Literature: Writer Ralph Giordano died – Times Online

Updates 10th December 2014 17:18 clock

Cologne (dpa) – Ralph Giordano was an energetic warning voice against law. . For decades, warned the Jewish writers in books, articles and lectures to right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism

Minted has the author – world famous because of his novel “The Bertinis” – his humiliation, persecution and ill-treatment by the Nazis in his Hamburg youth. The justified his life theme he practically kept until the last breath. Giordano, who died at age 91 in Cologne on Wednesday, leaving behind an extensive work – as a journalist and as a TV-documentarist

For his 90th birthday on 20 March last year, he was in his hometown of Hamburg. was still great honor – one of the few public appointments, he was still able to perceive. “My energy levels, my force potential is reduced, which I clearly feel,” he had said at home the German Press Agency in his modest apartment in Cologne. Behind him lies a “tremendous distance” and a “murderous century.”

As the son of a Jewish woman and a Sicilian he had narrowly escaped the Holocaust as a teenager. “It is a stage of life that has shaped everything I’ve done it,” he said. When the mother should be deported in February 1945, the Giordano’s hidden in a cellar hole. On May 4, 1945, she was freed by the British army – almost starved and totally exhausted. “His experience from the time of persecution made him a tireless Mahner for courage and democracy”, said Wednesday the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster.

As an intellectual head Giordano has received numerous honors also the Order of Merit or the Leo Baeck Prize from the Central Council of Jews in Germany. The “right demon” must be treated with education and substantive debate and with courage, he demanded. The long undetected murders of the neo-Nazi network NSU had been a very old startled him again. “I will be anxious for the Democratic Republic of -. The only legal form under which I can feel

safe”

His work he leaves the German Literature Archive in Marbach. As will probably not be sufficient for the removal VW bus, Giordano had noted his 90th with humor. He has written 23 books, many of which are bestsellers and have been translated into many languages. “To be the second or guilt of the load, a German” autobiographical family saga “The Bertinis” (1982), (1987) or “If Hitler had won the war” (1989) are among the major works. Much attention is also his autobiography “Memoirs of a survivors can” (2007). As television, he worked from 1961, first at Norddeutscher Rundfunk, then turned from 1964 to 1988 for the WDR around 100 films from around the world. In 1972 he moved from Hamburg to Cologne.

He broke in the last years of his life, a lot of criticism from his statements to Islam, to a failed in his view, the integration of Muslims and the construction of the Cologne Central Mosque. Pointed comments on talk shows and the term “human penguins” for veiled Muslim women sparked outrage. That he was accused of common cause with the radical right, injuring him. It is simply to denounce such manifestations of Islam, which are incompatible with the Basic Law go to him, he justified himself.

Little was known of the private citizen Giordano. Three times he had married. His two long-standing marriages ended with the death from cancer of his wives Helga (1994) and Wood Anemone (2002). A third marriage ended in divorce after a short time.

Giordano liked steam engines. A heart he also had the rare Wombat Marsupials – and it was a long time avid Ferrari driver. In his last years, the lanky gentleman lived with the imposing white mane of hair quite withdrawn in his apartment in a high-rise building in Cologne. His sharp intellect has been preserved to last him. Publisher Helge Malchow of Kipenheuer & amp; Petrovich said on Wednesday: “He was all of us, the employees of the publisher and authors many a friend we will never forget.”

Giordano Kiepenheuer & amp; Malevich