Anna Seghers Biography and List of Works

German novelist, essayist, short story writer who is best remembered for her novels about the persecution of Jews and other groups in Nazi Germany. She gained international fame with her novels The Seventh Cross (1942) and Transit (1944), the story of a group of German refugees in southern France. Seghers's major themes are social injustice and the political upheavals of the modern age. Her pseudonym was taken from the Dutch painter and etcher Hercules Seghers (1589/90-1638), whose fantastic landscapes she admired while studying in Heidelberg. Seghers wrote her most significant books while in exile.

"Im Gefangenenlager, in der Schule hatte Lohmer gelernt, wir die Geschichte der Menschen geworden ist und die neue Gesellschaft, in der er jetzt lebt. Er hatte gelernt, warum die Sowjetunion die ist, die sie ist. All die Lügen, die Hitler ihnen eingebleubt hatte, waren dort von ihm abgefallen. Er war gesund und frei geworden, stark und klar."
(from Der Mann und sein Name, 1952)

Anna Seghers (pseudonym of Netty Radványi) was born in Mainz into a cultured Jewish family. Influenced by her father, an antique dealer and art expert, she exhibited an early interest in art. Seghers studied at the University of Heidelberg, and wrote her doctoral thesis on ASPECTS OF JEWS AND JEWISHNESS IN THE WORK OF REMBRANDT. While still a student, Seghers joined a group of left-wing intellectuals. In 1925 she married the Hungarian writer and sociologist Lászlo Radványi. In 1928 Seghers joined the Communist Party and the Union of Proletarian and Revolutionary Writers. In the same year she made her literary debut with the novella DER AUFSTAND DER FISCHER VON ST. BARBARA (The Revolt of the Fishermen), which tells of the spontaneous insurrection of Breton fishermen against a monopoly. Seghers's view is realistic without making the subject polemic. She paid close attention to details, reflecting the ideas of Neue Sachlichkeit (new factualism). In this story Seghers forms her key themes - people must work together to fight oppression and rebellion gives meaning to one's life, even in death. The book gained public acclaim and was awarded the Kleist Prize. In 1934 the work was filmed in Russia by the radical German theatre director Erwin Piscator (1893-1966).

In 1930 Seghers published a collection of short stories about poverty-stricken workers, AUF DEM WEGE ZUR AMERIKANIOSCHEN BOTSCHAFT, UND ANDERE ERZÄHLUNGEN, which illustrates her interest from Dostoevsky, to Georg Bücher. Releasing the revolutionary energy is a central theme in DIE GEFÄHRTEN (932) and DER WEG DURCH DEN FEBRUARY (1934) - the latter deals with the Engelbert Dollfuss uprising in Austria in 1934. Austrian Nazis assassinated Dollfuss, a World War I hero and politician, during their attempt at a coup d'etat. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Seghers's writings were prohibited and she was briefly arrested. She fled to France in 1933 with her family, joining the other German exiles. In 1934 she went to Vienna and during the civil war she was in Spain. She lived in Paris until the invasion of Northern France in 1940, whereupon she made her way to Marseilles, and eventually settled in Mexico in 19410. There she wrote her most famous work, DAS SIEBTE KREUZ (1942, The Seventh Cross).

The Seventh Cross was made into a successful Hollywood film, directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Spencer Tracy. The story depicts seven Germans, who escape from a concentration camp, and are pursued by the Gestapo. In the camp the Nazis set up seven crosses to wait for the refugees. Four of them are captured, the fifth dies naturally, the sixth loses his hope and returns to the camp, but the seventh cross remains empty. In the film Fred Zinnemann makes a strong statement about a cynic who regains hope when others risk their lives to save him. In the book Seghers employs firsthand knowledge and eyewitness reports of Nazi terror, and bundled together the parallel threads of plot to create a novel of many facets.

Seghers firmly believed that as a writer she could advocate the cause of the proletariat, but she became disillusioned when the German workers did not stop the Nazi takeover. After World War II Seghers returned to East Berlin. In 1946 DER AUSFLUG DER TOTEN MÄDCHEN was published, which draws upon material from her youth in a similar fashion as her later work DIE ÜBERFAHRTS (1971). DIE TOTEN BLEIBEN JUNG (1949, The Dead Stay Young) portrays martyred communists in a world of reactionaries and good revolutionaries. 'Sagen von Unirdischen', from the volume SONDERBARE BEGEGNIÚNGEN (1972) is a science fiction story, and the novella STEINZEIT (1975) concerns the psychological and physical self-destruction of an American Vietnam veteran.

Seghers participated actively in the cultural and political development of the new socialist state and was appointed vice-president of Kulturbundes zur demokratische Erneuerung Deutschland. From 1952 to 1978 she was the president of the writers' union. Seghers died in East Berlin on June 1, 1983.

Seghers believed that justice and humanistic culture could be built only on the grounds of socialism and communism. In the DDR Seghers devoted herself to developing a simpler, terser literary style in accordance with the canon of socialist realism. Later feminist critic has accused her of describing women in an essentially subordinate position to male heroes, who are seen as the primary agent for building a new socialist order. However, her stature has not been adequately recognized in the West after the fall of DDR. From the younger generation of writers, her work inspired among others Christa Wolf.

For further reading: Anna Seghers, ed. by F. Wagner et al (1994); Anna Seghers by C. Zehl Romero (1993); Anna Seghers im Exil by A. Stephan (1993); Anna Seghers by A. Schrade (1993); Anna Seghers by Kurt Batt (1980); The bourgeois proletarian by L.A. Bangerter (1980); Zu Anna Seghers by Christa Wolf (Sinn und Form, Oktober 1980); Der Kurs auf die Realität by F. Wagner (1978); Anna Seghers by K. Sauer (1978); Ideologie und Mythos by E. Haas (1975); Anna Seghers, Ihr Leben und Werk by H. Neugebauer (1970); - other studies by W. Buthge (1982); C. Degemann (1985); K.J. LaBahn (1985) - See also: Anne Fried

DER AUFSTAND DER FISCHER VON ST. BARBARA, (1928)
GESAMMELTE WERKE, (1951)
AUFSÄTZE, ANSPRACHEN, ESSAYS, (1927)
WAS EIN VOLK DENKT UND FÜHLT, SPRICHT SEIN SCHRIFTSTELLER AUS, (1982)
GEWÖHNLICHES UND GEFÄHRLICHES LEBEN, (1986)
DER GERECHTE RICHTER, (1990)
DER LETZTE MAN DER HÖHLE, (1994)