Remembering a great writer: on the 100th by Heinar Kipphardt

Created: 03/08/2022, 09:00

By: Michaele Heske

Sound engineer Alexander Urban records an interview by Schorsch Wiesmaier with Peter B. Heim about the writer Heinar Kipphardt (picture, left).

© Michaele heske

Heinar Kipphardt would have been 100 years old today.

The author of “Bruder Eichmann” last lived in the district of Erding.

Dorfen/Fraunberg

– For more than ten years, until his death in 1982, Heinar Kipphardt lived with his family in Angelsbruck, a hamlet near Reichenkirchen.

There the writer wrote the novel “March” and the play “Bruder Eichmann”.

Kipphardt would have been 100 years old today.

The local historian Schorsch Wiesmaier from Dorfen and the author Peter B. Heim from Fraunberg recall the most well-known post-war writers in the district.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Kipphardt had worldwide success with the play "In der Sache J. Robert Oppenheimer".

His topic: The question of responsibility and morality of the individual during the Nazi era.

"Heinar Kipphardt was an uncomfortable writer because he was political," explains Wiesmaier, chairman of the Dorfen eV history workshop.

“It was about responsibility, about not hiding behind a chain of command.

You can still learn a lot from him today.”

Kippardt picked up facts and processed them in a literary way, adds columnist Heim.

"He tells a story that doesn't change in his plays, but intensifies it." The Fraunberger is reminiscent of "Bruder Eichmann".

The trial of Adolf Eichmann is considered a turning point in dealing with the crimes of National Socialism.

"Kipphardt did not invent Eichmann, but drew him, presented in such a way that the reader can recognize him better."

Would have been 100 years old today: Heinar Kipphardt.

© picture alliance

With a current film project on "Brother Eichmann", the Residenztheater in Munich is also asking what connects us today with the man who planned the murder of millions of Jews from his desk.

If you want to learn something about German history, you'll find what you're looking for at Kipphardt, says Heim.

"Despite the sometimes cruel aspects, his texts are a pleasure to read."

In 1972 Kipphardt, who was born in Silesia, grew up in Krefeld and worked as a doctor there after returning from the front, first to East Berlin, then to Munich and from there with his wife Pia to a converted mill in Angelsbruck.

"From Erding you have to drive in the direction of Wartenberg and pass through Titkofen, which has been famous since Monika Gruber, to get to Reichenkirchen," Heim describes the way to the writer's house, where he lived for a short time.

Eight years after Kipphardt's death, Heim met his family: stepdaughter Bella, wife Pia and their two sons Franz and Moritz.

"About a few corners, I'm Kipphardt's son-in-law."

The journalist Heim, who deals a lot with literature about the Second World War, feels "powerless" in the face of the war in Ukraine.

"Of course I'm worried," he says, "and at the same time I feel something like anger because of the very different mistakes on different sides that led to this war situation," he says.

Kipphardt's works should not be forgotten, says Wiesmaier.

That's why he and Heim recorded an interview in Dorfen, which can be viewed from today on the history workshop's website at www.geschichtswerkstatt-dorfen.de.

He also recalls the Heinar Kipphardt Prize, which the Education and Science Union (GEW), in which the former teacher is involved, offered for the first time in 2019: The first prizewinner was Maria Brand from Inning: “She won the prize for her admirable, courageous commitment to refugees,” said Wiesmaier.