Adolf Endler (20 September 1930 – 2 August 2009) was a lyric

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

, essayist and

prose Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures, or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting. Thus, prose ranges from informal speaking to formal academic writing. Prose differs most n ...

author who played a central role in subcultural activities that attacked and challenged an outdated model of socialist realism in the

German Democratic Republic East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

up until the collapse of

communism Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...

in the early 1990s. Endler drew attention to himself as the "father of the oppositional literary scene" at Prenzlauer Berg in the eastern part of Berlin. In 2005 he was made a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

Early life and career

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

as a young man, Endler moved to East Germany in 1955 and studied at the Johannes R. Becher Institute of Literature in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

from 1955–57. An acclaimed

, he was well respected in the East and West, but at the same time was marginalized and degraded by party functionaries who controlled the fields of cultural practice, conspired to guard their concepts of aesthetics, and went as far as to extend their influence into the writer's private life. Even though socialist realism had spread over most of Eastern European cultural life, it was successfully undermined by writers and artists like Endler. His defiance involved ignoring orders from cultural politicians and finding alternative ways of communicating with peers. In 1978 he coined the term Sächsische Dichterschule to describe the group of German writers who were born in the 1930s and were influential in the areas of poetry, such as, Karl Mickel, Heinz Czechowski, Sarah Kirsch and Volker Braun. This sentiment is shared by Michael Hamburger, who, before the group had been named, applauded those that they had been creative in an artistically hostile environment. Hamburger recorded the traffic of correspondence between individual poets -a secret project that held the young writers together in a state that promoted the exact opposite, i.e. the isolation of individual deviants. His colleague in exile, the Austrian Erich Fried (Fried and Hamburger went into exile in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

during Hitler's

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

), documented some of this writing for the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

in his review of the

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and g ...

In diesem besseren Land (1966). Into the seventies, Endler remained steadfastly confrontational. Following the expatriation from the GDR of songwriter Wolf Biermann in 1976, Endler was expelled from the Writers’ Association of the GDR in 1979, having declared his solidarity with his previously reprimanded colleague

Stefan Heym Helmut Flieg (10 April 1913 – 16 December 2001) was a German writer, known by his pseudonym Stefan Heym (). He lived in the United States and trained at Camp Ritchie in 1943, making him one of the Ritchie Boys of World War II. In 1952, he r ...

. Throughout the 1980s he contributed to various Berlin and

underground magazines. In the 1990s, Adolf Endler became known to a wider public through a volume of memoirs entitled Tarzan am Prenzlauer Berg (i.e. Tarzan at Prenzlauer Berg) and from 1991 to 1998, with Brigitte Schreier-Endler, he organised the legendary “Orplid&Co.“ readings in Café Clara in Berlin-Mitte. Mr. Endler died after a long illness.

Quotations

A lot of people connect liberalization with the fact that the GDR for international reason didn't want to have any trouble. The GDR wanted to be thought of in the international community as something very decent and without blemish. That was something we went along with. Our only means of power was to threaten to make an international fuss. If a book had been published in the west, and then the author had been sent to jail, there would have been a fuss. There must have been five hundred of us who had written letters or who had collected signatures. There weren't three hundred thousand people, but there were always ten or twenty thousand
refractory In materials science, a refractory (or refractory material) is a material that is resistant to decomposition by heat or chemical attack and that retains its strength and rigidity at high temperatures. They are inorganic, non-metallic compound ...
people who as a rule wanted to stay in the GDR, but who, out of some sort of defiance or whatever, weren't ready to put up with it. They weren't the people who had left because they were fed up to the teeth." -March 15th, 1992.

Quotes about

“He admired those who play with language like Kurt Schwitters and Alfred Jarry, astute minds like Karl Kraus and

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (; 1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German physicist, satirist, and Anglophile. He was the first person in Germany to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics. He is remembered for his p ...

and great epic writers like

François Rabelais François Rabelais ( , ; ; born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French writer who has been called the first great French prose author. A Renaissance humanism, humanist of the French Renaissance and Greek scholars in the Renaissance, Gr ...

and Hans Henny Jahnn. It was only after the political turnaround of 1989 that people noticed that he does not compare at all unfavourably with them – but not too late, thank goodness.” -Gregor Dotzauer, The Tagesspiegel (Berlin daily newspaper)

Works

*''Erwacht ohne Furcht, Gedichte 1960'' *''Weg in die Wische, Reportagen und Gedichte 1960'' *''Das Sandkorn, Gedichte, Mitteldeutscher Verlag 1974/1976'' *''Die Kinder der Nibelungen, Gedichte 1964'' *''In diesem besseren Land, Lyrik-Anthologie gemeinsam mit Karl Mickel 1966'' *''Nackt mit Brille, Gedichte 1975'' *''Zwei Versuche, über Georgien zu erzählen, Reisebericht 1976'' *''Verwirrte klare Botschaften, Gedichte 1979'' *''Nadelkissen, Prosa 1980'' *''Akte Endler, Gedichte aus 30 Jahren 1981/1988'' *''Tarzan am Prenzlauer Berg, Tagebuch 1984'' *''Ohne Nennung von Gründen, Prosa 1985'' *''Schichtenflotz, Prosa 1987'' *''Nächtlicher Besucher, in seine Schranken gewiesen. Eine Fortsetzungszüchtigung, Berliner Handpresse, Berlin 1989. Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, '' *''Vorbildlich schleimlösend, Prosa 1990'' *''Den Tiger reiten, Essays 1990'' *''Die Antwort des Poeten, Roman 1992'' *''Tarzan am Prenzlauer Berg. Sudelblätter 1981–1993, Reclam Leipzig, Leipzig 1994, '' *''Warnung vor Utah, Reisebuch 1996'' *''Der Pudding der Apokalypse. Gedichte 1963–1998, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main 1999, '' *''Trotzes halber, Gedichte 1999'' *''Das Greisenalter, voilà 2001'' *''Schweigen Schreiben Reden Schweigen. Reden 1995–2001, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main 2003, '' *''Uns überholte der Zugvögelzug. Alte und neue Gedichte, UN ART IG, Aschersleben 2004, '' *''Nebbich. Eine deutsche Karriere, Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, '' *''Krähenüberkrächzte Rolltreppe. Neunundsiebzig kurze Gedichte aus einem halben Jahrhundert, Wallstein, Göttingen 2007 '' *''Nächtlicher Besucher, in seine Schranken gewiesen. Eine Fortsetzungs-Züchtigung, Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, (editierte Neuauflage)''

Literary awards

*1978: Literatur-Förderpreis zum Kunstpreis der Akademie der Künste West-Berlin (Academy of the Arts, West Berlin) *1990: Heinrich-Mann-Preis der Akademie der Künste Ost-Berlin (Academy of the Arts East Berlin) – together with Elke Erb *1994: Brandenburgischer Literaturpreis *1995: Kritikerpreis der SWF-Bestenliste (Critics Award of the SWF Leaderboard) *1995: Brothers Grimm Prize of the City of Hanau *1996: Rahel Varnhagen von Ense-Medaille – together with Brigitte Schreier-Endler *1998: Ehrengabe der Deutschen Schillerstiftung (German Schiller Foundation) *2000: Peter Huchel Prize *2000: Literature Prize of the City of Bremen *2001: Bundesverdienstkreuz 1st Class *2003: Hans-Erich Nossack Prize *2008: Rainer Malkowski Prize jointly with Kurt Drawert

References

External links

Texte und Hörtexte von Adolf Endler
bei lyrikline.org {{DEFAULTSORT:Endler, Adolf 1930 births 2009 deaths Writers from Düsseldorf Writers from the Rhine Province East German writers Writers from North Rhine-Westphalia Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany German male poets 20th-century German poets German-language poets Members of the German Academy for Language and Literature 20th-century German male writers