The writer Hermann Kant is dead. He died on Sunday at the age of 90 years in a hospital in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. This was confirmed by the publisher Simone Barrientos days culture machine, in his last book “A strict match” has been published.
Popular Kant was, among other things with his novels “The Hall”, “The Legal” and “The Stay”. They achieved in the GDR a million copies.
On June 14, 1926 was born in Hamburg, the son of a gardener and a factory worker, Kant had initially made an electrician apprenticeship, made in 1944 conscientious in December and was until 1949 in Polish captivity , After his return he became a citizen of the GDR, the SED joined and began a course at the Greifswald Workers and Peasants Faculty, which took him two years to graduate. Kant studied German at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, then worked as a research assistant and to 1962 as editor of the magazine “New German Literature”. Since then, he was a freelance writer. In the DDR his novels reached millions of copies. In the criticism he got after the turn, when he observed the exclusion of critical writers in his time as president of the East German Writers’ Association and its activity as an unofficial member at the State Security Service – blamed for – its IM activity is detected for the period 1963 to 1976 were.
succeeding Anna Seghers
1962 debuted Kant with the short story collection “A little South Seas”. His first novel, “The Great Hall”, was published in 1965 and made Kant in the GDR rapidly popular. In some countries, the Federal Republic of the book in which Kant the construction phase of the DDR encircled by the example of the journalist and former electrician Robert Iswall and friends of his youth, was later Schullektüre. The readers in the GDR were particularly impressed by his cheerful fabulierender, this irony and satire not shy forming narrative. Even Western critics praised the debut as “complete and readable novel”. Stylistically related to the translated into twenty languages Bestseller was Kant’s novel “Contact” in 1972, when the East German critics complained, social conflicts would trivialized by artistic brilliance and witticism. After a partial footprint in 1969 the novel was three years prevented by the censor at the show – because of anti-Semitism and pornography
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in his third novel “the stay” (1977), the Frank Beyer in 1983 filmed a script by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Kant reflects the experiences of a German soldier, who – like the author – with 18 years in Polish prisoner of war came. Ten years Kant was vice president of the East German Writers’ Union and then took over in 1978 as successor of Anna Seghers responsibility for this body. During his presidency, many prominent writers and artists left the SED state. The exclusion of nine writers from the Writers’ Union in 1979 came not least at the instigation. Kant had the dressing exclude among other Jurek Becker, Erich Loest, Stefan Heym, Klaus Poche and Rolf Schneider called because they had criticized the GDR cultural policy in an open letter to the GDR state Erich Honecker. On the other hand, Kant sought also to integrate critical authors and enforce their publications.
A debt of which he would not hear
In 1981, Kant had also a seat in the GDR parliament held and belonged from 1986 to the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED on. After the political collapse of the GDR massive allegations against the longstanding association presidents were raised. Although early December 1989 approved by the Board by a large majority, Kant resigned end of the month of the leadership of the Writers’ Union, basing its decision with intolerable “physical and psychological pressure”.
Successful strained Kant 1990/1991 injunctions against authors and newspapers, who expressed the suspicion that he was a Unofficial under the code name “Martin” employees (IM) of the GDR Ministry for State Security (Stasi) have been. Kant maintained his “Not Guilty” after the publication of the comprehensive five hundred pages book “The Act Kant” (1995), in which the literary critic and journalist Karl Corino from around two thousand Stasi files clearly documented the IM activity of the writer.
informative things from today rare perspective
After the collapse of the GDR put Kant in 1991 his controversial autobiography “credits” before and justified his policy writers’ association: He is neither “Jester” nor “Grand Inquisitor” been. was panned predominantly in the feature pages of Kant in 1994 published novel “Cormorant”, his next novel “Escape. A WORD game “classified critics a year later as inconsequential. In “Ocarina” (2002) Kant told in the style of a picaresque novel, the life story of his protagonist from the novel “The stay” further, that of Stalin personally the mission is applied, in the case of his defeat to preserve his ideas. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine, the book was praised as “highly interesting, instructive and amusing panorama of post-war history of the now rare perspective of a confident communist cadre”. In “Cinema” (2005), a first-person narrator of the sleeping bag in the pedestrian zone of Hamburg from comments sarcastically capitalism, “identifier” (2010) is a grotesque a literary critic, in which one day in 1961, ringing the Stasi.
“A strict match” had called his last book the author. “We hope he is wrong,” the publisher commented the 64-page story on his website. The writer was right.
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