Stefan Heym was born as Helmut Flieg in Chemnitz on April 10, 1913. When in 1931, he published an antimilitarist poem in a Chemnitz newspaper, he was expelled from the local high school. His parents sent him to Berlin to finish his schooling. Here he got in contact with the pacifist and editor of Die Weltbühne Carl von Ossietzky, and wrote articles for the magazine. As a young man, being a Jew, he did not see any future in a racist Germany. The Reichstag fire in 1933 eventually triggered his escape to Prague.
When in 1935, he received a grant from a Jewish student association, he went to the United States to continue his academic studies at the University of Chicago. He completed them in 1936, writing a master's thesis on Heinrich Heine. Between 1937 and 1939, he worked in New York as Editor-in-Chief of the German-language weekly Deutsches Volksecho, a left-leaning paper for German immigrants.
When after the outbreak of the Second World War, the weekly ceased publication, Heym continued as a freelance author writing in English. As such, he met the Chicago writers around Nelson Algren (The Man with the Golden Arm) and married the dramaturge for film production and member of the Communist Party of the USA, Gertrude Gelbin. In 1942 Heym had his breakthrough with his first novel, Hostages, describing the situation in Czechoslovakia under the Nazi occupation. The book was made into a movie.
As an American citizen, he served in a unit for psychological warfare during the war and participated in the 1944 Normandy landings. His team composed texts designed to influence Wehrmacht soldiers to desert. After the war, Heym became editor in Munich of the Neue Zeitung, one of the most important newspapers of the American occupying forces.
Because of his pro-Soviet inclinations, Heym was transferred back to the US towards the end of 1945 and was discharged because of a "pro-communistic" mindset.
In the following years, he again worked as a freelance author, but in 1952 he, as a left-leaning intellectual, left the US during the McCarthy era, as did Charlie Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht, and Thomas Mann. Following a short stay in Prague, he eventually settled in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Heym initially received privileged treatment in the GDR as a returning antifascist emigre living with his wife in a state-provided villa in Berlin-Grünau. Its owners had just fled to the West. In April 1953, he celebrated his entry into the First German Workers' and Farmers' State with an open renunciation of the US, accusing it of becoming a fascist state. At the same time, Heym returned his military insignia to his former Commander-in-Chief, President Eisenhower. Between 1953 and 1956, he worked at the Berliner Zeitung, thereafter primarily as a freelance author. In his early years in the GDR, Heym supported the regime with socialist novels and other works he wrote in English that were subsequently translated into German.
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| Heym as an intelligent (intelligence) Sergeant in occupied Germany (©gdw-berlin). |
Because of his pro-Soviet inclinations, Heym was transferred back to the US towards the end of 1945 and was discharged because of a "pro-communistic" mindset.
In the following years, he again worked as a freelance author, but in 1952 he, as a left-leaning intellectual, left the US during the McCarthy era, as did Charlie Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht, and Thomas Mann. Following a short stay in Prague, he eventually settled in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Heym initially received privileged treatment in the GDR as a returning antifascist emigre living with his wife in a state-provided villa in Berlin-Grünau. Its owners had just fled to the West. In April 1953, he celebrated his entry into the First German Workers' and Farmers' State with an open renunciation of the US, accusing it of becoming a fascist state. At the same time, Heym returned his military insignia to his former Commander-in-Chief, President Eisenhower. Between 1953 and 1956, he worked at the Berliner Zeitung, thereafter primarily as a freelance author. In his early years in the GDR, Heym supported the regime with socialist novels and other works he wrote in English that were subsequently translated into German.
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| The first edition of The Lenz Papers published in East-Berlin in English with Heym's "special " Seven Seas Publisher (©Google) |
In 1964 his novel The Lenz Papers was published. This is how Stefan Heym became one of my literary heroes. In his book, he intelligently mixes historical facts with fiction. His fictitious hero Andreas Lenz is conversing with historic, revolutionary protagonists Gustav Struve, Johann Philipp Becker, Lorenz Brentano, and Armand Goegg and is in love with two fictional women, a down-to-earth Alemannic girl, and an intellectual Jew. When the Baden Revolution aborts, Lenz emigrates to the States, fighting as a 48er in the Civil War.
In the 1980s, Heym supported the civil rights movement in the GDR. His criticism of the communist regime was scorching, sarcastic, and to the point: I do not live in the GDR to keep my mouth shut.
*So why are American authors generally better at writing historical novels than German writers?
Seventeen years of exile in the US had shaped Heym's attitude and style and had changed his perspective. He was independent, incorruptible, and disobedient. Tensions between Heym and the communist regime arose when he wanted to publish a book on the June 17, 1953, uprising in East Germany: Five Days in June. When in 1976, he signed a petition protesting the exile of GDR-bard Wolf Biermann together with other GDR authors, the Union of Socialist Authors expelled him such that he was no longer allowed to publish in the East. From then on, he started to write in German and published in the West.
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| Andrew Lenz's tombstone at Arlington National Cemetery (©ARD-SWR) |
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| The television play in four parts (©ARD-SWR) |
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| Stefan Heym on Alexanderplatz on November 4, 1989 (©dhm) |
However, when it came to reforming the socialism practiced in the GDR, Heym raised his hand, intervened, made difficulties, and got difficulties. Highly gifted rhetorically, he was choleric, caustic, quick-tempered, ironical, stubborn, resistant, and wise but also naïve.
So we see him in Berlin at the mass demonstration on Alexanderplatz on November 4, 1989, demanding democratic socialism and discussing with demonstrators. Did he really think his idea of socialism would win the majority in a free election?
Following the Wende (turnaround) in the GDR, Heym sought a mandate in the Bundestag (parliament). In the 1994 all-German elections, he won a seat for the post-communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). So it happened that he, as the oldest deputy (age 81), tradition obliges, had the honor of opening the first session of the 13th legislative term of the Bundestag before the Bundestagspräsidenten (speakers) were elected.
Has Stefan Heym become, in addition to one of my literary heroes, a political hero too? For me, he was too much of a utopian, naïvely believing in the good in man, dreaming and writing of an ideal socialist republic as in his novel Schwarzenberg of 1984.
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| Stefan Heym during his inaugural speech at the 13th Bundestag in 1994 (©dpa) |
This November 10, 1994, will be remembered as one of the darkest chapters in the history of our parliament. Most of the deputies deprecated him, gave him the silent treatment, and simply ignored him.
But Heym was not silent, and he even was foresighted when he said: This Bundestag was elected in a period of crisis. This is not a cyclical but a structural crisis that will stay with us for a long time worldwide. How long will this world, the only one we have, tolerate mankind producing thousands of goods, and how are those distributed? As President Lincoln once said: You can fool all the people sometimes, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Mankind can only survive in solidarity. This presently means in our own country between East and West, but it also implies solidarity between above and below, rich and poor.
Concerning the structural crisis: After the Wende in Germany's East, whole industrial complexes were platt gemacht (phased out). As a result, the overall unemployment in Germany in 1994 was 8.4% but rose to nearly 10% in 1997. Moreover, the increase in the unemployment rate between 1994 and 1997 for the long-term unemployed was 24.1%, whereas, among the older persons, the increase was as high as 42.6%.
Solidarity in this world is still lacking. When a factory building collapses in Bangladesh, leaving more than 1000 people dead who worked for a breadline wage, we are shocked, but we like to buy our clothing cheaply.
But Heym was not silent, and he even was foresighted when he said: This Bundestag was elected in a period of crisis. This is not a cyclical but a structural crisis that will stay with us for a long time worldwide. How long will this world, the only one we have, tolerate mankind producing thousands of goods, and how are those distributed? As President Lincoln once said: You can fool all the people sometimes, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Mankind can only survive in solidarity. This presently means in our own country between East and West, but it also implies solidarity between above and below, rich and poor.
Concerning the structural crisis: After the Wende in Germany's East, whole industrial complexes were platt gemacht (phased out). As a result, the overall unemployment in Germany in 1994 was 8.4% but rose to nearly 10% in 1997. Moreover, the increase in the unemployment rate between 1994 and 1997 for the long-term unemployed was 24.1%, whereas, among the older persons, the increase was as high as 42.6%.
Solidarity in this world is still lacking. When a factory building collapses in Bangladesh, leaving more than 1000 people dead who worked for a breadline wage, we are shocked, but we like to buy our clothing cheaply.
Has Stefan Heym become, in addition to one of my literary heroes, a political hero too? For me, he was too much of a utopian, naïvely believing in the good in man, dreaming and writing of an ideal socialist republic as in his novel Schwarzenberg of 1984.
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| Stefan Heym in 2001, the year of his death (©dpa) |
This is fantastic!
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