Aktionsgruppe Banat

• Albert Bohn
• Rolf Bossert
• Werner Kremm
• Johann Lippet
• Gerhard Ortinau
• Anton Sterbling
• William Totok
• Richard Wagner
• Ernest Wichner

The authors Helmuth Fraundorfer, Roland Kirsch, Herta Müller, Horst Samson and Werner Söllner were close to the action group, but were members of the literary circle Adam Müller- Guttenbrunn in Timişoara, where after 1975 also participated most former members of the action group.

Gerhard Ortinau

Anton Sterbling

William Totok

Richard Wagner

Ernest Wichner

The action group Banat was from 1972 a literary group of students in Timisoara ( Timisoara German ), Socialist Republic of Romania. It was dissolved in 1975 by state organs.

Development

The action group Banat had its origin at the Lyceum of Sânnicolau Mare ( German Groß Sankt Nikolaus ), where the local German teacher Dorothea Goetz had called a literary circle in life. The nine founding members Albert Bohn, Rolf Bossert, Werner Kremm, Johann Lippet, Gerhard Ortinau, Anton Sterbling, William Totok, Richard Wagner, Ernest Wichner divided from the outset a common life-world. They came to the village socialization of the German minority in the Banat, and were all born 1951-1955. With the exception of Sterbling and Ortinau who were high school students in the founding years, they completed a German Studies at the University of Timisoara ( later West University ).

According to Anton Sterbling the official framework within which moved the literature circle, " the self- written, the us has become increasingly important ," was " first on the student page of the New Banat newspaper and then in other newspapers and magazines ", " later in the student supplement Universitas ". The namesake of the group was Horst Weber, former editor and reviewer for the newspaper The week from Hermannstadt (Romanian: Sibiu), who described the discussion group " an action group of young writers ." The readings of the literary group were held in the premises of the student cultural center of West University.

By his own account of 1975 three members of the group ( Totok Ortinau, Wagner) and the literary critic Gerhardt Csejka were arrested during a visit to the border under the pretext of autumn, to want to leave the country. In days of interrogation by the Romanian Securitate them was next attempted violation of limits and a " crossing of borders of poetry " accused, the group was also compared with the Baader- Meinhof gang. The state organs gave them to understand that you can " take these literary fun guerrilla no longer " wanted. In support of the threat Totok William was arrested and spent eight months in custody. " Wagner, Ortinau and Csejka were released from prison after a week. The initially imposed publication ban was lifted shortly thereafter and confiscated membership books of the Romanian Communist Party ( PCR) returned. " Totok, who was expelled in 1971 from the Communist Youth League Uniunea Tineretului Comunist ( UTC), was not a member of the PCR. All Members were summoned for questioning at different times during the Securitate; all were spoon-fed, some even beaten.

Some of its members joined the Adam -Müller Guttenbrunn literature circle ( previously literary circle Nikolaus Lenau ) in Timişoara in; as well as the friendly with them authors Helmuth Fraundorfer, Roland Kirsch, Herta Müller, Horst Samson and Werner Söllner, members of the action group were not. Other withdrew from the literary world, some filed applications to emigrate to the Federal Republic of Germany.

The situation came to a head for the remaining authors as Nicholas Berwanger, who had advocated in his capacity as Vice-Chairman of the Romanian journalists Council for the young writers, in the fall of 1984 did not return from a trip abroad to Germany to Romania. The remaining members of the Adam -Müller Guttenbrunn literature circle set up on Werner Kremm applications for final departure to Germany. Some lost their jobs it; their work was not published in Romania. The departure requests were granted between 1985 and 1987.

Four of the nine founding members - Lippet, Ortinau, Wagner, Wichner - are still active as a writer in Germany. Bohn retired to Germany from the literary scene back. Kremm remained in Romania, where he works as a journalist; Totok has worked as a journalist in Germany; Sterbling works as a professor of sociology and education in Germany. Rolf Bossert was found two months after his departure in an emigrant 's home in Frankfurt am Main lifeless under his open bedroom window. The circumstances of his death remained largely unexplained.

Program

The program of the Action Group was initially of aesthetic, but also political. The members discussed similar topics, emphasizing common views and how they fit together. The authors' group was characterized by the basic motif of romania - German literature. The authors were part of a linguistically tied to the German culture, on the other hand dominated thematically by the Romanian daily life. The group opened performances with the poem commitment. The collective text can be used as a guide by the authors are considered and represents an appeal to the audience and the authors dar. The poetry came the members of the group more than an aesthetic function; they should encourage the reader to action. The members were their views on the function and effect strategy of the texts, the sober language and the political commitment connected by the common spent by most school and study time.

The group saw itself as the solidarity of writers and pleaded to Marxism. Your literary models were Bertolt Brecht, the German poet romania Anemone Latzina and GDR writers such as Volker Braun and Rainer Kirsch. Another influence came from the Beat Generation, the Vienna Group and the '68 movement. Favorite topics included the debate about the political reality - the desire for system reform from the inside to the dialectics of Marx and Engels - and the tradition of the Banat Swabians.

The members saw themselves as " intellectual group of young troublemakers. This self-image was not recently strengthened by the identification " " with the lifestyle of western youth culture "; they saw themselves as "anti romania German Provakateure and Western- oriented intellectuals ". " An open, reality- changing criticism of the regime was not aim of the Action Group Banat. "

After the dissolution of the action group the remaining members discussed their texts in the literary circle " Adam -Müller Guttenbrunn ", where there was also polemical exchanges between younger and older members. The authors undertook reading tours in Banat. In discussions it was also " received informers, their notes, among other things, the Securitate 1982 searches of Horst Samson and William Totok " on the activities of had made. The ratio of the group to Nikolaus Berwanger was ambivalent. Although this was trying to promote the county, but the views on literature were apart, which for example by expressing that Berwanger wanted to invite the " poet laureate " Franz John Bulhardt in the Guttenbrunn circle. These circumstances led to the exit of some members of the circle, what the Securitate animated object to try to split the group.

Assessment

The classification of the members of the action group Banat as dissidents and persecuted is controversial.

Sarah Langer described in retrospect in her work Between Bohemia and dissidence. The action group Banat and their authors in the Romanian dictatorship, the action group Banat as one of the most important dissident groups in Romania and the 1970s, which also influenced other language authors from the Banat.

The author Claire de Oliveira describes dissidence with views of the action group as any form of resistance against the total instrumentalization of language by the communist regime, the questioning of the everyday language, the confirmation of belonging to a minority, and the refusal of the official discourse through the participate in the use of dialect and non - commitment.

The Transylvanian literary historian and journalist Horst Schuller Anger rejected the term " dissidence " as well as the terms " opposition" and "resistance " compared with opposition groups in other socialist states back as misleading and found the term " denial " rather true.

Werner Kremm meant that virtually no dissident manuscripts " for the time after" had arisen during the Ceauşescu dictatorship: "It was said that after the turn, so after finally the freedom has come to Romania, the drawer literature would now finally released be. Nothing happened: There has been no drawers literature. "

Anton Sterbling was critical of the constitution of a " sort of myth of the Action Group, which does not necessarily find my favor because it includes - as with any myth -. Mixed fact and fiction in a peculiar and sometimes annoying way "

The researcher at the Institute for Danube Swabian history and geography Olivia Spiridon observed the attempts by the Romanian state to win these authors for himself - Richard Wagner was another member of the Romanian Writers' Union. However, in the 1980s it came to the final break with the Romanian state increasingly nationalistic -talking. "

Sarah Langer falsely reported that except Sterbling, Wichner and Ortinau all members of the group after reaching the required age of the Romanian Communist Party ( RCP ) had joined. It is true that while Ortinau was a member of the party, but was excluded from the 1976. He moved in 1980 to the Federal Republic. Totok, which was in 1971 also excluded from the Youth League UTC, was not RKP member.

The former head of the Bucharest Criterion publishing Hedi Hauser said in an interview: " [ ... ] the Romanian- German poet [ had ] more freedom to express their opinions and to publish them as their Romanian colleagues. The governance she let a certain extent, because they said it would have little impact on the people and came to the west with good. "

The writer Dieter Schlesak called the then young Banat authors ' luxury dissidents during the Thaw Ceauşescu, the grotesque communist king with scepter and throne. " It had not only given the literati resistance of the " action group Banat ", " barely, then usually not even mentioned as a marginal phenomenon in the sources ." The group had worked " only in isolation " and " no connection or even solidarity with the real social actions " shown. The former civil rights activist Carl Gibson defined it as an "action group Banat without action ." The former civil rights Mircea Dinescu said that the German poet from the Banat in the Ceauşescu period would not have been regarded as the biggest problem children of the Securitate: "This was a small pelican colony far away in Timisoara, but always in sight. "

In the anthology obituary on the Romanian- German literature German literature Wilhelm Solms the writer and the victim of the communist dictatorship in Romania, Wolf of Aichelburg replied: " ... and it is the part of the Wagner group -Müller Totok a stupid arrogance and propaganda lie when they play up their role as carriers of this grave literature, supported by unsuspecting German lecturers like Mr. Solms in Marburg ".