Jürgen Serke died on April 13, 2024.

Jürgen Serke was born on April 19, 1938 in Landsberg an der Warta, today Gorzów Wielkopolski. He worked for the UPI news agency in Frankfurt am Main from 1961—1969 and reported on the Prague Spring from Czechoslovakia in 1967/68. From 1970—1983 he worked as an author for “Stern”, from 1984—1989 for “Weltwoche” Zürich and from 1990—1992 for “Welt”.

His journalistic work focused on writers' resistance to the two totalitarianisms of the 20th century.

With his book “Die Verbrannten Dichter” (1977), which emerged from a series in the “Stern”, he initiated the rediscovery in the Federal Republic of Germany of those authors whose works were burned by the Nazis in 1933. This book title became a generic term for an entire literature. Without Jürgen Serke, many of these authors would still be forgotten today.

The book “The Exiled Poets. Reports and pictures of a new expulsion” (1982) focused on the poets of resistance against communist totalitarianism and showed their authors in western exile trying to regain a foothold in a foreign world.

In the book “Böhmische Dörfer. Wanderings through an abandoned literary landscape” (1987) Jürgen Serke presented the German-language literature of Czechoslovakia destroyed first by the Nazi regime and then by Communism and reinserted it into Czech history.

The book “Home in Exile. Poets who remained independent in the GDR” (1998) finally presented the life and work of those poets who remained in the GDR, fought the SED regime and based their resistance on the authors of Charter 77.

With Hajo Jahn, chairman of the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Gesellschaft, Jürgen Serke was the initiator and organizer of the campaign “Reading Poets in Asylum Seekers' Homes” in 1992. It was a reaction to the attacks on asylum seekers' homes in Hoyerswerda, Rostock and Hünxe. Sarah Kirsch, Wolf Biermann, Herta Müller, Rainer Kunze, Hans Joachim Schädlich, Günther Grass, Peter Schneider, Sten Nadolny took part in the campaign on November 9, 1992. The campaign was joined by the foundations of the SPD, the CDU, the Greens, the Börsenverein des deutschen Buchhandels, the Initiative against Violence and Xenophobia, which brought together 60 German publishers, and the German Janusz-Korczak Society.

In 2008, Jürgen Serke's collection of books, pictures and documents was taken over by the Else-Lasker-Schüler Foundation and shown in the Solingen Museum under the title “Heaven and Hell between 1918 and 1989.” Together with the Fine Arts Collection, the museum became the only center of persecuted arts. The literature collection is now part of the “Citizens' Foundation for Persecuted Arts — Else Lasker-Schüler Center — Gerhard Schneider Art Collection”.

On the 90th anniversary of the National Socialist book burning, the book “The Burned Poets” (Wallstein Verlag 2023) was published in a new form and received great attention.

Serke received the Alexander Zinn Prize from the Hanseatic City of Hamburg for his work in 1992. In 2002, he was awarded the “Magnesia” literary prize in Prague on the occasion of the Czech translation of the “Bohemian Villages” in Prague. In 2011, he was the first German to receive the Václav Benda Medal for his “significant role in the fight for the restoration of freedom and democracy in the Czechoslovak Republic.” In 2012, he received the Art Prize for the German-Czech Republic in Bremen Termination. The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded him the Free Agit Prize in 2017.

Center for Persecuted Arts, Solingen
Jürgen Joseph Kaumkötter and the entire team

Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen
Thedel v. Wallmoden and all employees