Adolf Endler (10 September 1930 – 2 August 2009) was a German writer. Endler challenged the socialist realist art movement of the German Democratic Republic and was active in the literary scene of Prenzlauer Berg, in East Berlin. In 2005, he became a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Literature).
Endler was born in Düsseldorf in 1930.
He moved to East Germany in 1955 and studied at the Johannes R. Becher-Institut für Literatur in Leipzig from 1955 to 1957.
He was an acclaimed poet popular in both the East and the West.[clarification needed] At the same time, he was shunned by party functionaries[who?] because of his opposition to socialist realism. He defied the cultural directives of the state and communicated secretly with his peers.[citation needed]
Endler coined the term Sächsische Dichterschule (Saxon School of Poetry) to describe German writers born in the 1930s who were influential in poetry, such as Karl Mickel, Heinz Czechowski, Sarah Kirsch, and Volker Braun. British poet Michael Hamburger commended the group for their creativity in the hostile environment of East Germany at the time.[citation needed] Hamburger secretly recorded the correspondence between individual poets.[citation needed] Some of the correspondence was also documented by Erich Fried, a colleague of Endler's, in his review of "In diesem besseren Land" (In this better land).[citation needed]
Endler continued to be a controversial figure in East Germany into the 1970s. He was expelled from the Authors’ Association of the GDR in 1979, after declaring his solidarity with his previously reprimanded colleague Stefan Heym. Throughout the 1980s, he contributed to various Berlin and Leipzig underground magazines.
In the 1990s, Adolf Endler became known to a wider public through a volume of memoirs entitled Tarzan am Prenzlauer Berg (Tarzan at Prenzlauer Berg). From 1991 to 1998, with Brigitte Schreier, he organized the Orplid & Co. series of readings in Café Clara in Berlin-Mitte.
Endler died in August 2009, at the age of 78.
