Jurek Becker

Jurek Becker
Becker in 1993
Bornc. (1937-09-30)30 September 1937
Łódź, Łódź Voivodeship, Poland
Died14 March 1997(1997-03-14) (aged 59)
Sieseby [de] (Thumby), Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Writing career
LanguageGerman
Notable workJacob the Liar

Jurek Becker (German: [ˈjuːʁɛk ˈbɛkɐ] ⓘ; c. 30 September 1937 – 14 March 1997) was a Polish-born German writer, screenwriter and East German dissident. His most famous novel is Jacob the Liar, which has been made into two films. He lived in Łódź during World War II for about two years and survived the Holocaust.

Childhood

Jurek Becker was born in a Jewish family, probably, in 1937. His birth date is not entirely clear because his father gave a birth date that was intended to protect the child from deportation. After the war Becker was claimed by a father (Jurek was never sure if he was his real father) who said he no longer remembered Jurek's correct birth date. It is probable that Jurek Becker was some years younger than is generally reckoned.[citation needed]

He lived in the Łódź Ghetto as a child. When he was five, he was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and later to Sachsenhausen. His mother was murdered in the Holocaust, but his father survived; father and son were reunited after the war and settled together in East Berlin.[citation needed]

Career

After completing his national service in the East German army in the 1950s, during which time he became firm friends and shared an apartment with the actor Manfred Krug, Becker studied philosophy in East Berlin but was expelled from university for what were called ”non-conformist" views. In the 1960s he wrote film and television scripts, one of which, Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar), he turned into a novel when the film production was halted after the director was blacklisted for a film deemed critical of Eastern German working conditions and planning methods. It was made into a film by the East German film company DEFA in 1974, and in 1977 became the only East German film ever to be nominated for an Academy Award (in the foreign-language film category), though it did not win. A 1999 remake, starring Robin Williams in the title role, had limited success.

By the mid-1970s, Beckers differences of opinion with the GDR authorities becoming more and more apparent, he was one of the original twelve signatories of the petition against the expulsion of writer and singer Wolf Biermann to West Germany in November 1976. In 1977 he moved from East to West Berlin, though entirely unusually the East German authorities did not revoke his citizenship, allowing him to travel freely between the two German states, and he continued to publish novels and short stories both on Jewish and other themes.

Death

Becker died in 1997 of colon cancer that was diagnosed in December 1995.[citation needed]

Works

In German

Becker was primarily a novelist, but he also wrote film and TV scripts. Several of his novels deal with the victims of the Holocaust: Jakob der Lügner, Der Boxer, and Bronsteins Kinder. Jakob der Lügner remains his most successful work.

In English translation

Filmography

Screenwriter

References

  1. ↑ Sander Gilman (2002). "A Rare Bird Sander Gilman on writing the biography of Jurek Becker". Archived from the original on May 15, 2004. Retrieved October 5, 2014.

Sources