German Literature

Huchel

Peter Huchel (1903-1981)

Peter Huchel was born Helmut Huchel in Groß-Lichterfelde, a suburb of Berlin, on 3 April 1903. His father Friedrich Huchel was a civil service clerk.

From 1907-1913, due to his mother’s illness, young Helmut lived with his grandparents in Alt-Langerwisch near Potsdam. His grandfather Friedrich Zimmermann was a farmer who wrote poetry. After Friedrich Zimmermann died on 9 November 1913, the farm was sold off. Helmut Huchel was schooled in Steglitz until his family moved to Potsdam in the autumn of 1915.

From 1923-26 Huchel studied German literature and philosophy, in Berlin, Freiburg and Vienna. During this time, he was influenced by the Circle around the German-Jewish intellectual Oskar Goldberg (1885-1952) (see Stephen Parker, Peter Huchel: A Literary Life, pp. 82-95). From 1927-1929 Huchel lived in France.

In 1930 Huchel changed his first name from Helmut to Peter, and he married his girlfriend Dora Lassel, a pastor’s daughter. Their daughter, Susanne, was born in 1935. The couple separated in 1946. Between 1934 and 1940 Huchel made his living writing radio plays (Hörspiele) in Nazi Germany. In 1941-1945 he did his military service close to Berlin. On 27 April 1945 he was captured by the Russians. Later that year he was (re)trained at the anti-fascist school of the Soviet Military Administration in Rüdersdorf.

Huchel’s first collection of poems, Gedichte, was published in 1948. In 1953 he married his second wife, Monica Rosenthal (1914-2002), a writer and translator who had two children from her previous marriage.

From 1949 to 1962, Huchel was the editor of Sinn und Form, East Germany’s leading literary review. The first issue contained unpublished poems by the nature poet Oskar Loerke (1884-1941), the second some poems by the German-Jewish poet Gertrud Kolmar (1894-1943). Huchel’s editorial policy was open-minded and resistant to ideology; as he declared: ‘We shall not put on uniforms’ (quoted in Reiner Kunze and Mireille Gansel, ‘In Time of Need’, p. 31). After years of problems with the SED, East Germany’s ruling party, Huchel was forced to resign as editor in 1962.

From 1963 to 1971, Huchel lived in severe isolation in East Germany and was unable to publish his work. In 1971 he and his wife Monica were permitted to move to Rome, and then in 1972 they settled in Staufen im Breisgau near Freiburg (where he had studied in the 1920s). Huchel spent the rest of his life in Staufen.

In an interview in 1974, Huchel stated: ‘Hüben wie drüben werden die begabten Lyriker kaputtgemacht: drüben von der Partei, hier vom Literaturbetrieb.’ (‘Both here and over there, talented poets get destroyed: over there by the Party, here by the publishing industry / literary establishment.’) – Peter Huchel, ‘Besuch beim lyrischen Ich: Interview mit Peter Sager’, in Huchel, Gesammelte Werke in 2 Bänden, Band 2, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984, pp. 394-94 (p. 395).

Huchel’s poems have an intensity comparable to the work of Georg Trakl. Many of his poems evoke the Brandenburg countryside where he grew up.

Huchel was a friend and associate of many important writers including Bertolt Brecht, Hans Henny Jahnn, Milan Kundera and his brother Ludvík Kundera, Johannes Bobrowski, Reiner Kunze, as well as his English translator, Michael Hamburger.

English Translations

Peter Huchel, The Garden of Theophrastus and other poems, trans. by Michael Hamburger (Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1983)

Peter Huchel, A Thistle in His Mouth: Poems, trans. by Henry Beissel (Dunvegan, Ont.: Cormorant Books, 1987)

Peter Huchel, These Numbered Days [Gezählte Tage]; contributions by Karen Leeder, trans. by Martyn Crucefix (Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2019)