Walter Janka | |
|---|---|
 Walter Janka at the extraordinary party congress of theSED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany/Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) in Berlin (December 1989) | |
| Born | 29 April 1914 |
| Died | 17 March 1994 (1994-03-18) (aged 79) |
| Occupation | Publisher |
Walter Janka (29 April 1914 – 17 March 1994) was a Germancommunist, political activist and writer who became apublisher.[1]
Janka is notable for having spent time incarcerated as apolitical prisoner under the rule of theNazis and later imprisoned under suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities by theSupreme Court of East Germany, in both cases serving most of his sentence atBautzen prison.
Walter Janka was one of six children born to atool and die maker called Adalbert Janka. He attended junior school from 1920 till 1928. Between 1928 and 1932 he undertook a type setting apprenticeship.
In 1930 Walter Janka became an Organisation Leader, and then a Political leader of theYoung Communists (KJVD /Kommunistischer Jugendverband Deutschlands) for theChemnitz sub-region. After his elder brother,Albert, had been murdered by the Nazis, Walter himself was imprisoned by theGestapo. He was remanded to custody inChemnitz and inFreiberg before being tried and convicted underGerman law of preparing to commithigh treason (German:Hochverrat). After 1½ years of imprisonment in Bautzen prison, he spent a six-month term inSachsenburg concentration camp. Finally, in 1935 he was deported toCzechoslovakia.
In 1936 Janka went to Spain to join theThälmann Battalion and fight in theSpanish Civil War. In 1937 he became a Captain, and shortly after that, in the Karl Marx Division, he became the youngest Major, and then a Battalion Commander, in theInternational Brigade of theSpanish Republican Army.[1]
During a 1991 interview withGerman-American journalist and retired U.S. intelligence official John O. Koehler,[2] Janka, recalled his encounters in Spain with fellow KPD exile and futureEast German Secret police chiefErich Mielke. During the winter of 1936, Janka was summoned by theServicio de Investigación Militar, thepolitical police of theSecond Spanish Republic, and personally interrogated by Mielke. Mielke demanded to know why Janka had voluntarily traveled fromCzechoslovakia to Spain rather than being assigned there by the Party. When he told Mielke to get lost, the SIM demoted Janka back to the ranks and then expelled him from the International Brigade. Decades later, Janka told Koehler, "While I was fighting at the front, shooting at theFascists, Mielkeserved in the rear, shootingTrotskyites andAnarchists."[3]
During the second part of 1938, Janka was badly wounded during theBattle of the Ebro.[1][4]
After theNationalist faction won the war, Janka fled to theThird French Republic, where he wasinterned between 1939 and 1941 atCamp Vernet. He then escaped viaCasablanca in November 1941, and ending up in exile inMexico, where together withPaul Merker andAlexander Abusch he founded the "Free Germany" ("Freies Deutschland") movement and contributed to theanti-Nazimovement inGerman literature known asExilliteratur.
In Mexico he ran the publishing business "El Libro Libre", which also employed fellow exiled German writerAnna Seghers. In 1946 Janka took over leadership of the Mexican section of theGerman Communist Party (KPD) in exile.[5]
After the end of theSecond World War Janka returned, in April 1947, to what wasSoviet occupation zone, later to becomeGerman Democratic Republic in 1949. In 1947 he married his long-standing partner, a translator called Charlotte (Lotte) Scholz. The couples' two children, André and Yvonne, were born in 1948 and 1950.
After a brief period working with the leadership of theSED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany/Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) he joined the board ofDEFA, the state-owned film studio. He was appointed managing director on 6 October 1948. He was replaced in the top job in 1949, but remained on the executive board till 1950.[1]
In February 1950 he became Deputy Director of the Berlin-basedAufbau-Verlag, then the country's leading publishing house, moving up to the top job in 1953. During this time he planned a project to make a film based onThomas Mann's novel of dynastic decline,Buddenbrooks, which was to be a collaboration between East Germany's DEFA and West German film companies. Another ambition, in pursuit of which he metCharlie Chaplin near the latter's home atVevey in May 1954, was a DEFA film with Charlie Chaplin as the leading star.[citation needed]
On 6 December 1956 Walter Janka was arrested on a charge ofcounter-revolutionary conspiracy[6] and held in theBerlin-Hohenschönhausen Remand Prison. By March 1957 he had become one of six men arrested and held in respect of the alleged conspiracy. Janka remained in the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen prison for more than half a year before being charged in theSupreme Court, on 26 July 1957, with "being directly behind, and participating in, a counter-revolutionary group" (known as theHarich Group),[7] He was sentenced to a further five years in prison, with "enhanced solitary confinement" ("verschärfter Einzelhaft").[8]
The trial took place under conditions of tight security. The Justice MinisterHilde Benjamin herself appeared as a prosecution witness. No defense witnesses were permitted. State prosecutor,Ernst Melsheimer successfully threatened Janka's friend,Paul Merker who had himself only recently been "rehabilitated" (released from prison) in respect of an earlier matter, and who was now called upon to testify against Janka, with the words:
Wolfgang Harich had already been convicted, and sentenced to a ten-year jail term in March 1957, in respect of the same alleged conspiracy as Janka. The two had previously worked together at theAufbau publishing house. Harich was brought into the July show-trial byJudge Walter Ziegler as a leading prosecution witness: his testimony now heavily implicated Janka. The two former friends would remain estranged from one another for the rest of their lives.[10]
Janka served the first part of his sentence in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen prison where he had been held on remand, but in 1958 he was transferred to Bautzen prison where he fell seriously ill.[8] He later wrote of this time how his mind wandered back to the Nazi years when he had been incarcerated in the same place. As the authorities refused to repair the heater in his cell, he recalled sitting here more than twenty years earlier, in the big prison complex on the edge of the city which the townsfolk nicknamed "the yellow misery", because all the buildings were built with the same cheap yellow stone.[11][12]
On 23 December 1960 Janka was released from prison before completing the original term of his sentence, following international protests. An initial period of unemployment lasted till 1962,[1] after which he was worked again in film with the DEFA film studio as adramaturge[1] based inKleinmachnow on the southern fringe Berlin where he had had a home since the 1950s.
During the 1960s, working with other writers, Janke developed scenarios and screen-plays for the DEFA. He was heavily involved with the much acclaimed film,Goya or the Hard Way to Enlightenment ("Goya – oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis") (1971). However, out of regard for his record of "political activism", recognition that came his way remained unpublicized.
In 1972 his official recognition as aVictim of the Nazi regime (Verfolgter des Naziregimes / VdN) was reinstated, and he was accepted back into the rulingSED. However, his autobiographical coloured scenes from his "Journey to Gandesa" about his experiences of theBattle of the Ebro during theSpanish Civil War remained unfilmed, and he terminated his contract with DEFA in 1973, having retired from it in 1972.[1]
During the 1980s Janka wrote articles, traveled several times toWest Germany and gave lectures about his experiences in theSpanish Civil War. Finally, barely more than six months before the fall of the Berlin wall, on 1 May 1989 he was awarded thePatriotic Order of Merit (Gold/first class) "in recognition of outstanding services to the creation and development of socialist society in the German Democratic Republic".[13]
As the end of the German Democratic Republic approached, Janka's memoir of his 1956 arrest and subsequent imprisonment was published, in October 1989, byRowohlt Verlag under the wry title "Difficulties with the truth" ("Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit").[12] Walter Janka suddenly found himself very popular. AsGerman reunification appeared unstoppable, on 4 and 5 January 1990 theSupreme Court met in open session and annulled their 1957 judgement against him. At the same time a legal and journalistic dispute flared between Janka andWolfgang Harich about the details of those 1957 show trials.[14]
Janka's contribution to dramaturgy received recognition in the form of theHeinrich Greif Prize in 1990.
On 16 December 1989 Janka was a member of the presidium at theSpecial Party Congress of theSED (then in the process of transforming itself into thePDS / Party of Democratic Socialism / Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus) held in Berlin at theDynamo Sports Hall.
In 1990 he was a member of the "Council of Elders" of the newPDS, but he soon became disappointed with this, and quit.[8]
Walter Janka died in March 1994 inKleinmachnow and is buried there in the Waldfriedhof (Cemetery in the woods).[15]
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