100th birthday of Johann Kinau - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1980 - 60 Pfennig

The poet Johann Kinau, better known under his pseudonym »Gorch Fock«, was born on August 22, 1880 on the island of Finkenwärder near Hamburg (today Hamburg-Finkenwerder). He came from a fishing family. Birthplace and impressions from the parental home are the basis for the poetic work of Johann Kinau. The pseudonym "Gorch Fock" is also explained by his connection to the world of "driving people". Gorch Fock, a figure from an early narrative, has similarities with the poet in his life story. The two brothers of the poet, Jakob and Rudolf Kinau, made a narrative appearance in northern Germany. After a commercial apprenticeship in Geestemünde Fock worked as a writer and Kontorist in Meiningen, Bremen and Halle an der Saale. In 1904 he came to Hamburg as an accountant and worked there at the Hamburg-Amerika-Linie. As a volunteer in the First World War, he was from 1915 initially as an infantryman in Russia, Serbia and France. In early 1916 Fock came at his own request as a sailor on the small cruiser Wiesbaden. He died in the Battle of the Skagerrak at the age of 36 on May 31, 1916. In his poetic work Gorch Fock, who has emerged as a lyricist, playwright, but especially as a realistic home teller of "Waterkant", with the native landscape, their People and above all the love of the sea, which turns people into destinies. His works convey the atmosphere of seafaring, harbor and fishing life, the world of "driving people". Some of them are written in "Hamburger Platt"; the sound is partly cheerful from coarse-humorous humor, partly dark-moody and thought-deep. The language is economical, the design scarce and original. Among the works of the poet Gorch Fock include: "Schullengrieper un Tungenknieper" (1910), "Hein Godenwind, de Admirol of mosquitoes" (1911), a sailor figure; "Maritime navigation is not" (1912), his most important work, a High German novel with Low German dialogue; in it he glorifies the former fin warder in the fishing family Mewes and describes the hard life of the sea fishermen; "Stars above the sea" (diary sheets and poems from the estate, 1917).