Maria Osten ( German: Maria Osten , real surname Greschener , German Greßhöner , a pseudonym with the meaning "East" was taken to mean sympathy for the USSR; March 20, 1908 , Mukkum - September 16, 1942 , Saratov ) - German writer and journalist.
| Maria Osten | |
|---|---|
| Maria Osten | |
| Birth name | Maria Greßhöner |
| Aliases | |
| Date of Birth | March 20, 1908 |
| Place of Birth | Mukkum , Germany |
| Date of death | September 16, 1942 (34 years old) |
| Place of death | Saratov , USSR |
| Citizenship (citizenship) | |
| Occupation | , , |
| Language of Works | |
Content
Biography
She grew up in East Prussia (the village of Neuholz, now Goltze , Commune Valcz ), during the First World War she lost her father. In 1922 she entered the Lyceum in Berlin , but soon left school. She took private drawing lessons from the expressionist artist Ludwig Meidner . In 1926 , she married Wiland Herzfelde , the founder and head of the publishing house Malik-Verlag , which produced avant-garde and left-wing radical literature, including translations of Soviet writers. In 1927 , she joined the Communist Party of Germany . In 1928, she published her first story, “Melgast” ( German: Mehlgast ), in the collection “24 New German Stories”. In 1929, she first visited the USSR with her second husband, director Evgeny Chervyakov .
In 1932, she met with the Soviet writer and journalist M. Koltsov and entered into a civil marriage with him. She began to be published in the magazine " Spark " and other Soviet publications. In 1933 , Osten and Koltsov adopted a 10-year-old boy from Saar named Hubert Loste and brought him to the Soviet Union. On the fate of a German boy, for whom the USSR became a new homeland, Osten wrote a documentary book “Hubert in Wonderland” ( 1935 ), published with a preface by Georgy Dimitrov , according to Igor Bunich , a book in which “the German boy did not cease to rejoice at everything what he saw in the USSR, cursing everything that he left at home ”, was released as part of the propaganda campaign of the Comintern and enjoyed great success in the Soviet Union [1] . She worked as secretary of the anti-fascist magazine Das Wort . Accompanied Lyon Feuchtwanger on a trip to the USSR (December 1936 - March 1937).
During the Civil War in Spain, together with Koltsov, she observed the actions of the Republicans, a participant in the antifascist congress of writers (July 1937). In a denunciation, Andre Marty Stalin was accused of espionage in favor of Nazi Germany , which was one of the reasons for the arrest of Koltsov [2] . The decision to arrest Koltsov, among other circumstances motivating his trial, stated:
Wife KOLTSOVA, Maria von OSTEN, daughter of a large German landowner, who has been to several countries and parties, a Trotskyist . KOLTSOV met her in 1932 in Berlin. Upon arriving in Moscow, OSTEN cohabited with the now arrested as spies film directors, artists, German writers [3] .
Osten came to the USSR from Paris , where she lived at that time to help ward off charges from Koltsov [4] , for this purpose she even accepted Soviet citizenship. She was arrested in June 1941 and shot in a Saratov prison.
Nephew (son of her sister Hannah) - British physicist, Nobel laureate John Kosterlitz .
Sources
- ↑ I. Bunich. The five hundred year war in Russia. Book Three (Thunderstorm. Bloody Games of Dictators) - St. Petersburg: Oblik, 1997. - S. 415.
- ↑ B. Sopelnyak. “Are you not going to shoot yourself?” // Evening Moscow , No. 47 (23845), 03/15/2004.
- ↑ E. Makarevich. The man through the eyes of special services // "Journalist", January 2003.
- ↑ V. Fradkin, “The Case of Koltsov”, M., 2002, ISBN 5-264-00681-4
Links
- Kirstin Engels. Zur Biographie Maria Ostens // Traum und Trauma. Die Sowjetunion als Exilland für deutsche Schriftsteller (1933-45). (German)
Literature
- "Give me back freedom." Memorial collection of documents from the archive of the former KGB. Figures of literature and art of Russia and Germany are victims of the Stalinist terror. 1997.
- B. B. Medova . Mikhail and Maria: The story of a short life, happy love and the tragic death of M. Koltsov and M. Osten. - M.: Politizdat, 1991 .-- 329 p.
- Ursula El-Akramy . Transit Moskau: Margarete Steffin und Maria Osten. - Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1998 .-- 406 S.