100th birthday - Germany / German Democratic Republic 1985 - 35 Pfennig

100th birthday of Egon Erwin Kisch On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Egon Erwin Kisch, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of the German Democratic Republic issues a multicolored special postage stamp with auxiliary field. Special cancellation from April 23 to June 22, 1985 On the occasion of the 100th birthday of the writer and journalist Egon Erwin Kisch "Truly, this portal is a glorious splendor, two stone bears that have kept the gold of their fur for centuries, guard the gate, in turn sheltered by two young men reinforced with rods, down from the mouths of two human profiles, dense tendrils, fruits, and foliage sprout, first upwards and then rounding each other in a slight curve, the branch enveloping columns and ornaments and leaving only the golden one Bears in the height the appropriate place.This house still stands today, it is even under monument protection. With these words, the writer and journalist Egon Erwin Kisch himself described in one of his reports the house in the Prague Melanchtrichova, in which he was born on April 29, 1885: the house to the two golden bears, in the Renaissance style in the second half of the Built in the 16th century and noted as a sight not far from the Old Town Square in every guide about the Moldau metropolis. The son of a cloth merchant, Kisch came from the German-speaking bourgeoisie of Prague. He attended a state secondary school, studied at the Technical University and the University and came to journalism in 1904 after one year of military service, which was spent in constant protest. He volunteered at the "Prager Tageblatt", attended a school of journalism in Berlin and earned his first spurs as a local reporter in Prague (1906-1913). After the First World War, which he experienced as a soldier in Serbia and later as an officer, most recently at the military press office in Vienna, Kisch turned to the revolutionary workers' movement. He worked in illegal soldiers' councils, became leader of a Red Guard in Vienna and joined the Communist Party of Austria in 1919. In 1921 he moved to Berlin, where he sought cooperation in the workers' press, traveled through numerous countries and became one of the most prominent reporters of his time. He became a co-founder of the proletarian-revolutionary writer, came to the Soviet Union in 1925-1926 and 1930-1931, which became crucial for his further development, and traveled illegally to the United States (1928 -1929) and China (1932). On the Reichstag fire night Kisch was arrested in Berlin, but immediately released due to protests of his Czechoslovak homeland other than Dimitroff. He continued first from Czechoslovakia and later in Paris continued his anti-fascist struggle, began his famous trip to an anti-war congress in Australia in 1935 was a speaker at the Congress for the Defense of Culture in Paris and fought 1937-1938 with word and writing in the International Brigades in Spain. During the Second World War, he lived in emigration to Mexico (1940-1946) and worked there, among other things, the magazine "Free Germany". In 1946 he returned to his homeland in Prague and was busy writing a report book on the new Czechoslovakia when, shortly after the revolutionary events of February 1948, death took the pen out of his hands forever. He died on 31 May 1948 in Prague and was buried in Urnenhain in Strasnice. Egon Erwin Kisch, also called Egonek, began as a Czech writer writing in German with poetry and narrative works. He also tried stage plays and worked as a dramaturge for a while. But his real achievement became the literary reportage. While his first works of this genre were marked above all by bourgeois criticism and a partial anarchist compassionate sympathy for the lumpenproletariat, in the twenties he found ever more clearly on the side and the positions of the revolutionary workers' movement. If he initially saw in the "unbiased witness of the past", which had "no tendency", "nothing to justify" and "no point of view", the task of his reports, it changed as he penetrated more and more consciously into social contexts , dealt with Marxism-Leninism and won the clear positions of a convinced Communist for himself and his work. The reportage book "The Raging Reporter" of 1925 became with his title to the synonym for him, although he worked anything but superficially fast, but rather deliberately slowly, thoroughly, filing at each formulation. Many other reportage volumes followed: "Paradise America", "Landing in Australia", "Discoveries in Mexico", "Marketplace of Sensations", just to name a few. With "Tsars, Popes, Bolsheviks" and "Asia thoroughly changed" Kisch was one of the first writers who spoke objectively and objectively about the great changes in the USSR. And he devoted one of his last works to Karl Marx, whose stays in Karlovy Vary he presented with masterful reporter acrobatics. Egon Erwin Kisch has entered the history of literature as the creator of socialist literary reportage. He has given the practical examples and fertilized the theoretical generalization. He has often been called "the classic journalist" - and as such he lives on with his rich work. The special postage stamp issue for his 100th birthday unites in her motifs the Prague Birth House, which has recently been completely restored, its name and a portrait with the obligatory cigarette for Kisch's personality.