Neumann Margarete

She was born on February 19, 1917 in the city of Pirits, in the province of Pomerania, in the kingdom of Prussia in a family of small burghers . The father of the writer was a cook, mother - an accountant ^[4] . At the end of the lyceum, in 1934 she continued her education at a pedagogical seminar in Königsberg . In 1939, she passed the state exam in the specialty of a youth social worker and received the right to occupy the position of district social worker in the province of East Prussia. In 1939-1945 she worked as a social worker in Heilsberg ^{[2] [4]} . In 1939, she married Helmut Neumann ^[5] , from whom she gave birth in 1940 to her daughter and in 1942 her son . Some sources mention another child - a son named Jürgen ^[4] . In 1945, she was widowed. The husband of the writer died on the Soviet-German front ^{[1] [5]} . In a correspondence published in 1982, Neumann admitted that he committed suicide at the front shortly before the end of the war ^{[6] [7]} .

During World War II, she fled with children from the East Prussia province, occupied by the Soviet army , on the outskirts of Kosa near Friedland in , where she worked as a farmer. In 1949 she moved to the city of Halle in the state of Saxony-Anhalt and got a job as a welder. She joined the Socialist United Party of Germany and became a member of the Democratic Women's Union of Germany ^{[1] [4]} .

In 1951, at the invitation of Kurt Bartel, she arrived in Berlin to participate in the preparation of the World Festival of Youth and Students ^[4] . In 1952 she settled in Hohen Neuendorf and began to lead the life of a free writer. This year, Neumann had a daughter, Vera, from the poet and actor Martin Paul (03/28/1930 - 09/23/2007), who was thirteen years younger than her. Their marriage was unsuccessful. Paul later admitted that he was always homosexual ^[6] . In 1956, Neumann joined the ^{[1] [8]} . In 1961 she moved to Neubrandenburg ^{[1] [8]} , where she had an apartment and a lonely house in the forest. For a long time, the writer was associated with friendship with Brigita Ryman , who left entries in her diaries. In them, she describes her as an enterprising, generous, cheerful, courageous, active woman in relation to men, whose behavior and personal life were rumored ^[6] . In 1970-1974, Neumann worked at the in Schwedt ^{[1] [8]} .

In 1991, the writer left Germany for Tunisia . The reason for the move was her painful perception of some of the changes that began in the country after unification. According to Neumann herself, such Germany was too big and heavy for her ^[3] . From 1991 to 2001, she lived in Sousse and . Margarete Neumann died of cancer, shortly after returning to her homeland, on March 4, 2002 in Rostock ^{[1] [3]} . She was buried in a cemetery in the commune of Mullin ^{[4] [9]} .

The communist regime in the German Democratic Republic allowed her to engage in writing, since the works of Neumann were considered by the official authorities as examples of socialist realism in East German literature. In 1955, the writer’s first novel, Way Through the Field, was published in a simple language about the lives of ordinary people in rural areas in East Prussia, a family of Adomeit farmers who had to leave their homeland after the war and start a new life in Mecklenburg ^[10] . The book was a success with readers and brought fame to the author. In 1957, Neumann was awarded the Heinrich Mann Prize for it ^[8] .

In the late 1950s, she wrote and published a collection of short stories “The History of Lin Bastians”, collections of short stories “The Long Road” and “Seven Songs” and a collection of poems for children “Bread from a Wooden Bowl”. In the preface to the publication of the last book in 1959, Neumann explained the reason why she took up writing: “There was nothing that I (after the war) should not have comprehended and understood from scratch. I did not immediately realize everything, but gradually, as I understood my mistakes. Therefore, I write about what I encounter and comprehend, in the hope that it may be useful to others and strengthen their understanding ” ^{[4] [K 1]} .

In the 1960s, she published two novels - “The Grave digger” and “And they loved each other, no matter what”, as well as a collection of short stories “Elizabeth” and a collection of short stories “The Mirror”. In the same years, she began to write scripts for productions on the radio and for the DEFA film studio . In 1960, Neumann composed two books for children - “The Little Apricot Tree” and “The Wonderful Tree”. In 1964, she was first awarded the Fritz Reuters Prize ^[8] .

In the 1970s, Neumann published a collection of essays “Orenburg Diary” and three novels - “Lovers”, “Weber” and “The Green Room”; the latter is considered her best work ^[3] . Communist censorship attempted, but could not, remove from the novel an episode in which Neumann described the Soviet soldier of a German peasant who was unable to survive the mental trauma inflicted on her and committed suicide ^[6] . In 1974, she received the Fritz Reuters Prize for the second time. In 1977, the writer was also awarded the literary prize of the Democratic Women's Union of Germany ^[8] .

In the 1980s, she wrote the novel “Magda Adomeit”, a series of short stories “This is my life” and a collection of short stories “After a Very Long Winter”, which included works from 1956-1987 ^[8] . In the early 1990s, the writer published a collection of short stories “Strong-wrestler. Two stories about Barlach " ^[4] and the novel" Weber and Adomeyta in the evening and in the morning " ^[10] . After the unification of Germany, Neumann stopped writing ^[4] .

In the GDR and the FRG, Neumann's work was evaluated and evaluated differently. Sarah Kirsch in the afterword to the 1973 book “The Evening Before the Home Trip” ( German Am Abend vor der Heimreise ) speaks of Anna Zegers ’s letter to Neumann from 1972, in which she described the style of the writer’s early works as “restrained and normal” ( German zurückhaltend und normal ) ^[4] . Attitude to the works of Neumann in Germany can be expressed in the words of the modern German literary critic Sabina Brandt , who calls one of the writer's books “a treatise for edifying naive citizens of a socialist state” ^[10] .

• Baumgartner G., Hebig D. Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR : [ him. ] . - Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996 .-- P. 595-596. - 1084 p. - ISBN 3-1116-9913-7 , 978-3-11-169913-4.
• Krause Ch. Neumann, Margarete // Wer war wer in der DDR? : [ him. ] . - Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2010 .-- ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Lampe R. "Dennoch, das Haus bezauberte mich ...": Auf den Spuren bekannter und unbekannter Autoren in Oberhavel Hennigsdorf, Hohen Neuendorf, Birkenwerder, Mühlenbecker Land : [ him. ] . - Hamburg: Tredition, 2017 .-- 116 p. - ISBN 978-3-74-395035-1 .
• Niven B., Niven WJ East Germany's Ossowski? Margarete Neumann // Representations of Flight and Expulsion in East German Prose Works : [ eng. ] . - Rochester, New York: Boydell and Brewer, 2014 .-- P. 126-132. - 219 p. - (Studies in German Literature). - ISBN 1-5711-3535-9 , 978-1-57-113535-3.