Eric Koch
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Eric Otto Koch (31 August 1919 – 28 April 2018) was a German-born Canadian author, broadcaster and academic.


Life

Koch was born in 1919 into a prominent assimilated
German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321 CE, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish commu ...
family. His grandfather was a court
jeweller A bench jeweler is an artisan who uses a combination of skills to make and repair jewelry. Some of the more common skills that a bench jeweler might employ include antique restoration, silversmithing, goldsmithing, stone setting, engraving, ...
and his father, Otto, was an officer in the
German Army The German Army (, 'army') is the land component of the armed forces of Federal Republic of Germany, Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German together with the German Navy, ''Marine'' (G ...
during
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
who died during routine surgery while Koch was still an infant. The young Erich Koch was renamed Otto in memory of his father. In 1935, after the Nazis took power, he was sent by his family to
boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...
in England, where he was enrolled at Cranbrook School in
Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...
before enrolling at St. John's College, Cambridge, to study economics and then law.Eric Koch fonds Biographical Sketch
York University Archives and Special Collections
In 1940, he and other Germans resident in Britain were detained as
enemy alien In customary international law, an enemy alien is any alien native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secur ...
s. Koch was deported to Canada where he remained at an internment camp in
Sherbrooke, Quebec Sherbrooke ( , ) is a city in southern Quebec, Canada. It is at the confluence of the Saint-François and Magog rivers in the heart of the Estrie administrative region. Sherbrooke is also the name of a territory equivalent to a regional count ...
until 1941 when he and most of his fellow internees were recognised by the government as "victims of Nazi aggression" and released. His mother, who had escaped Germany before war broke out, contacted the Birks family in Montreal, jewellers who were friends of the Koch family, and put him in their care. His guardians suggested he change his name from Otto as it was too German a name to have in wartime and so Koch anglicized his original name of Erich to Eric. Having been granted his economics degree by Cambridge in absentia, Koch resumed his studies at the
University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...
where he completed his law degree, paying for his education by writing articles for an encyclopedia. After completing university in 1943, Koch found work teaching French at
Appleby College Appleby College is an international independent school (grades 7–12) located in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, founded in 1911 by John Guest, a former Headmaster of the Preparatory School at Upper Canada College. Guest dreamed of establishing a sma ...
for two terms, and then worked as a writer for '' Saturday Night'' magazine. In 1944, he was recruited to join the German Section of the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...
's new International Service broadcasting programmes from
Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...
to Germany, initially as part of Canada's
psychological warfare Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), has been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations ( MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Mi ...
campaign during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
and subsequently as part of efforts to educate Germans in democracy. Koch remained with the CBC for 35 years, eventually moving to the domestic English language service of CBC and serving from 1953 to 1967 as a member of the Department of Talks and Public Affairs in Toronto. In the 1960s, he was a producer of the CBC-TV talk show ''
Take 30 ''Take 30'' (also expressed as ''Take Thirty'') was a Canadian television newsmagazine series, which aired on CBC Television from 1962 to 1984 for 2,500 episodes. An afternoon series originally designed as a "women's show", the series gradually ev ...
'' and hired future
Governor General of Canada The governor general of Canada () is the federal representative of the . The monarch of Canada is also sovereign and head of state of 14 other Commonwealth realms and resides in the United Kingdom. The monarch, on the Advice (constitutional la ...
Adrienne Clarkson Adrienne Louise Clarkson ( zh, c=伍冰枝; ; born February 10, 1939) is a Canadian journalist and stateswoman who served as the 26th governor general of Canada from 1999 to 2005. Clarkson arrived in Canada with her family in 1941, as a refuge ...
as a reporter for the show. In 1964, he became the supervising producer of the groundbreaking and controversial current affairs programme ''
This Hour Has Seven Days ''This Hour Has Seven Days'' was a CBC Television public affairs program that ran from 1964 to 1966, offering viewers in-depth analysis of the major social and political stories of the previous week. The show, inspired by the BBC and NBC-TV s ...
'', later writing a book about the program. He was promoted in 1967 to Area Head, Arts and Science and was responsible for the creation of a large number of radio and television programmes. Among the people he hired were
Barbara Amiel Barbara Joan Estelle Amiel, Baroness Black of Crossharbour, DSS (born 4 December 1940), is a British-Canadian conservative journalist, writer, and socialite. She is married to former media proprietor Conrad Black. Early life and career Amiel wa ...
and
David Suzuki David Takayoshi Suzuki (born March 24, 1936) is a Canadian academic, science broadcaster, and environmental activist. Suzuki earned a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961, and was a professor in the genetics department at the ...
. From 1971 to 1977, he served as regional director in Montreal. He retired from the CBC in 1979 in order to focus on writing books and teaching at
York University York University (), also known as YorkU or simply YU), is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, ...
, where he was a course director in the Social Science Division and taught a course on The Politics of Canadian Broadcasting for 18 years, into his eighties. Koch was also on the board of directors of the Couchiching Conference for many years, especially involved in organizing the annual conferences. He published his first novel at the age of 50, ''The French Kiss'', about
Charles de Gaulle Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free France, Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Re ...
and
Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
, and over the next 48 years went on to write a total of 15 novels in English, one novel in German, a play, varying in genre from
satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...
to
historical fiction Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the Setting (narrative), setting of particular real past events, historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literatur ...
, and five works of non-fiction.Biography
erickoch.ca
''Hilmar and Odette'', the story of two of his half-Jewish relatives who remained in Germany during World War II and their contrasting fates, was awarded the Yad Vashem Prize for Holocaust Writing in 1996. His historical fiction has been set in the recent German past, particularly the period from the late 19th century and into the
Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...
, and has been published in Germany as well as Canada. Koch died in April 2018 at the age of 98, on the day his final novel, ''Beethoven’s Locket'', was launched.The Globe and Mail (Prairie Edition): Eric Koch
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Works


Satirical fiction

* ''The French Kiss: A Tongue-In-Cheek Political Fantasy'' (1969) * ''The Leisure Riots'' (1973) * ''The Last Thing You'd Want to Know'' (1976) * ''Goodnight, Little Spy'' (1979)


Historical fiction

* ''Icon In Love: A Novel About
Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
'' (1999) * ''The Man Who Knew
Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...
'' (2000) * ''Earrings:
Baden-Baden Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the states of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos (river), Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the ...
1885'' (2002) * ''Premonitions: A novel'' (2008) * ''Arabian nights! 1914: a novel about
Kaiser Wilhelm II Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia from 1888 until his abdication in 1918, which marked the end of the German Empire as well as the Hohenzollern dynasty ...
'' (2010) * '' The Weimar Triangle'' (2010) *''Beethoven’s Locket'' (2018)


Science fiction

* ''Kassandrus'' (1988) * ''C.R.U.P.P.: Two Science Fiction Novels'' (1990; contains ''The Leisure Riots'' and ''The Last Thing You'd Want to Know'')


Non-fiction

* ''Success of a mission: Lord Durham in Canada'' (1961) * ''Deemed Suspect: A Wartime Blunder'' (1985) (biographical) * ''Inside Seven Days: The Show That Shook the Nation'' (1986) * ''Hilmar and Odette: Two Stories from the Nazi Era'' (1995) * ''The Brothers Hambourg'' (1997) * ''I Remember the Location Exactly'' (2010) (family history) * ''The Golden Years: Encounters with Glenn Gould, Marshall McLuhan, Lester B. Pearson, René Lévesque and John G. Diefenbaker'' (2013) * ''Otto and Daria: A Wartime Journey Through No Man's Land'' (2016) (biographical)


References


External links

* Hi
archival records
are preserved at
York University Libraries York University Libraries (YUL) is the library system of York University in Toronto, Ontario. The four main libraries and one archives contain more than 2,500,000 volumes. History The first York library opened in 1961 at Glendon College and ...
(F472)
Eric Koch's blog

YouTube channel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Koch, Eric 1919 births 2018 deaths People from Frankfurt 20th-century Canadian male writers 20th-century German novelists 21st-century Canadian male writers 21st-century German novelists Canadian male novelists Canadian radio personalities Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Canada German male novelists Jewish Canadian writers Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Academic staff of York University Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Novelists from Ontario