Jurek Becker: A Life in Five WorldsJurek Becker, the author of the first comic novel on the Holocaust, Jacob the Liar, and other highly acclaimed works, was one of West Germany's most famous exiles from the GDR. A survivor of the Shoah-his mother died in a Nazi death camp-and witness to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, Becker endured most of the trials that Jews experienced in Europe from the onset of World War II to the end of the Cold War. In the first biography of this fascinating figure, Sander Gilman tells the story of Becker's life in five worlds: the Polish-Jewish middle-class neighborhood where Becker was born; the Warsaw ghetto and the concentration camps where Becker spent his childhood; the socialist order of the GDR, which Becker idealized, resisted, and finally was forced to leave; the isolated world of West Berlin, where he settled down to continue his writing; and the new, reunified Germany, for which Becker served as both conscience and inspiration. Gilman was close friends with Becker for nearly thirty years, and his biography is based on unprecedented access to both the man and his papers. As Gilman reveals, Becker's story encapsulates the fractured experience of life in twentieth-century Europe, a time and place in which political systems and national borders were constantly in flux. The life of Becker, we learn, was one of great literary achievement and notoriety, but it was also one of profound cultural dislocation. An important theme in the book is Becker's struggle with his Jewishness, an identity he repressed in socialist East Germany, but embraced after reunification, when he found himself at the center of Jewish culture and literature. Sander Gilman's story of Jurek Becker is biography of the highest order, a portrait of an extraordinarily gifted artist whose hope and courage are manifested in his legacy as one of the greatest German writers of the past century. |
Contents
1 Jurek in Lodz 19371939 | 1 |
2 Rumkowski the Ghetto King and Jerzy the Jewish Child 19391945 | 11 |
3 Georg in the Soviet Zone 19451949 | 22 |
4 Georg as a Young Communist in the German Democratic Republic 19491960 | 34 |
5 Jurek Becker as Georg Nikolaus Writes for the Movies 19601974 | 50 |
Photographs follow page 94 | 94 |
Common terms and phrases
Amanda anti-Semitism Arno asked Auschwitz became Becker Papers become Boxer Bundesarchiv camp child Christa Wolf Christine citizens communist critical cultural DEFA dissident East Elisabeth Borchers Ende des Grössen father February film Frank Beyer Frankfurt am Main Georg ghetto Grössen Wahns Günter Hager Hannah Hinstorff Holocaust Honecker Höpcke interview Jacob the Liar Jerzy Jewish Jewish identity Jews Jurek Becker Jurek wrote Klaus Kreuzberg Kurt Hager language leave the GDR Letter Liebling Kreuzberg literary literature Litzmannstadt living Lodz Manfred Krug Max's Misleading the Authorities Mordeha Nazi Nicki novel November October official party played Poland Polish political published radio Ravensbrück relationship Rieke role screenplay script seemed September Shoah Simrock Sleepless Days socialist Soviet Stasi Files XX/7 Stefan Heym story Suhrkamp survivor television told Union victim wall Walter wanted West Berlin West German Western Wolf Biermann writer Yiddish young Zeitung