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Tag: Hertha Muller

  • The Banat Action Group

    The Banat Action Group

    Romanian-born writer Herta Muller, who is a member of Romania’s ethnic German community, was granted the Nobel Prize in 2009, which put this community in the limelight in Romania, in particular the Banat Action Group (Aktionsgruppe Banat in German). This was a group of poets Herta Muller used to frequent when she was still living in Romania. Set up in Timisoara in 1972, it consisted of nine members: Rolf Bossert, Werner Kremm, Johann Lippet, Gerhard Ortinau, Anton Sterbling, Albert Bohn, Richard Wagner, Ernest Wichner and William Totok. The group was known for their eccentric literary output, which often clashed with the repressive communist regime of the day. William Totok recalls the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968 had a great impact on the members of the group, who were about 17 years old at the time:



    “The invasion came at a time when student movements were staging anti-authoritarian protests in the West. We believed it was possible to change the frozen socialist regime and make it more humane. This wasn’t only a propaganda slogan used by the politicians of the time, but a metaphor we all believed could be achieved in reality. For many people, 1968 was a decisive year. For us, this was the start of our literary activities. The 1970s, with their short-lived liberalisation, also had an impact on the ethnic German literature produced in Romania. 30 people made their debut in some of the publications issued by a number of high schools from Timisoara over two years. 10 of them continued to write for a long time afterwards. In 1972, most of these people had already gone to university. I met them in Timisoara, after finishing my military service. We were all trying to get published. The group was officially born in April 1972, at the headquarters of the Neue Banater Zeitung. After long discussions we signed a kind of protocol. The most prominent and the most active of us, whom we regarded as our ideologist and mentor, was Richard Wagner, who also got his first book published in 1973. The literature we wrote was fairly unambiguous. While we didn’t have any aesthetic or political programme, we agreed to come up with a kind of literature that was different from what had been written before, from proletarian literature. Our work was also different from the literature written by well-established ethnic German writers from Romania, trying instead to align ourselves to the trends in the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, as well as Austria. It was a challenge for us, a group of young people not yet in our mid 20s and claiming to be Marxist and trying to write Marxist literature. It was also a challenge for the country’s political police, the Securitate, which had never been confronted with such a phenomenon before, that is with writers who described themselves as Marxists and leftists. This is why they didn’t know how to react. They were probably thinking that being Marxists, we were on their side.”



    The Securitate was, however, keeping a close eye on these young people. 1974 saw the first and last mention of the collective term “the Banat Action Group” in the fourth issue of the Neue Literatur magazine. Unshelved by the Securitate, the publication cemented the reputation of the nine writers as producers of “formalist, negativistic and double-meaning texts” William Totok explains:



    “This issue set in motion an entire repressive campaign which culminated with our arrest in 1975 and the dismantling of the group. We were considered subversive and more dangerous than we really were. After 1977, what was left of the Action Group became part of the official literary community in Timisoara. At this time, our activity was in fact 15 times more serious than what we’d done before. We got unbelievable texts published in newspapers, anthologies and books published until 1984 or 1985, when we were banned from publishing.”



    Arrested and placed under investigation by the Securitate in 1975, the group’s members were released shortly afterwards, with the exception of William Totok, who remained in prison for nine more months. In the meantime, the Banat Action group had been dismantled. Its members stayed in the country until the mid-1980s, when they emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany, with the exception of Werner Kremm.

  • Nobelpreis für einen Banater

    Nobelpreis für einen Banater

    Hertha Müller und Stefan Hell: unterschiedliche Generationen, Berufe und wahrscheinliche komplett unterschiedliche Persönlichkeiten: die erste ist Schriftstellerin, der zweite Wissenschaftler — beide sind deutschsprachig, beide stammen aus dem rumänischen Banat und beide haben den Nobelpreis gewonnen.




    Stefan Hell und und die US-Wissenschaftler Eric Betzig und William Moerner wurden für die Entwicklung der hochauflösenden Fluoreszenz-Mikroskopie ausgezeichnet. Die drei haben es geschafft das optische Mikroskop in ein Nanoskop umzuwandeln. Das erlaubt die Beobachtung von Molekularprozessen in Echtzeit. Die Nanoskopie wird zur Zeit oft eingesetzt und bietet die nötigen Instrumente im Kampf gegen Krebs und andere unheilbare Krankheiten an. In einem Interview für das rumänische Rundfunk, berichtete Stefan Hell über seine Banater Wurzeln. Mit nur 15 Jahren, im Jahr 1978, wanderte er zusammen mit der Familie nach Westdeutschland aus. Stefan Hell:




    “1978 wanderte ich aus dem Banat, aus Rumänenien aus. Knapp 34 Jahre lang war ich nicht mehr da. Vor 2-3 Jahren habe uich wieder zusammen mit meiner Familie das Banat besucht. Es war eine schöne Erfahrung. Es war schön Arad und Sanktaana, wo ich aufgewachsen bin, wieder zu sehen. Die Leute könnten mich nicht verstehen, wenn sie nicht wüssten, dass ich aus Rumänien stamme.”




    Der Nobelpreis kommt nach vielen Jahren im Forschungsbereich in Deutschland, zuerst an der Heildelberger-Universität, dann beim Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie und Biophysik in Göttingen, wo er zur Zeit auch Direktor ist. Die Ausbildung in Rumänien sei gut gewesen, die Lehrer auch.




    Die Beziehung Hertha Müllers mit Rumänien war viel komplizierter. Eigentlich nicht mit dem Land, sondern mit den kommunistischen Behörden der Epoche, die ihr das Leben bis zur Auswanderung 1987 unerträglich gemacht haben. Hertha Müller wurde 1953 in Nitzkydorf, im Banat geboren. Als junge Schriftstellerin wollte sie mit der rumänischen Sicherheitspolizei nicht mitarbeiten. 1987 zog sie nach Westberlin. Sie hat über 20 Bücher veröffentlicht, die meisten wurden auch ins Rumänische übersetzt. Ihre Werke berichten von den Erfahrungen im Kommunismus. Die Autorin weigert sich ein Land oder eine Sprache zu wählen. Sie gibt jedoch zu eine Sensibilität für die rumänische Sprache zu haben.

  • Un nouveau Nobel pour le Banat

    Un nouveau Nobel pour le Banat

    Herta Muller et Stefan Hell. Une romancière et un chimiste. Deux générations, deux professions – et sans doute deux sensibilités différentes. Ils ont pourtant 3 choses en commun: la langue allemande de leur pays daccueil, l’Allemagne, leur pays dorigine, à savoir la région de Banat du sud-ouest de la Roumanie et un prix Nobel qui récompense leur travail.



    Cette semaine, Stefan Hell, aux côtés de deux autres savants, a reçu le Nobel de Chimie “pour le développement de la microscopie à fluorescence à très haute résolution”, a indiqué le jury dans son communiqué. Les trois chercheurs ont amélioré la puissance du microscope, lui permettant de voir lextrêmement petit en temps réel. Leur travail pionnier a fait entrer la microscopie optique dans la dimension nanométrique”, a encore souligné le jury. A présent, la nanoscopie est largement utilisée, offrant les instruments nécessaires aux progrès de la médecine dans la lutte contre le cancer et dautres maladies considérées comme incurables.



    Dans une interview accordée à la radiodiffusion roumaine, Stefan Hell avouait être fier de ses origines roumaines. Sa famille avait quitté la Roumanie lorsquil avait 15 ans, pour sétablir en Allemagne de lOuest. Stefan Hell:


    SON :”En 1978, nous avons émigré de Roumanie, du Banat. Je ny suis plus rentré pendant 34 ans. Il y a 2 ou 3 ans, ma famille et moi, nous sommes revenus au Banat. Ce fut une belle expérience. C’était très émouvant de revoir les villes dArad et de Sântana, où jai passé mon enfance. Les gens ne me comprendraient pas sils ne savaient pas que je provenais de Roumanie”, a conclu Stefan Hell.



    Pour Stefan Hell, le Nobel récompense un grand nombre dannées de recherche en Allemagne, dabord à lUniversité de Heidelberg, puis à lInstitut de Chimie et Biophysique “Max Planck” de Göttingen, dont il est l’actuel directeur. Il affirme que léducation reçue en Roumanie a été des meilleures, grâce à des enseignants exceptionnels, qui ont su éveiller son intérêt et sa passion pour la science.



    Pour sa part, la romancière Hertha Mueller a eu une relation beacoup plus compliquée avec la Roumanie. En fait, ce n’est pas un conflit avec le pays, mais avec le régime communiste de lépoque, qui a transformé sa vie en un calvaire jusquen 1987, lannée de son émigration en Allemagne. Née en 1953, à Niţchidorf, ville de la même région de Banat, doù provient Stefan Hell, la jeune écrivaine interdite Hertha Mueller est devenue victime des persécutions de la Securitate avec laquelle elle refusait de collaborer. En 1987 elle sétablit à Berlin – Ouest. Elle écrit plus dune vingtaine de livres, la plupart traduits en roumain et parus en Roumanie. “Face à la peur de la mort, ma réaction fut une soif de vie. Une soif de mots. Seul le tourbillon des mots parvenait à formuler mon état”, racontait en 2009 Herta Muller, lors de la traditionnelle lecture précédant la cérémonie officielle de remise du prix Nobel. Un prix qui la récompensait, pour avoir «avec la densité de la poésie et la franchise de la prose, dépeint lunivers des déshérités», et sublimé le trauma de son expérience de lépoque communiste. Un univers marqué par les interrogatoires, les humiliations, les calomnies, la marginalisation et la peur de la mort.



    Cest peut – être pourquoi cette femme écrivain refuse de se revendiquer un pays ou une langue, préférant appartenir exclusivement à elle-même. Herta Muller reconnaît néanmoins avoir une grande sensibilité pour la langue roumaine, dont les métaphores sont plus sensuelles à son avis et vont droit au but. (aut Stefan Stoica, trad. Valentina Beleavski)

  • Nobel for a Romanian-Born Scientist

    Nobel for a Romanian-Born Scientist

    Hertha Mueller and Stefan Hell: different generations, different professions and probably different sensibilities; the first, a writer, the second a man of science. The two, however, are linked by their ethnicity, as ethnic Germans born in the region of Banat, in southwestern Romania, and by the fact that they are both recipients of the Nobel Prize. Stefan Hell has just received the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry, alongside another two scientists, for outstanding accomplishments in the field of microscopy and super-resolution.



    The three have managed to turn an optic microscope into a nano-scope, which allows the study of molecular processes in real time. Currently, nanoscopy is used on a wide scale and it provides the necessary instruments for the progress of medicine in the fight against cancer and other incurable diseases. In an interview to the public radio station, Stefan Hell said he was proud of his Romanian origin, although at the age of only 15 he and his family left Banat to settle in Western Germany. Stefan Hell:



    “We emigrated from Banat, Romania, in 1978 and I stayed away for 34 years. Two or three years ago I went back to Banat with my family. It was nice to see again Arad and Santana, where I grew up. People would not understand me if they didn’t know I come from Romania.”



    Stefan Hell says the Nobel Prize came after long years of research in Germany, first at Heidelberg University, then at the “Max Planck” institute for Chemistry and Biophysics in Gottingen, whose director he currently is. He believes that the education he got in the country was very good, that he had very good teachers, who fuelled his interest in and passion for science.



    Hertha Muellers’ relationship with Romania was a little more complicated; actually it was not the relationship with the country as such, but with the communist authorities of the time. Born in 1953 in Nitchidorf, in the same region of Banat, the young and intransigent writer Hertha Mueller refused any collaboration with the political police, the Securitate, and as such became a victim of the regime. In 1987 she settled in West Berlin. She has published over 20 volumes, most of them translated into Romanian.



    “In the face of death, my reaction was an unquenched thirst for life and words. It was only the whirl of words that would manage to express how I felt”, Hertha Mueller recalled in 2009, during the traditional reading session that precedes the awarding of the Nobel Prize. The distinction came as a reward for a prose depicting a picture of uprooting and otherness, which sublimates the trauma suffered during the communist regime, with all its interrogations, humiliation, marginalisation and fear of death. The author refuses to claim one country or one language, choosing to belong exclusively to herself. Hertha Muller admits, though, that she feels a certain a special connection with the Romanian language, in which metaphors are more sensual and more to the point.