslau. In 1929 he became a professor at the University of Greifswald and in 1950, he started his professorship at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. The Bubnoff unit, which is the unit of measure for the speed of geological processes, is named after him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dieter Kalka</span> German songwriter

Dieter Kalka is a German writer, songwriter, poet, dramatist, musician, editor, translator and speech therapist.

Blanvalet is a German publishing house, based in Munich, which was founded in 1935 in Berlin and is now part of the Bertelsmann's Random House publishing group. Blanvalet publishes entertainment literature and non-fiction, first in hardcover, and as paperbacks since 1998. The publisher became well known with the novel series "Angélique". More recent authors include Charlotte Link, Marc Elsberg, Karin Slaughter, Diana Gabaldon and George R. R. Martin.

Günther Birkenfeld was a German writer. His books were banned during the Nazi years but he remained in the country and was conscripted for aircraft monitoring during the war. During the postwar period, in what had become the Soviet occupation zone, he was a co-founder, in 1948/49, of the anti-communist Combat Group against Inhumanity .

Ingeborg Euler began her public career as a cabaret artiste and author. After the early death of her husband, the campaigning "Auschwitz journalist" Thomas Gnielka, she herself became more widely known as a German television journalist.

Sven Felix Kellerhoff is a German historian, journalist and author who specialises in the history of the Nazi era.

Walther Schoenichen was a German biologist and a prominent proponent of nature conservation within Nazi Germany.

Stefan Amzoll was a German musicologist, journalist and independent author. In 1989/1990 he was editor-in-chief of Radio DDR 2 and 1990/91 deputy editor-in-chief of Deutschlandsender Culture. A main focus of his work was New Music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermann Matern</span> German communist politician

Hermann Matern was a German communist politician (KPD) and high ranking functionary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and statesman in the German Democratic Republic.

Das Begräbnis is a short story by German author Wolfdietrich Schnurre. It was written in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and was first published in 1948 in the February issue of the magazine Ja. Zeitung der jungen Generation. In 1960, Schnurre included a revised version in the prose collection Man sollte dagegen sein. Das Begräbnis is also significant in literary history as the first text to be read at a meeting of the writers' association Gruppe 47.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ulrike Almut Sandig</span> German writer

Ulrike Almut Sandig is a German writer. She was born in Großenhain in the former GDR, and has lived in Riesa, Leipzig and Berlin. She studied religion and indology at university, and then studied at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Günther Deicke</span> German poet and journalist

Günther Deicke was a German poet and journalist.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Katrin Hillgruber: Im Schatten der Blockwalter, Rezension, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 9. Mai 2015, S. 34
  2. ↑ Ursula Heukenkamp (1996), Ursula Heukenkamp (ed.), "Das lautlose Deutschland. Widerstandsliteratur und ihre Rezeption", Unterm Notdach. Nachkriegsliteratur in Berlin 1945-1949 (in German), Berlin: Erich Schmidt, pp. 267-316, hier 306 ISBN   978-3503037360
  3. ↑ Ursula Heukenkamp (1996), Ursula Heukenkamp (ed.), "Das lautlose Deutschland. Widerstandsliteratur und ihre Rezeption", Unterm Notdach. Nachkriegsliteratur in Berlin 1945-1949 (in German), Berlin: Erich Schmidt, pp. 267-316, hier 306
  4. ↑ John, Sanford (2001). "censorship: GDR". Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture. Routledge. p. 97. ISBN   978-0415263528.
  5. ↑ Unter anderem „Die große Literatur des kleinen Mannes – Der Fall Fallada“ im Augustheft 1948. S. auch (anon.) „Kanonade: Rein-Fall“, in: Der Spiegel, 4. Mai 1950, S. 37: In der Monatsschrift ‚Einheit‘ und in deren marxistischem Sinne kritisierte Rein regelmäßit die neue Prosa.“
  6. ↑ Carsten Wurm, Günter Häntzschel (ed.), "Anthologien im Aufbau-Verlag 1945-1990", Buchwissenschaftliche Forschungen (in German), vol. Jg. 2005, Nr. 5: Literatur in der DDR im Spiegel ihrer Anthologien, pp. 29-46, hier S. 31
  7. ↑ „Bedauerlich und schädlich. Bemerkungen zu einer ‚Neuen Literatur‘“, in: Berliner Zeitung, Nr. 83, 7. April 1950, S. 3, unter dem Titel „In eigener Sache“ auch in Sonntag, Nr. 15, 1950.
  8. ↑ Ursula Heukenkamp (1996), Ursula Heukenkamp (ed.), "Das lautlose Deutschland. Widerstandsliteratur und ihre Rezeption", Unterm Notdach. Nachkriegsliteratur in Berlin 1945-1949 (in German), Berlin: Erich Schmidt, pp. 267-316, hier 312 ISBN   978-3503037360
  9. ↑ Neues Deutschland (in German), 23 April 1950, p. 11
  10. ↑ Der Spiegel (in German), 4 May 1950, p. 37
  11. ↑ Claus-Ulrich Bielefeld: Ein Buch wie seine Zeit, voller Risse und Schründe. Rezension, in: Literarische Welt, 18. April 2015, S. 2
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.