"Like a detective"

Dr Jürgen Nitsche

This is how Dr Jürgen Nitsche describes his work. The freelance historian, author and curator has been tracing Jewish families, particularly from Chemnitz and the region, for more than twenty years. He keeps in touch with descendants of these families worldwide like no other and tells their stories. He has always wanted to do history, not any other subject, just history. He has followed his passion and keeps the memory of many great Chemnitz residents alive. Dr Jürgen Nitsche is involved in numerous committees in the city. He is on the advisory board of the "Days of Jewish Culture in Chemnitz" association, a member of the "Stumbling Stones for Chemnitz" coordination centre and a founding member of the International Stefan Heym Society. In an essay on Stefan Heym and the preparations for the 800th anniversary celebrations of Karl-Marx-Stadt in 1965, he came across new insights into Stefan Heym's relationship with his native city of Chemnitz. In 2017, he received one of five International Stefan Heym Awards for his extensive research. Chemnitz and Stefan Heym: a love story? He reveals this in the Maker of the Week interview.

They scrutinised the genesis of Stefan Heym's book "5 Days in June" and travelled back in time to Karl-Marx-Stadt in 1965. Stefan Heym, one of the most important German writers and an honorary citizen of Chemnitz since 2001, was supposed to support the board of trustees preparing the celebrations to mark the 800th anniversary of the city of Karl-Marx-Stadt. However, just a few months after his invitation, the city leadership did an about-turn and unceremoniously disinvited Heym. Sounds like a strange episode. Why exactly this topic for your essay and your application for the International Stefan Heym Awards?
Dr Jürgen Nitsche: To be honest, the idea came from Inge Heym. Seven or eight years ago, she had already given me a copy of a letter from Stefan Heym to Stephan Hermlin from 1975. In the letter, Heym refers to his disinvitation. He asked Stephan Hermlin whether he had also been disinvited. At the time, I thought it would be interesting to find out what the background was. That came back to me when the Stefan Heym Sponsorship Awards were announced in 2017. I then spoke to Inge Heym again. She said it would be very good and she would be happy if we shed light on the matter, and that's how I came up with the idea.

You write in your essay that the disinvitation may have upset Stefan Heym. Did you talk to Inge Heym about it or did you find any references to it in your research?
In "Nachruf", his autobiography, he also refers to this event, albeit only briefly, and then Inge Heym said that whenever they drove past Chemnitz in the following years in the direction of Prague or other cities, he was very sad or thoughtful and still quite disappointed that they had disinvited him back then. That went on until he became an honorary citizen. Only then, I think, were the wounds more or less healed. That did bother him. After all, he had agreed to be part of the committee of honour to prepare the 800th anniversary celebrations, just like Stephan Hermlin. He was happy and wanted to take part. Then came a very succinct disinvitation with one or two sentences from the Lord Mayor saying that he would not be involved - without any explanation. I thought that we had to find out what the actual reason for this was. Then I came across the reading.

On 29 January 1965, the "Freie Presse" announced a literary discussion by Stefan Heym for 1 February 1965 in the "Pressekaffee" as part of its event kaleidoscope "From Friday to Friday". The Agricola bookshop had invited to the literary discussion. It was agreed that Stefan Heym would say a few general things about the work of a writer.
I think that the readings in Chemnitz and a day later in Zwickau were the triggering moment, which is new and not yet so well known in research. Contrary to the agreement, he read from his unpublished manuscript "Der Tag X" in both places.

You sifted through and analysed many documents for your essay. Were you particularly surprised by anything?
Heym actually received nothing but encouragement from all sides. That surprised me. There was virtually no rejection at the time. Not even at the reading, only from one unknown person. And yet the whole thing tipped over. Suddenly he became a non-person.
I also learnt a lot about people from the cultural scene in Chemnitz back then who are no longer known. I did a bit of research on a writer, Regina Hastedt, who had also invited him once before. I also looked into the gentleman who accompanied him at the reading, Karl Otto. He was also a writer and a communist. He introduced him at the time and conducted the interview during the reading. That's quite interesting. So my essay is not just about Stefan Heym, but also about some of the people in contemporary history at the time. For that reason alone, it was worth looking into it.

You write that even the daily press reported favourably on the reading.
Exactly, especially from the bloc parties LDPD and NDPD. Even foreign countries reported on this reading. It was more or less spectacular for the time. That was the period between the end of 1964 and 1965, when relations between Stefan Heym and the party and state leadership gradually came to a head.

Do you see the reading in Karl-Marx-Stadt as a key moment?
As one of several. There were several more speeches that he gave abroad. In Slovakia and another city. Minsk, I think. Those were the key moments. He attacked and criticised the party leadership in particular.
I realised that Stefan Heym was an incredibly courageous man. You can't really imagine that with today's point of view and today's knowledge. He was more or less alone and as a writer he took on the whole state and the whole party. Respect! Others might not have done that. Only very few. Even though he had to reckon with going to prison. But he always remained true to his principles.

The Stefan Heym Forum opened at the TIETZ in October 2020. The centrepiece of the forum is Stefan and Inge Heym's original working library. The wooden desk has also moved to Chemnitz. On it lies a thick volume labelled "Der Tag X. Novel by Stefan Heym". A long battle was waged in the GDR against the publication of this book about the popular uprising of 1953.

With regard to the manuscript "Der Tag X", you speak of a "history of prevention" that lasted almost 30 years and produced thousands of documents from Stasi reports. You have now looked through some of the documents. How did you find studying the documents?
Of course I was surprised to find that IMs were present everywhere, more or less at all events, reporting on them. The fact that it was so massive and everywhere was quite remarkable. These IMs also reported on this reading. One of them kept popping up. The reports were incredibly detailed. The tradition itself is of course also surprising. Stefan Heym was an important person and he was watched more closely than others.

"That would have pleased my people," said Stefan Heym on his appointment as an honorary citizen of the city of Chemnitz in 2001. How important do you think this honour was for Stefan Heym's relationship with the city of his birth?
By my people, I'm sure he meant his whole family, the Flieg family. I think that was very important to him. I was lucky enough to be able to talk to three of his cousins. During the conversations, I learnt that his relationship with his parents and his uncles and aunts was incredibly strained. He was like an outcast back then. His mother was very supportive of him. His aunts and uncles didn't. They accused him, as I understood it, that his escape to Prague and the poem before that were the cause or reason why his father killed himself in 1935.

You keep in touch with Stefan Heym's relatives, who are still around the world, for example in Sao Paolo, London or the USA. How do you make contact?
It's not that easy. I had the good fortune to meet Dr Arthur Weiner's daughter in 1999. Dr Weiner used to be the second head of the community (editor's note: the Jewish community of Chemnitz), a lawyer, notary and art collector. He was abducted on 10 April 1933 and murdered near Wiederau. I called his older daughter Anni in London. I asked her if she would help me with my work.

Together with Dr Ruth Röcher, Chairwoman of the Jewish Community of Chemnitz, Dr Nitsche published the memorial book "Jews in Chemnitz: The History of the Community and the Jewish Cemetery" in 2002. Preparations for the book began back in 1999 and the two editors devoted 500 pages to the history of the Jewish community and its members in Chemnitz. The book makes the reader aware of the once formative influence of Jewish life on the economic and cultural development of the city.

Fortunately, she said yes. I visited her in London in the spring of 2000. She gave me lots of addresses and recommended me everywhere. She was 93 years old and fortunately kept in touch with a lot of Chemnitz Jews, friends and girlfriends, throughout the years. That's how it started back then. Back then it was still letters and phone calls. She also gave me the addresses of a cousin of Stefan Heym in London and the son of an aunt in the USA. They all welcomed and supported me. I've been doing it ever since.

Do you have any idea how Stefan Heym, his ideas and conceptions, but also the history of the Chemnitz Jews, which you deal with, can be passed on to the younger generations? This is also a concern that the city of Chemnitz is pursuing with the Stefan Heym Sponsorship Awards and which is entirely in the spirit of Stefan and Inge Heym?
In 2003, I decided to become self-employed and decided that I still needed partners for my work. I gained the Friedrich Ebert Foundation as an ally. At the same time, I also got in touch with the adult education centre. Fortunately! The staff there had the idea of making adult education centres appealing to younger people. We thought for a long time about how we could make the whole thing more interesting and chose a new approach in 2007 or 2008. The idea was to convey history through pictures. I then told the story of the Jews of Chemnitz using pictures and other documents. Not so much with academic lectures, but simply with documents that I found, showed and simply discussed. There was more interest again. But first you have to get hold of the photos, know what's in them and speak freely. I still do that from time to time. Five or six times at schools so far. Especially when there is a request from individual teachers or head teachers. I've also been an extracurricular supervisor for special learning achievements twice. Four or five years ago, I had a pupil who later won a prize. That was about Jews. Now I have a new pupil who is working on the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi era. That's a lot of work, of course, but I think you have to support particularly talented pupils like that.

"Chemnitz, this name was once a byword, a sign of quality for a myriad of different industrial and consumer goods [...] But this Chemnitz no longer exists," you quote a newspaper article from 1965 in your essay on Stefan Heym. Chemnitz has also lost its reputation in the recent past, especially after the riots in 2018. How important is the title of "European Capital of Culture 2025" for the city and the cultural region?
Incredibly important. It's a unique opportunity for the city and the region to do something for its image. I hope the city seizes the opportunity so that people in Germany, Europe and around the world recognise what kind of city Chemnitz really is. Back in 2018, I received many enquiries from abroad. Frightened enquiries. I always said it wasn't quite that drastic after all. But it's hard to refute something like that. The Capital of Culture is an opportunity to show the opposite.

The City of Chemnitz is awarding the International Stefan Heym Prizes totalling 20,000 euros for projects and initiatives that deal with the life, work and influence of Stefan Heym in a special way. The application deadline has been extended until 15 March 2021.

Further information on the International Stefan Heym Awards can be found here.