Wolfgang Harich

Life Wolfgang Harich was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, on 9 December 1923, His father was a writer Walter Harich and his mother was Anne-Lise Wyneken, 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 firmly believed in uniting 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 conspiracy. Although he only served eight years, Harich was kept 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, surviving until 15 March 1995, This experience gave him the ability to become considered as one of Berlin's best theater critics.

Political views Harich was a convinced communist and an environmentalist. He joined Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), the Communist Party of Germany, then later joined Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, which later became the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), in 1946.

As a twenty-year-old, Harich was drafted into the Wehrmacht, but left and joined an anti-Nazi group in 1944. He was a Stalinist until the early 1950s; he wrote in a memoir of recalling "crying an ocean of tears over Stalin's death." He was arrested on 29 November 1956, indicted in March 1957 and sentenced to imprisonment in July 1957. He remained in jail until released in December 1964. Harich referred to his years in jail as his Rufmord, or reputation-murder, and felt guiltless because all he did was "just talk." He actually thanked the Stasi for their vigilance in arresting him, for without their attention, he would not have been given ten years in jail, and instead he would be looking at the noose. This quote of Harich's was recorded at his hearing,

quote|I wish to deliver my thanks to the SSD … I've found that they are correct and decent … I had gotten completely out of control … I was a runaway horse, which no call could have stopped … If I hadn't been taken into custody, I wouldn't today be ready for 10 years, which the Herr Prosecutor has recommended, but only for the hangman, and therefore I thank the SSD for their alertness. Having spent most of his time in jail in solitary confinement, Harich emerged in 1964 as a hard-line Stalinist and enthusiastic critic of all modernist experimentation, even labeling Friedrich Nietzsche as a "Nazi worshipper." and insisting that his legacy was nothing but "a giant trash bin." Harich focused on more environmental political problems in the 1970s. In 1975 he undertook an impractical campaign for a state communism in the service of environmental protection, in hopes of making some change. Also, after the Wende (change) in Germany in 1989, he became the chairman of the Alternative Enquete Komission (AEK) which conducted research on the history of the GDR, and aligned himself with the self-proclaimed Mikhail Gorbachev reform communists after 1990.

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, Tägliche Rundschau; and he was also a journalist for the French-licensed daily. He became editor-in-chief of the journal Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie along 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 GDR Academy of Fine Arts. Upon his arrest, Der Spiegel devoted its cover story to Harich in 1956, stating that West German intellectuals regarded him highly and saying, "despite his youth, probably the only GDR intellectual capable of calling into question the current foundation of the communist state, the doctrine of hard-frozen 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.

Publications Rudolf Haym und sein Herderbuch. Beiträge zur kritischen Aneignung des literaturwissenschaftlichen Erbes. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1955 Jean Pauls Kritik des philosophischen Egoismus. Belegt durch Texte und Briefstellen Jean Pauls im Anhang. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968 Zur Kritik der revolutionären Ungeduld. Eine Abrechnung mit dem alten und dem neuen Anarchismus. Basel: Edition Etcetera, 1971 Jean Pauls Revolutionsdichtung. Versuch einer neuen Deutung seiner heroischen Romane. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1974 Kommunismus ohne Wachstum? Babeuf und der »Club of Rome«. Sechs Interviews mit Freimut Duve und Briefe an ihn. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1975 Keine Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit. Zur nationalkommunistischen Opposition 1956 in der DDR. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1993 Nietzsche und seine Brüder. Schwedt: Kiro, 1994 Ahnenpass. Versuch einer Autobiographie. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1999 Nicolai Hartmann. Leben, Werk, Wirkung. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2000 Nicolai Hartmann — Größe und Grenzen. Versuch einer marxistischen Selbstverständigung. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2004

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