The Modern Novel

Biography

Bienek was born in Gleiwitz (now Gliwice), in Upper Silesia in 1930. He has said that, at the age of thirteen, he remembers the Jews shipped off to Auschwitz while, at the age of fifteen, the Russians occupied Gleiwitz and set fire to it. At the age of sixteen, he had to leave the area for ever. At that time, Silesia straddled the German and Polish borders but is now mainly in Poland. He started his literary career in Berlin, studying at the Berliner Ensemble, where he met Brecht. In 1951, he took part in anti-Stalin demonstrations and was deported to the Soviet Union. He was sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment and he spent four years in the Vorkuta gulag. He was released after an amnesty and went to West Germany, living mainly in the Munich area. He cites several American authors as influences on his work, including Faulkner, McCullers, Thomas Wolfe, Capote and Pound (he made the last film of Pound). He died in 1990.

Though a first-class poet, he will be best remembered for his superb Gleiwitzer Tetralogie (Gleiwitz Tetralogy), a series of four novels set in his home town of Gleitwitz, during World War II. The first three focus on only one day (31 August, 1939, 4 September 1939 and Good Friday, 1943, respectively), while the final one is set during February 1945. Bienek is mainly concerned with the action and fates of the ordinary people of the town and how they try to continue their lives while the war carries on around them. His tetralogy is one of the great works of modern German literature.

Other links

Horst Bienek
Horst Bienek (in German)