Anna Seghers

Seghers, Anna (Mainz, 1900-83, Berlin), pseudonym of Netti Radványi, née Reiling, and the name by which she is publicly known. She studied history, Sinology, philology, and history of art in Heidelberg and Cologne, writing her doctoral thesis on Jude und Judentum im Werk Rembrandts (1924, publ. 1981). In 1928 she became a member of the Communist Party and in the following year joined the Internationale Vereinigung revolutionärer Schriftsteller. In 1933 she was arrested, but fled to France, and in 1941 escaped to Mexico. Throughout these years in exile she helped fellow writers, attended the International Congress of Writers, worked for a time for the Neue Deutsche Blätter and, in Mexico, for the periodical Freies Deutschland, the organ of an anti-fascist movement; she was also president of the Heine-Club. In 1947 she returned to East Germany, and in that year was awarded the Büchner Prize; from 1952 to 1978 she was president of the Schriftstellerverband. Her numerous honours included the Nationalpreis, which she received three times. Anna Seghers was a remarkably gifted writer whose best work, most of it written in exile, reflects her deep humanity and sense of justice.

Proposed by H. H. Jahnn, she received the Kleist Prize for her early stories Grubetsch and Der Aufstand der Fischer in St. Barbara (1928), then turned to novels, of which Das siebte Kreuz (1942) earned her international acclaim; it has remained unsurpassed as a work symbolizing the martyrdom of the victims of fascist persecution. Her other outstanding novel, Transit (1944 in English, 1948 in German), was mainly written in Marseilles after her flight from Paris before the advancing German troops. Against this background it shows on different levels of experience the trauma of emigration. ‘Transit’ implies the fight for survival, largely dependent on chance, but it also comes to symbolize the fascist age which, having claimed its victims on land and sea, will be followed by a new dawn in the homeland. The same spirit and subtle interplay of realism and serene irony characterizes, on a more limited scale, the overtly autobiographical story Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen (1944); in a state of reverie, the author returns to a school excursion, recalling her Jewish teacher and her classmates of bygone years, and tracing their subsequent lives and deaths during a regime which had tested the moral fibre of each of them. After Die Gefährten (1932), a work of solidarity with proletarian ideals, Der Kopflohn. Roman aus einem deutschen Dorf im Spätsommer 1932 (1933) is the first study on the rise of fascism and portrays extreme poverty, in a village community, as one of its causes. Der Weg durch den Februar (1935) moves to the abortive workers' rising in Vienna in 1934, and Die Rettung (1937) to the economic crisis before 1933 when workers united to resist fascism. The title-story of the collection Auf dem Weg zur amerikanischen Botschaft (1930), dealing with the effects of the execution in 1927 of the political agitators Sacco and Vanzetti in the USA, is likewise concerned with a recent event. Works centring on revolts and revolutions in historical contexts include the story Wiedereinführung der Sklaverei in Guadeloupe (1948, repr. 1989). Most of her numerous stories first appeared in periodicals and are contained in collections published in East Germany; these include Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen (1948), Die Linie (1950), Die Kinder (1951), Brot und Salz (1958), Karibische Geschichten (1962), Der Bienenstock (2 vols., 1953; 3 vols., 1963), Die Kraft der Schwachen (1965), Der Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara. Die Gefährten. Das wirkliche Blau (1968), Sonderbare Begegnung (1973), and Drei Frauen aus Haiti (1980). Of the late stories, Überfahrt (1971), dealing with the conflict of love with the (greater) claims of the socialist community, should be noted for its skilful structure. The interplay of different perspectives is a remarkable feature of Seghers' best prose.

Her extensive socialist Zeitroman Die Toten bleiben jung (1949), written in exile though revised before publication, weaves the story of individuals into a picture of Germany between the November Revolution of 1918 and 1945. It was followed by Die Entscheidung (1959) and Das Vertrauen (1968), on the years from 1947 to 1951 and 1953, to form a trilogy also known as ‘Deutschlandromane’. The last is especially strong in its support for the government during the workers' rising in June 1953. Seghers' personal preoccupation with socialist realism (see Sozialistischer Realismus) goes back to the 1930s, to meetings of the Internationaler Schriftstellerkongreß and to her contact with Georg Lukács, in which she maintained that to be creative, narrative art cannot proceed from restrictive normative guidelines, only from a conception of social and historical reality that includes areas of experience deriving from a writer's own intuitive vision. In Aufgaben der Kunst (1944) she arrives at a synthesis between ‘Aufklärung’ (rationality) and ‘Intuition’, which she also applies to the treatment of myth, for example in Sagen von Artemis (1938). Notably in Die Toten bleiben jung her approach owes much to Tolstoy (Über Tolstoi. Über Dostojewski, 1962). Über Kunst und Wirklichkeit (4 vols., 1970-9), ed. with introduction by S. Bock, includes a discussion with Christa Wolf, whom Anna Seghers influenced and who wrote the postscript to the collection Glauben an Irdisches. Essays aus vier Jahrzehnten (1970). Briefe an Leser appeared in 1970; correspondence with Wieland Herzfelde: Gewöhnliches und gefährliches Leben. Ein Briefwechsel aus der Zeit des Exils, 1939-1946 in 1986; Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben (14 vols.) 1975-80, and Werke in zehn Bänden in 1977.