Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj

Daschdordschiin Natsagdordsch (Mongolian Дашдоржийн Нацагдорж; * November 17, 1906; † July 13, 1937 ) was a Mongolian writer and is considered the founder of modern Mongolian literature.

Life

Natsagdordsch was born the son of a poor but educated aristocratic officials. Already at the age of eleven, he joined as an assistant clerk in the civil service of the autonomous Outer Mongolia. By private tutors, he received a good education at an early stage and thus belonged after the Revolution of 1921 to the very small layer of Mongolian intellectuals were able to take the responsible functions in the People's Republic was founded in 1924. He made career in the army and one of the founders of the Communist Youth League. He was even in spite of his youth, a candidate for the Party Central Committee and the Central Control Commission. After spending a year studying at the Military Academy, Leningrad 1925/26, he was among the more than forty young Mongols who primarily as students and trainees training in Germany between 1925/26 and 1929/30 - some even in France - received. In fact Natsagdordsch was not a member of organized group of Mongols who or who completed partly in Wickersdorf or Letzlingen ginden in boarding schools or in Berlin in mainstream schools in different companies a lesson. He could instead make with his wife and independently of these groups his stay. This " educational experiment" was possible only through the national-democratic, cosmopolitan orientation of the former Mongol leadership, which was discontinued in 1928. So were these young Mongols of which were later exposed to many reprisals, the only ones who have been trained up to the democratic changes in 1990, in the capitalist countries.

After a few months in Berlin Natsagdordsch went to Leipzig, where it does not - as asserted earlier - studied journalism because he the others of his young compatriots could not demonstrate any comparable degree as the German Abitur. So it was a stroke of luck for him that he could assist in the Leipzig professors Erich Haenisch and Frederick Weller, which at that time operated Mongolistikstudien.

In 1929 he returned with most other Mongols in the home where he initially got no steady job and worked as an interpreter and staff of the youth newspaper. From 1931 he studied at the Science Committee, was there in 1934 the first interpreter and a year later Head of the Historical Department of the committee. Under the radical left leadership Natsagdordsch was first arrested in 1932 under absurd charges and sentenced to one year of residency restrictions in 1936 was followed by a second arrest and five months of forced labor.

The short, tense and tragic life of the Mongolian national poet ended at the age of thirty, a few weeks before the beginning of the " Great Terror " in Mongolia, over 30,000 people were killed.

Work

Natsagdordsch, deeply rooted in the Mongolian literary tradition and particularly of folk poetry, was the first who recorded the fundus of world literature and became the forerunner of the modern Mongolian poetry and short prose, and also the first internationally famous Mongolian poet. The literary quality of his best work was achieved by a new generation of writers until the 1950s and 1960s again.

Some of Natsagdordschs early literary works were already in Germany, so the poem " In a distant land, to learn " (1927, German 2014) and the sketch "I witnessed the May 1 in a capitalist country " (1928, dt. 2006). Carrying on the rich folk song tradition, he created love and nature poems, which are among the most beautiful in the Mongolian poetry. The poem "My home " (1933, dt 2014) is still regarded as a national poem of the Mongols. Also, " The Star" (1931, German 2014) and the poem cycle " The Four Seasons" (1934, dt 2014) belong to the permanent existence of the Mongolian seal.

In his mostly short stories Natsagdordsch for the Mongolian prose trod new paths of a realistic and poetic storytelling. While prose sketches like "The Bird Grey " (1930 ) and " The Steppe Beauty " (1931 ) as " lyrical miniatures " are referred to, suggests the poet with stories such as " The son of the old world " (1930, German 1968) and "White Moon and Black Tears " (1932, dt 1968) on how young Mongols from misery and ignorance to free himself and can go a self-determined way. In the translated into many languages ​​story "The tears of the Lamas " (1930, dt 1976) provides Natsagdordsch his talent as a humorous, ironic author proof. The autobiographical narrative carries the " Dark Rock" ( 1930). Even as a translator (Pushkin, Poe, Maupassant ) and as a playwright Natsagdordsch has gained importance. At a fairy tale type, which is common among Mongols as well as in other Central Asian nations, his play " The three sad hill " (1934 ) goes back, which was in the editing as an opera (1942 ) for most performed work of the Mongolian theater.

Translations

• In: Whose world ... Poetic document, ( East) Berlin 1967
• In: "Sunday", No. 1/68, ( East) Berlin
• In: explorations. 20 Mongolian stories, ( East) Berlin 1976
• In Mongolian Notes, Issue 15/2006 and issue 18/2009
• In: There wander the times under the eternal sky. A pearl necklace Mongolian poetry, Leipzig 2014