Helmut Damerius

Helmut Damerius (16 December 1905 – 29 September 1985) was a German communist, theatre director, writer and the founding member of the Left Column, an agitprop theater group. As the Nazi Party gained in strength, he went into exile in Moscow, only to be arrested in the so-called Hitler Youth Conspiracy and sentenced to a long term in a Soviet prison. After his prison sentence, he was banished to Kazakhstan and was not permitted to move elsewhere. In 1956, he received permission to move to East Germany, where he stayed until his death.

Early years Damerius was born and raised in Berlin-Wedding. His mother was a florist and his father a gardener. After attending a volksschule, he apprenticed at a florist. and joined the Anarcho-Syndicalist Youth of Germany, a political party that was in existence from 1920 to 1933.

In 1924, Damerius joined the Communist Party (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, or KPD) and he and his wife had a baby, who died as a small child. They were divorced in 1927. In 1928, he was a member of the agitprop theater group Rote Blusen, led by Arthur Pieck. Damerius took this opportunity to emigrate to the Soviet Union.

Middle years in the USSR He began studying at the State Institute for Theater Arts in Moscow and he applied for citizenship in the Soviet Union. The Left Column returned to Germany, but discovered that they were prohibited from performing, so they returned to the Soviet Union, where they worked with the Workers' Youth Theatre, also known as "TRAM". Damerius led them both until 1933. and transferred to the State Institute for Theater Arts in Moscow, where he studied drama direction. He also consulted at the Mezhrabpom Film Studio and staged productions at the German Collectivists' Theater in Odessa. a newly opened labor camp housing up to 37,200 people in the Taiga, where he was made to do hard labor such as cutting down trees, and he suffered from hunger, exhaustion and the cold. The officer, Nikolai Mitrofanov, denied beating Damerius and even refused to acknowledge that the NKVD had ever practiced torture. He claimed that Damerius had incriminated himself because other prisoners who had been in custody longer had told him that this would expedite his case. |group=note He returned to working in theater, becoming the director of the Decorations Department of the Jambyl theater in 1955.

In 1956, Damerius was allowed to leave the Soviet Union for the German Democratic Republic (GDR), but was warned not to speak or write of his experiences in the Soviet Union, under strict threat of punishment.

Final years in the GDR After Damerius' return to the GDR, he became the head of the Concert and Guest Performance Direction, serving in that capacity from 1956 to 1960. From 1960 to 1961, he was the first director of the Artists' Agency, established to oversee and grant permission for East German artists to perform abroad and foreign artists to perform in East Germany. In 1960, he became head of the State Folk Art Ensemble in Berlin, retiring in 1963. From 1980 to 1982, he secretly worked on his memoirs, writing about the "years of his pointless arrest, the loss of the middle years of his life". He secretly gave his complete manuscript to Professor Werner Mittenzwei in 1982.

Damerius died in East Berlin. His memoir, Unter Falscher Anschuldigung ("Under False Accusation"), was released posthumously in 1990.

Awards and honors In his later years, Damerius was awarded several East German medals and honors. In 1963, Damerius received the Medal for Fighters against Fascism, in 1973, he received an award for 50 years of allegiance to the SED from its Central Committee; in 1975, he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit; and in 1980, he received the art award of the Free German Trade Union Federation.

Publications "Kolonne Links" in: Das Rote Sprachrohr Berlin (1929 - 1931) "Kolonne Links" in: Lieder der Agitprop-Truppen vor 1945. Das Lied im Kampf geboren. Leipzig (1960) Über Zehn Meere zum Mittelpunkt der Welt, Berlin (1977) "Neun Kapitel über Lebenslauf und Geschichtsverlauf", with an introduction by Werner Mittenzwei in: Sinn u. Form 41 (1989) 6 Unter falscher Anschuldigung – 18 Jahre in Taiga und Steppe, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar (1990). (Published posthumously.)