2023-09-24 13:29:47
The contrast between poetry and punk convinced the jury and they chose the Berlin writer and poet Henryk Gericke as the new castle clerk in Beeskow, the Oder-Spree district announced. Gericke, born in East Berlin in 1964, had been living as a freelance writer since the mid-1980s, according to the district’s statement. This is formulated euphemistically and ignores the fact that the authorities at the time had Gericke firmly in their sights in order to arrest him if necessary under Section 249 of the GDR Criminal Code “Danger to public order through anti-social behavior”. Gericke had completed an apprenticeship in bookbinding and was not quite as freelance; at least on paper he worked as a printer at the Progress film distributor and then in the office for culture-related architecture.
However, Gericke probably put his energy into his cultural and oppositional activities after work. In 1982 he founded the punk band The Performance Corpses, he was politically active, founded several underground magazines (for example Die Anschlag) and edited independent anthologies with such beautiful titles as “Autodafé” and “Braegen”, each of which he also included his own texts.
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He was able to give up his printing job after the end of the GDR. In 1990, Gericke founded the Galrev Druckhaus publishing house together with other active members of the Prenzlauer Berg literary scene, including the former informal MfS employees Sascha Anderson and Rainer Schedlinski. In 1993 he left and became a freelancer, which again could be described as a euphemism, but this time because of the existential pressure. Gericke received the Alfred Döblin scholarship twice. He spends a lot of time dealing with and documenting the opposition, punk and literary history of Prenzlauer Berg and wrote the script for the documentary film “ostPUNK! – too much future”, curates exhibitions and founded the Staatsgalerie on Greifswalder Straße.
Gericke convinced the jury with the exciting interplay between his biographical background and the novel project he had begun “The room is out of joint” (working title). The writer is scheduled to be introduced as the 31st castle clerk on January 13, 2024 and give his inaugural reading. 30. Until the end of May, the castle clerk was Franziska Hauser, a familiar author to readers of the Berliner Zeitung.
The Oder-Spree district and the city of Beeskow award the office for five months – combined with the obligation to publish texts in addition to the inaugural and final readings. There is a monthly scholarship of 1,000 euros to support the implementation of your own literary projects.
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