Günther Krupkat
Günther Krupkat ( born July 5, 1905 in Berlin, † 14 April 1990, ibid ) was one of the most prominent science fiction authors from the early days of the GDR. He wrote novels such as When the gods died, the large border, The Invisibles and Nabou.
Life
Günther Krupkat was born in 1905 in Berlin. Lack of money he had to quit his engineering studies. He worked before the Second World War, among other things as a factory worker, Film playwright, business traveler, electrician, advertising copywriter, a laboratory technician and as an employee in the press and radio.
At age 19, he wrote, inspired by Tolstoy's Aelita Alexei Nikolaevich, his first utopian novel Od, but for which he could not find a publisher for his "too left" perceived social criticism. The book remained unpublished. First short stories by the author were published before 1945. Günther Krupkat was involved in the resistance against the Nazis and fled to Czechoslovakia.
Günther Krupkat lived after the Second World War in East Germany, in Berlin. He finished his engineering studies there, then worked as editor in chief from 1955 and was self-employed. In addition to the ' Titanic' novel The Ship of Lost he wrote SF novels that have been reprinted again and again. The Writers' Union of the GDR, he was from 1972 to 1978 Chairman of the Working Group Utopian literature, whose founding he himself had initiated. His successor in this position was Heiner Rank.
Work
Krupkats best known and most widely read books were two novels in which the influence of the pre- astronautics in the GDR -SF was visible. When the gods died deals with the failed contact by extraterrestrials with humanity mists of time. Nabou describes the story of a highly developed robots that they left behind - said Nabou namely - that leads the reader to the deepest depths of the earth. Besides, this novel marks a first literary peak in the SF of the GDR. Nabou was described by Franz Rottensteiner in 1979 as " one of the best examples of science fiction from the GDR ".