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Paul Gratzik (born November 30, 1935 in Lindenhof, near Lötzen in East Prussia) is a German dramatist and novelist.[1] He came to wider public attention in 2011 as the subject of the documentary film de (in English: Traitor)[2] .
Life
Paul Gratzik was the third of six children of a farm worker in the then German state of East Prussia, now in eastern Poland. His father fell in the first days of the war.[3] Early in 1945 he, his mother, and siblings fled westwards in an ox cart to Schönberg in Mecklenburg.[2] After completing compulsory education he undertook a carpentry apprenticeship from 1952 to 1954, and then did manual work in the Ruhr, in Berlin, in Weimar, and later in the brown coal open-cast mine in Schlabendorf. In Berlin he tried to complete his Abitur at evening classes.[2]
In Weimar, in 1962, he was an official in the local Free German Youth and decided to collaborate with the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) as an informer. He also began to write. From 1963 to 1968 he studied at the Weimar teacher training institute (de:Institut für Lehrerbildung).[2] His first play was published in 1966.[4] In 1968 he enrolled at the "Johannes R. Brecher" Institute for Literature at Leipzig University, but after a short time, by almost unanimous vote of faculty and students, he was expelled.[1][2] He then taught at a children's home in Dönschten in the Osterzgebirge.
In 1971 he began to work full-time as a writer and joined the GDR writer's guild (Deutscher Schriftstellerverband). But in 1974 he began again to work in industry, part-time, in the Dresden transformer factory. From 1977, Gratzik lived in Berlin, employed as playwright by the Berliner Ensemble. He was awarded the Heinrich Mann Prize in 1980.[1]
Then in 1981 he refused all further cooperation with the Stasi and confessed to his friends, amongst them Heiner Müller, that he had spied on them. He was no longer allowed to publish, and many friends shunned him.[5] From 1984 he himself became an object of observation by the Stasi and experienced harassment by them.[2]
Since the middle of the 1980's he has lived in seclusion in the Uckermark, between Templin and Prenzlau.
Work
Paul Gratzik's work reflects his own experiences as a manual worker under East German socialism. Although a committed communist, his unadorned realism, and readiness to tackle taboo themes, for example the Jugendwerkhöfe, East German juvenile re-education establishments, brought him into conflict with the censors.[1] In GDR literary circles he was, as a working class writer, already unusual, but his gregariousness, charisma, and attractiveness to women, made him one of the most colourful figures.[5][6]
The German National Library lists seven plays and novels by Paul Gratzik, published between 1966 and 1982.[4] The British Library lists no works of his in English.[7]
Vaterlandsverräter film
Vaterlandsverräter is a 90-minute documentary film about Paul Gratzik directed by the German film maker de. It premiered at the Berlinale in 2011. In 2012 it was broadcast by Arte, and in 2013 awarded a Grimme-Preis in the Information category:
Annekatrin Hendel presents her protagonist as a contradictory, sometimes challenging, sometimes repellent character. A protagonist well able to hang himself with his own words, pompous, charming, brusque. She allows him no excuses, forces him to confront his past, the while respecting him as a person. It is stimulating, even exciting, and forces the viewer to address this polarising figure, to take a position. There are hundreds of films about the GDR and the Stasi, this is one of the few that doesn't follow the well-trodden path of self-certainty.
— Jury, Grimme-Preis, 2013[8]
Die Zeit also praises the film:
It concerns a traitor who regrets his treachery, finds the courage to blow his cover himself, and now waits out his days in provincial Uckermark. Vaterlandsverräter begins to historicize the Stasi, but also to differentiate its image. It is an important film with a new angle on the subject.[5]
Works
The single transferable vote (STV) is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through ranked voting in multi-seat constituencies (voting districts).[9] Under STV, an elector has a single vote that is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, as the count proceeds and candidates are either elected or eliminated, is transferred to the remaining candidates according to the voter's preference, in proportion to any surplus votes for the elected candidates, or the discarded votes of the eliminated candidates. The exact method of reapportioning votes can vary (see Differing counting methods).
It is a special case, being a single-winner system, of the single transferable vote, a multiple-winner system.
It is, being a single-winner system, a special case of the single transferable vote, a multiple-winner system.
It is the single transferable vote restricted to a single winner (STV is a multiple-winner system).
References
- ^ a b c d "Biographische Datenbanken" (in German). Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f "Vaterlandsverräter". Film web site. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
- ^ Becker, Dirk (28 October 2011). "Er hat an das Paradies geglaubt". Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (in German). Retrieved 11 August 2013.
- ^ a b "Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek". Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
- ^ a b c Joel, Fokke (4 October 2011). "Dokumentation eines Verrats". Zeit Online (in German). Retrieved 11 August 2013.
- ^ "Vaterlandsverräter" (in German). Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
- ^ "Explore the British Library". London: The British Library.
- ^ "Vaterlandsverräter / Jurybegründung". Grimme Preis (in German). Marl, Germany: Grimme Institute. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
- ^ "Single Transferable Vote". Electoral Reform Society.