Ernesto Cardenal

Ernesto Cardenal Martínez ( born January 20, 1925 in Granada ) is a Nicaraguan Catholic priest suspended, socialist politician and poet. He is one of the most famous exponents of liberation theology and is next to Rubén Darío as one of the most important poets of Nicaragua. As part of the successful revolution in Nicaragua by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional ( FSLN ), he was 1979-1987 Minister of Culture of Nicaragua.

Biography

Origin and path to the priesthood

Cardenal comes from a very wealthy family of Spanish origin. Pedro Joaquín Chamorro is his cousin. He first attended school in Léon, then returned but as a student of the Jesuit college to Granada back. In this time already fell first literary attempts - mostly elegiac love poems.

From 1942 to 1946 he studied philosophy and literature at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma of Mexico, then to 1949 at Columbia University in New York. Between 1949 and 1950 he traveled to Italy, Spain and Switzerland. In the late 1950s he joined yet a theology studies in Mexico and Colombia.

Cardenal had continued as a student his literary work, where he was close to the poet circle around Coronel Urtecho and Martinez Rivas. Politically engaged, he participated in during his studies in revolutionary movements. After a trip to Europe in 1952 he returned to Nicaragua back, where he continued his literary work and found in 1952 after the opposition youth movement UNAP. In 1954, he participated actively in the April revolution against dictator Anastasio Somoza García, who was betrayed prematurely and ended with the death of many of his friends. Cardenal escaped with difficulty a massacre of the dictator Somoza, against whom he had fought with literary agents, partly with an insulting poem about his father, "Tacho " Somoza.

In 1956 he had to leave the country. In 1957 he entered the Trappist monastery in Kentucky Gethsemany. He was accompanied for two years from the poet-monk Thomas Merton as novice master. In the monastery his book Vida en el amor (1959, dt 1971, The Book of Love) was born. In 1959, he broke out for health reasons from his novitiate and left Gethsemany.

Then Cardenal spent two years visiting the Benedictine Abbey of Santa Maria de la Resurreciôn in Cuernavaca ( Mexico). He studied Catholic theology - among others Ivan Illich. From 1961 he led this study continued in Medellin (Colombia ), where he later worked as a teacher at the Seminario de Cristo Sacerdote of La Ceja. During this time he wrote the Salmos (1969; German 1979 Psalms), are still recognized as the poetic basis of liberation theology and are later translated into about 20 languages.

Ernesto Cardenal in 1965 was ordained a priest in Managua.

In Solentiname

Half a year later Cardenal founded together with the writer William Agudelo an aligned according to early Christian conceptions municipality on the island Mancarron in Solentiname group of the Great Lake of Nicaragua. There he wrote his most famous book in Germany: The Gospel of the farmers of Solentiname (1975, German 1977). In 1970 he went for several months to Cuba, where his Cuban Diary ( 1972 German, 1980) was born. In 1973 he visited the Federal Republic for the first time.

On October 13, 1977, he occupied with a group of farmers from Solentiname the barracks of the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua from San Carlos. The facilities in Solentiname were destroyed shortly thereafter by the soldiers Somoza. Cardenal went to Costa Rica into exile and joined the Sandinista Liberation Front FSLN.

Back in Nicaragua until the end of political career

On July 19, 1979, the date of the victory of the Nicaraguan revolution Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Cardenal returned to Nicaragua and was appointed minister of culture of the new Sandinista government. He sat down for a "revolution without vengeance " and initiated a comprehensive literacy campaign for almost 70 % illiteracy in the country.

In March 1983 Cardenal was reprimanded by Pope John Paul II in Managua in public. In the Pope's visit to Nicaragua previously Sandinistas had shouted down the pontiff in his homily loudly. By early 1985 he was suspended from Pope John Paul II for his political activities in the FSLN from his post as a Catholic priest. Cardenal never sought a reversal of this ecclesiastical sanctions. His brother, Jesuit Father Fernando Cardenal, who had come in as Minister of Education in the Nicaraguan government in July 1984, was expelled in December 1984 the Jesuit order.

As the East- Berlin municipal authorities in 1985 in search of a Nicaraguan artist for the production of a mural was struck Cardenal - then Minister of Culture of Nicaragua - the national winners of Naive Art in Nicaragua, Manuel García Moia ago.

By 1987, Ernesto Cardenal had held the office of Minister of Culture. Then the Ministry was - allegedly for reasons of cost - resolved. Cardenal was engaged at the time of the FSLN rule together with his brother Fernando and other Catholics and Protestants in the left-wing People's Church ( iglesia popular ) and presented its most famous leading figure abroad, mainly in Germany, dar.

In 1988 he founded with Dietmar Schönherr the international culture and development project Casa de los tres mundos in Granada. In 1990, the electoral alliance UNO ( Unión Nacional Opositora ) under the leadership of Violeta Chamorro, the parliamentary elections. In the new government, the moderates of both parties cooperated with each other.

Ernesto Cardenal left the FSLN in 1994, in protest against what it considers to authoritarian rule of Daniel Ortega. He turned at the same time clear that he continues to understand as " Sandinista, Marxist and Christian."

After the end of political career

In January 1998, a warrant of arrest for breaching the peace, theft, criminal damage and membership in a criminal organization has been issued against him, but canceled again soon. The occasion was the alleged "occupation" of property by members of the Foundation led by Cardenal " Association for the Development of Solentiname ".

After retiring from active party work, Cardenal focused back on his lyrical work. In addition to the U.S., he is V.A. in Germany on the way to present his work. A large fragmentary poem cycle he laid in the early 1990s before the work Cántico Cósmico, which appeared in 1995 under the title songs of the universe in German language. Just a few years after its publication, the work by many as a milestone in Latin American literature was appreciated.

After a European tour in 2008, Cardenal had to return to his homeland to cancel because there threatened him a penalty. According to the German PEN Centre Cardenal office management and lifestyle of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega had publicly criticized. He was then sentenced in the resumption of a process set in 2005 for libel to pay a fine, but refused to pay this, which is why the accounts of the writer have been locked in a row. In the debate, numerous artists and politicians expressed their solidarity with Cardenal.

Cardenal is engaged in various social initiatives. With his friend Dietmar Schönherr he continues to support Casa de los tres mundos. With Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he maintained friendly relations. In Germany its popularity grew through his reading travels with the musicians of Grupo Sal

Awards and honors

Works (selection)

• Cut up the barbed wire. South American Psalms. With an afterword by Dorothee kettle holes. Wuppertal 1967
• The book of love. Latin psalms. Gütersloh 1971
• Prayer for Marilyn Monroe and Other Poems. Afterword: Kurt Marti. Wuppertal 1972
• In Cuba. Report of a trip. Wuppertal 1972
• The Gospel of the farmers of Solentiname. 2 volumes, Wuppertal 1976/78; New edition, 1991, ISBN 3-87294-163-1
• Meditation and resistance. Documentary texts and new poems. Foreword by Helmut Gollwitzer. Gütersloh 1977
• At night the lights words. Poems. Berlin 1979
• Poems. Spanish and German. Suhrkamp (BS 705), Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-518-01705-5
• The poetic work. Nine volumes. Wuppertal 1985-89
• We are stardust. New poems and selection from the factory. Wuppertal 1993, ISBN 3-87294-537-8
• Songs of the Universe - Canticle Cosmico. 2 vols. Wuppertal 1995, ISBN 3-87294-549-1
• With love fill this blue planet. Wuppertal 1998, ISBN 3-87294-804-0
• Memories. 3 volumes: 1: Lost life. Wuppertal 1998, ISBN 3-87294-803-2
• 2: The years in Solentiname. Wuppertal 2002, ISBN 3-87294-917-9
• 3: In the heart of the revolution. Wuppertal 2004, ISBN 3-7795-0013-2