Wieland Herzfelde

Wieland Herzfelde (actually Herzfeld, born April 11, 1896 in Weggis, Switzerland, † November 23, 1988 in East Berlin ) was a German journalist, author and publisher. In 1916 he founded the legendary Malik -Verlag, who specialized in avant-garde art and Communist literature.

Life

Wieland Herzfeld (really Herzfeld ) was born as the third of four children of the writer Franz Held and his wife Alice Stolzenberg. He followed his older brother Helmut Herzfeld in 1914 to Berlin, where he studied German and Medicine. Since his youth he cherished the desire to be a writer and wrote her first poems at a young age. Since March 1914, he published his work under the name Wieland Herzfelde with attached " e", as he was called by Else Lasker-Schüler so. His artistic plans were interrupted in 1914. Herzfelde moved as a volunteer in the First World War. The experiences at the front shook him, and he decided in 1916 with his brother to bring out a magazine against the war. The first edition of the New Youth, was released the same year, but was banned the following year by the government.

From her 1917 finally went out of the Malik -Verlag, who had initially to the publication of politically sensitive magazines (including the bankruptcy, the enemies ) and specialized art portfolios of George Grosz. In the same year Herzfelde was discharged from the army.

His brother Helmut Herzfeld, who now called himself John Heartfield, was co-founder of the publishing house responsible for the extravagant design of publications. Gradually, the company converted from a magazine to a book publisher, became the mouthpiece of the Dada movement and supported his publications the Soviet Union.

Herzfelde used to many Berlin artists of the time personal contacts, among others, Count Harry Kessler, Else Lasker-Schüler or Erwin Piscator, who offered him in his work as well as financial moral support.

On 31 December 1918 the date of the founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD ), heart field, Grosz and Heartfield joined the union.

In the 1920s, the publishing house was through an art gallery, the Grosz Gallery, and extended a bookstore. In April 1921 Herzfelde and Grosz had to appear in court. It was about a process for insulting the Reichswehr, which the Defense Ministry had initiated. Occasion were exhibits from the First International Dada Fair of 1920: Grosz's portfolio God with us and the stuffed soldier with the pig's head, designed by Schlichter and Heartfield. The court imposed fines of RM 300 to RM 600 against Grosz and his publisher, Wieland heart field.

With the rise of Hitler, the publication of leftist books became impossible. Herzfelde hid with friends in front of the Gestapo and was last refuge with Rowohlt. In 1933 he fled to Prague, where he began publishing activity again. After the official closure of the Malik - Verlag in Berlin in 1934 by the Nazis, Herzfelde moved the seat of the house, for legal reasons, to London, but managed the publishing house continues from Prague. Here he began to move, works by Johannes R. Becher and Ilya Ehrenburg and publish together with Anna Seghers the journal New German music, which was directed against the brown barbarism in Germany. This period also saw the publication of the fell "Collected Works " by Bertolt Brecht.

Together with his brother he fled to London in 1938, received in 1939 a visa for the United States and eventually emigrated to New York. Here began the hardest time for the publisher and his family, as they all financial reserves and befriended donors had to start a whole new life without. Only five years after his arrival in America he could get his wish to found a publisher for German exile writers realize. The anti-fascist aurora -Verlag, he called together with Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Alfred Doblin, Heinrich Mann, Ernst Bloch, Ferdinand Bruckner, Oskar Maria Graf, Berthold Viertel, Ernst Waldinger and FC Weiskopf in 1944 to life. This, however, had to be closed two years later, as heart field was heavily in debt.

1949 returned to the publisher returned to Germany and became a professor of literature at the University of Leipzig. He wrote poems, stories, essays, and worked as a translator. After the return of John Heartfield in 1950 created stage sets and book layout. George Grosz also returned back to West Berlin in 1959, but died in the same year.

Wieland Herzfelde has remained committed to the principles of socialism, never got in the GDR as a publisher but the support and recognition that would have been due him. How many comrades who had sought refuge during the fascism in Western Europe or the U.S., he was temporarily excluded from the party. In the years 1952-1962 he devoted himself to the publication of the 14 -volume "Collected Works " by Leo Tolstoy.

Died in 1968, his brother John Heartfield. In the same year, the Academy of Arts hosted the exhibition " The Malik -Verlag ", with the reprint of the New Youth had a number of reprints of all Malik journals and selected books, according to. In West Germany the work of the publisher has been recognized by several exhibitions.

Awards and spheres of influence

From 1956 to 1970, Herzfelde President of the PEN Centre of East Germany and since 1961 a member of the Academy of Arts of the GDR. In 1959 he was awarded the Heinrich Heine Prize of the Ministry of Culture of the German Democratic Republic and in 1986 became an honorary citizen of Berlin, where he died on 23 November 1988. The tomb, as an honorary grave of Berlin on the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery, located in the department of CH. On November 23, 1995, a Berlin memorial plaque at his former home, Berlin -Weissensee, Woelckpromenade 5, attached.

Eponym

Wieland Herzfelde - secondary school (or high school) in Berlin- Weissensee. After merging with the Bühring High School in 2006, she was renamed Primo Levi High School in 2007.

Works

• Protective custody. Experiences from 7 to March 20, 1919 at the Berlin Rules troops. Malik, Berlin, 1919.
• Tragigrotesken night - dreams. Berlin:. Malik Verlag 1920 cover and drawings by George Gross (sic). ( Reprints in the Aufbau-Verlag Berlin, several editions 1972-1985 )
• George Grosz and Wieland Herzfelde: The art is in danger - Three essays. Berlin: Malik Verlag, 1925.
• Evergreen: strange experiences and adventures of a cheerful orphan boys. Berlin: Aufbau -Verlag, 1949.
• The stone sea: unusual events - stories. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1955 ( Island Library 599).
• Transit: sheets of 50 years. Berlin: Aufbau -Verlag in 1961.
• John Heartfield: Life and Work. Dresden: Verlag der Art 1962.
• To the point and written spoken between 18 and 80 Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag 1976.
• What you touch ... love poems. Illustrations by Werner Klemke. Private edition 200 copies. Berlin 1976.
• Blue and red: poems. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1971 ( Island Library 952).
• Wieland Herzfelde and Ernst Bloch: We have life again in front of us - correspondence 1938 - 1949 Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 2001, ISBN 3-518-58259-3. .
• Dear Comrade, the Maliks have decided ..., Wieland Herzfelde Hermynia for mills, Upton Sinclair, letters 1919 - 1950, Bonn 2001