Wolfgang Harich

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Wolfgang Harich bigraphy, stories - Journalists

Wolfgang Harich : biography

03 December 1923 – 21 March 1995

Wolfgang Harich (3 December 1923 – 21 March 1995) was a philosopher and journalist in East Germany.

A deserter from the German army in World War II and a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Harich became a professor of philosophy at Humboldt University in 1949. He was arrested in 1956 and sentenced to eight years in prison for the "establishment of a conspiratorial counterrevolutionary group." He was released in 1964 and rehabilitated in 1990. In 1994 he joined the Party of Democratic Socialism.

His grave is preserved in the Protestant Friedhof III der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde (Cemetery No. III of the congregations of Jerusalem’s Church and New Church) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, south of Hallesches Tor.

Life

Wolfgang Harich was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, on 9 December 1923, into an upper-class literary educated family. His father was writer Walter Harich and his mother was Anne-Lise Wyneken, who was the daughter of Alexander Wyneken, editor in chief of the Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung.

Harich became known as one of the stronger voices in post war debates at a very young age in Germany. He had ruthless beliefs in uniting the war torn Germany. He studied philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin and, upon graduation, became professor of philosophy and taught at the same university. His strong voice eventually led him to be sentenced to imprisonment for ten years for conspiring. Although he only served eight years Harich was forced to be in solitary confinement for more than seven of those eight years, which took a large toll on his mental health, giving him severe depression and dizziness. He emigrated to Austria in 1979, moved to West Germany in 1980, and returned to the Besseres Deutschland or "Better Germany" in 1981. Although he had a heart attack in July 1960, he fought through it and recovered to continue his life until 15 March 1995, when he died at the age of 71.

Education

Harich studied philosophy at Humboldt University in East Berlin with Nicolai Hartmann and Eduard Spranger, graduating in 1951. He began giving lectures in 1949 on Marxist Philosophy, and in 1952 he became the University’s Professor of Philosophy. Before his final studies at Humboldt, he had entered the Kammer Der Kunst Schaffenden, Department of Creative Artists, in June 1945 as Paul Wegener’s personal assistant. This experience gave him the ability to become considered as one of Berlin’s best theater critics.

Literary work

Harich became accomplished and created a name for himself at a very young age. He followed in his father’s footsteps and became a Jean Paul scholar, writing two books dealing with Paul’s epistemology and poetic vision, which are arguably his finest scholarship. In 1946, he worked for the newspaper of the soviet occupation regime, Tagliche Rundshau; and he was also a journalist for the French-licensed daily Der Kurier. He had become editor-in-chief of the journal Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Philosophie with Arthur Baumgarten, Ernst Bloch, and Karl Schroter in 1953. In the same year, Harich also received the prestigious Heinrich Mann Prize for editing and journalism, conferred by the DDR Academy of Fine Arts. In somewhat accordance with his arrest, Der Spiegel wrote its cover story to Harich in 1956, stating that West German intellectuals regarded him highly and saying, "despite his youth, probably the only DDR intellectual capable of calling into question the current foundation of the communistic state, the doctrine of ice-hard Stalinism." They even called him "an intellectual phenomenon" and "a pure intellect on two feet." In the 1970s, Harich published Communism without Growth: Babeuf and the Club of Rome with Rowohlt Verlag, which argued that a neo-Stalinist state with dictatorial authority to enforce environmental standards could avert an ecological catastrophe.

Political views