Johannes Robert Becher

Becher, Johannes Robert (Munich, 1891-1958, Berlin), the son of a Bavarian judge, revolted in adolescence against his upper-middle-class environment, and, while studying medicine and philosophy in Berlin, Munich, and Jena, began to write poetry; encouraged by R. Dehmel and initially influenced by W. Bonsels, G. Heym, and J. van Hoddis, he became an Expressionist writer (see Expressionismus) and from 1912 contributed to a number of periodicals, including Die Aktion. His first attempt, the ‘Kleist-Hymne’ Der Ringende (1911), was followed by the collections Die Gnade eines Frühlings (1912), De Profundis Domine (1914), and the volume of poetry and prose (influenced by Walt Whitman), Verfall und Triumph (2 pts., 1914); its title derives from the poem Toten-Messe, which is dedicated to the memory of Fanny Fuß, a woman whom Becher at the age of 19 shot and fatally wounded in an alleged suicide pact before inflicting a serious wound upon himself. In November 1910 he wrote to Dehmel that his survival had strengthened his resolve to become a poet.

In 1914 he refused military service and two years later published his most significant Expressionist volume, An Europa. Neue Gedichte (1916), which he introduced with a passionate appeal for peace; in the same year appeared the collection Verbrüderung (1916). In 1918 he joined the Spartacists (see Spartakusbund) and in 1919 the Communist Party. A few years later he recalled his change to political commitment in the sonnet ‘Die Partei’: ‘Was wär ich, ohne daß mich die Partei / In ihre Zucht genommen, ihre strenge?! / Ein wilder Spießer, der mit Wutgeschrei / Sich selbst zerfetzt …’. Becher, who knew and had applauded Hasenclever's play Der Sohn, wrote on his childhood and youth in his autobiographical novel Abschied (1940).

Becher was a Communist deputy in the Reichstag when, in 1925, he was accused of high treason because of his collection of poetry Der Leichnam auf dem Thron (1925); the case, at first dropped, was reopened in 1927 after the publication of his anti-war novel Levisite oder Der einzig gerechte Krieg (1926). This time the proceedings were abandoned as a result of protests from other writers. In 1927 Becher attended the first International Congress of Revolutionary Writers in Moscow, and in the following year he became a co-founder and chairman of the Bund Proletarisch-Revolutionärer Schriftsteller (BPRS); from 1932 he was co-editor of Die rote Fahne. In 1933 he emigrated to Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, France, and, in 1935, to Moscow, where he edited the German edition of Internationale Literatur and in 1943 became one of the founders of the Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland. In 1945 he returned to Germany, settling in East Berlin and rising to prominence in the new Democratic Republic (see Deutsche Demokratische Republik). Until 1947 president of the Kulturbund, he founded the periodical Sinn und Form (with P. Wiegler) in 1949, when he wrote the national anthem (music by Hanns Eisler) and was awarded the Nationalpreis, the first of numerous honours. From 1953 to 1956 he was president of the Akademie der Künste, and from 1954 East Germany's first minister of culture.

Becher himself was aware that the decades of ideological commitment had produced few poems of distinction; he wrote with apparent ease, used conventional forms, and aimed to use communication in the service of his cause, which had absorbed his inherent spirituality. His numerous titles and collections include Ausgewählte Dichtung aus der Zeit der Verbannung 1933-1945 (1945). In 1941 he wrote his ‘German tragedy’ Winterschlacht, which had its first German performance in 1945 as Schlacht um Moskau (1953). Unable to accept the return to a divided Germany, he expressed years of longing for the country of his sentiments in poetry contained in Heimkehr (1946), Schöne deutsche Heimat (1952), and Deutsche Sonette (1952), as well as in his ‘Nationalhymne’, which expressed the idea of a whole Germany and consequently was no longer sung to his words at official functions from the 1970s on. He attempted to revive the German folk-song by writing his own Neue deutsche Volkslieder (1950, with music by H. Eisler). But in 1952 he also published a selection of poetry by Hölderlin, one of the poets he most admired, and he used a title by Gryphius for a selection of 16th and 17th c. poetry, Tränen des Vaterlandes (1954); in his endeavour to preserve Germany's literary heritage he was influenced by his friend G. Lukács. Becher did not disguise further psychic crises (e.g. the poem ‘Verzweiflung’). A collection of his own love poetry from the years 1913 to 1956, Liebe ohne Ruh (1957), and Schritt der Jahrhundertwende (1958) are volumes published during his last illness. Although he saw it as a poet's foremost duty to serve the state, he knew of his need for individual self-expression; he sought to justify this with reference to his own nature poetry in his diary Auf andere Art so große Hoffnung (1951, ext. 1955 to include the year 1951). This informative volume was followed by Verteidigung der Poesie. Vom Neuen in der Literatur (1952), Poetische Konfession (1954), Macht der Poesie (1955), and Das poetische Prinzip (1957), all of which are known as his theoretical ‘Bemühungen’. To the latter title he appended reflections on his favourite form, the sonnet: Philosophie des Sonetts oder Kleine Sonettlehre.

Among numerous editions of Becher's work, Gedichte 1911-1918 (1973), ed. P. Raabe, deserves mention. Gesammelte Werke (18 vols.), ed. by the Johannes R. Becher Archiv der Deutschen Akademie der Künste, appeared 1966-81; publications following the unification of Germany include Der gespaltene Dichter. Johannes R. Becher. Gedichte, Briefe, Dokumente 1945-1958 (1991), ed. with a preface by C. Gansel, and extensive correspondence, Briefe 1909-1958 and Briefe an Johannes R. Becher 1910-1958 (2 vols., 1993), ed. R. Harder et al.