Werner Heiduczek (24 November 1926 – 28 July 2019)[1] was a German writer. His works have been translated into more than 20 languages and name as author – depending on the language region – Verner Gajduček, Verners Heidučeks or Verneris Heidućekas.[2]
Born in Hindenburg, Upper Silesia, Heiduczek grew up in a Catholic Silesian miner family as one of five children – his father was a miner in the Upper Silesian coalfield. In 1942, during the Second World War, Heiduczek volunteered as an Luftwaffenhelfer. As he wanted to go to the front, the call-up to the Wehrmacht in 1944 was not inconvenient. However, he did not serve at the front.
He escaped from US captivity to the East Zone and there fell into Soviet custody, but he was spared the labour assignment in the Soviet Union.[3] From January 1946, he took part in a course for so-called Neulehrer in Herzberg (Elster) and taught in the village school in Wehrhain from September to November 1946.[4] From 1946 to 1949, Heiduczek studied education and German studies in Halle. Until 1952 he worked as a teacher, school inspector and finally Schulaufsicht in Merseburg.[5] From 1953, he completed postgraduate studies in Potsdam in pedagogy and then worked in teaching again until 1961, for example 1955 to 1959 at the children's and youth sports school in Halle. From 1961 to 1964, he worked as a German teacher at the Goethe-Gymnasium Burgas, Bulgaria.
From 1965 he was a freelance writer based in Halle. Heiduczek initially wrote stories, plays and radio plays for children and young people. In later works, he dealt with the fate of Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950) and their integration into the GDR society. His novel Death by the Sea, the autobiographically coloured, sceptical life balance of the GDR artist Jablonski, published in 1977 by Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle/Saale, was temporarily banned in 1978 at the intervention of the Soviet ambassador to the GDR Peter Abrassimov because of alleged anti-Soviet passages: Heiduczek's book had addressed the rape of German women by Soviet soldiers after World War II.[6] Until the end of the GDR, Heiduczek then increasingly shifted to material from fairy tales and legends.
Heiduczek had been a member of the Schriftstellerverband der DDR since 1960; since 1990 he belonged to the Verband deutscher Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller and the PEN-Zentrum Deutschland, and since 1992 to the Freie Akademie der Künste zu Leipzig.
Heiduczek and his wife Dorothea (teacher, d. 1998) had three daughters (the youngest died in 1996). In 2001, the widower met the journalist Traudel Thalheim (born 1937)[7] – with whom he lived in Leipzig until the end of his life.[8][9] Heiduczek died in 2019 at the age of 92 in Zwenkau. The funeral service took place on 21 August 2019 in Leipzig;[10] the urn was laid in the ground in Lichtentanne – at the grave site of his wife.[11]
The city of Leipzig honoured him in 1996 with the honorary volume "Werner Heiduczek zum 70. Geburtstag" (responsible: Reinhard Stridde, essay: Carsten Wurm, bibliography: Ulrich Kiehl), ISBN 3-86061-012-0.[13]
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek listet zum Autor Werner Heiduczek insgesamt 119 Publikationen auf (Stand: 29. Juli 2019).[14]
Autobiography
Picture books
Tales, fairy tales
Essays
Children's books
Recounts
Novels
Theater plays
Werkausgabe
