Peter-Paul Zahl (March 14, 1944, in Freiburg im Breisgau – January 24, 2011, in Port Antonio, Jamaica) was a German-born anarchist–libertarian writer and director. He last held dual German–Jamaican citizenship.
His extensive work, which includes lyric poetry, prose, and plays, is marked by the politicization of literature in West German society as a result of the 1968 movement. He was honored in 1980 for the picaresque novel Die Glücklichen and in 1995 for the crime novel Der schöne Mann.
In the late 1960s, he became known in West Berlin as the printer of the underground magazine Agit 883 and as a publisher and author of subcultural writings from the radical leftist social environment, which brought him into the focus of law enforcement.
After critically wounding a police officer in a shootout while fleeing from police, he was imprisoned from 1972 to 1982. In 1976, the Düsseldorf District Court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for two counts of attempted murder. While in prison, Zahl intensified his literary work. He then became involved in cultural politics for the New Jewel Movement in Grenada and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. From 1985 he lived primarily in Jamaica.
Life
Childhood and youth
Zahl was born in Freiburg, Germany, in the penultimate year of World War II, the son of Hilde Zahl, a secretary, and Paul Zahl, a lawyer. His parents stayed there in 1944 when his father received medical treatment for a severe war injury and leg amputation. His mother and grandmother were Jewish. Towards the end of the war, the family moved back to their hometown of Feldberg in Mecklenburg with their one-year-old child, where the father founded the children's book publishing house Peter-Paul, named after his son, in 1947. The company was successful and soon became the second-largest children's book publisher in the GDR.The Publishing House of Peter Paul in Feldberg – a bibliography, Mecklenburg-Strelitz Blog, May 28, 2011 As a privately owned company, however, it ran counter to state economic planning, and in 1951 Paul Zahl was denied a new license to continue the business. Due to further difficulties with the state authorities, the Zahl family moved to West Germany in 1953, settling first in Wülfrath and later in Ratingen in the Rhineland.Christoph Links: Die verschwundenen Verlage der SBZ/DDR: Zwischenbericht zu einem Forschungsprojekt. In: Björn Biester, Carsten Wurm (Ed.): 2016. Archive for the History of the Book Trade, Volume 71, p. 235–260. doi:10.1515/9783110462227-009, pirckheimer-gesellschaft.org (PDF; 531 kB)
The family found it difficult to adapt to their new surroundings, as the father remained unemployed and there were problems with the payment of his war pension. About two decades later, Peter-Paul Zahl himself described the move to the West as the end of an "extremely beautiful and happy childhood.Peter-Paul Zahl: Lebenslauf einer Unperson. In: Erich Fried, Helga M. Novak: Am Beispiel Peter-Paul Zahl. Eine Dokumentation. 3rd edition. 1978, p. 15-48, here p. 27 He first attended high school in Velbert, then in Ratingen until he graduated from Mittlere Reife, before completing his apprenticeship as a small offset printer in Düsseldorf from 1961 to 1964, passing his journeyman's examination with a grade of "very good". During his apprenticeship, he was considered "difficult" and "critical" by his superiors. He was politically active, joining the Printing and Paper Union and the Conscientious Objection Society.Judgment of the Düsseldorf Regional Court of March 12, 1976, reprinted in: Erich Fried, Helga M. Novak: Am Beispiel Peter-Paul Zahl. Eine Dokumentation. pp. 86–101, here p. 87
West Berlin 1964—1972 In 1964 Zahl moved his primary residence to West Berlin to avoid conscription, which was not implemented due to the Allied reservation of rights for citizens in the western sectors of the city. He worked as a printer and attended night school and lectures at the Free University of Berlin to become a writer. But he soon turned his back on institutional education: "They don't teach you how to write anyway. On the contrary, they just mess up your style and your class consciousness.Peter-Paul Zahl in a letter to Rudi Dutschke, March 24–25, 1978: Rudi Dutschke: Georg Büchner und Peter-Paul Zahl, oder: Widerstand im Übergang und mittendrin. In: Georg Büchner Jahrbuch. Berlin 1984, p. 37 In 1965 he married his girlfriend Urte Wienen, also from his former hometown of Ratingen. The couple had two children, Raoul-Kostja,See Agit 883 .... born on July 16, 1969, and Nadezhda, born in 1971.Cf. Zahl, Peter-Paul. In: Walter Habel (Ed.): Wer ist wer? Das deutsche Who’s who. 24th edition. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1985, , p. 1377. After the birth of their daughter, Zahl moved into a shared apartment. He was evicted from the apartment he shared with his wife because he was repeatedly not found in the marital household. The marriage ended in divorce in 1973.
In late 1965 Zahl supported an initiative by cabaret artist Wolfgang Neuss against the Vietnam War. Zahl's first publications of prose and poetry in magazines and on flyers also date from 1965. In 1966, he became a member of the Dortmunder Gruppe 61, a literary group initiated by Max von der Grün, whose aim was to create a link between writers and industrial workers. His first novel, From Someone Who Set Out to Earn Money, was published in 1970 by Karl Rauch Publishing House in Düsseldorf and received some public attention.Gregor Dotzauer: Peter-Paul Zahl: Das System ist der Fehler. In: Tagesspiegel from January 25, 2011, retrieved on March 9, 2012.
In 1965/66 he came into contact with the student movement, from which the then extra-parliamentary opposition (APO) developed. After the formation of the Grand Coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SPD under Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger in 1966/67 and the discussion about the Emergency Laws, the APO became a socially relevant opposition to the system with revolutionary aspirations. Zahl supported the principles of the movement, but refused to be associated with student-dominated organizations such as the Socialist German Students (SDS). He saw himself as part of a proletarian youth, a mixture of "young workers, Kreuzberg bohemians, German army refugees, young booksellers".Rudi Dutschke: Georg Büchner und Peter-Paul Zahl, oder: Widerstand im Übergang und mittendrin. p. 39
With the financial support of his parents-in-law, Zahl and his wife founded the Zahl-Wienen printing and publishing house in 1967 on Urban Street in Kreuzberg. In addition to corporate stationery and advertising, the company printed various publications and posters for the subcultural left-wing political scene. The publishing house mainly published countercultural magazines, such as the second issue of pro these in 1967. Zeitschrift für Unvollkommene by the astrologer Hans Taeger, as well as council communist and anarchist texts, including Spartacus: zeitschrift für lesbare literatur (1967–1970)Spartacus: zeitschrift für lesbare literatur – DNB 011172142 – catalog entry of the German National Library and the magazine pp-quadrat (1968–1970).pp-quadrat – catalog of the German National Library; accessed on March 9, 2012 The first pp-quadrat volume contained the brochure amerikanischer faschismus by Bernd Kramer, another the description of Günter Wallraff's self-experiment with mescaline. The editions were often characterized by artistically designed collages, woodcuts and lithographs.
Zahl also wrote for the literary magazine Ulcus Molle Info and the satirical newspaper Der Metzger. With the zwergschul-ergänzungshefte,zwergschul-ergänzungshefte – DNB 458748331 – catalog entry of the German National Library the publisher brought out a series between 1968 and 1970 with writings by revolutionary thinkers that were put up for discussion in the APO. The reprint of Georg Büchner's Hessian Courier from 1834, whose call "Peace to the shacks! War on the palaces!" was adopted as the slogan of the movement.
From February 1969, the printing company produced the anarchist-libertarian magazine Agit 883, which Zahl was involved in editing until 1971. This reflected the fragmentation of the APO into different factions after its peak in 1967/1968. In numerous articles, it addressed the controversial question of the transition from protest to armed resistance, which had arisen in parts of the movement after the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke the previous year. When larger presses were purchased for the large-format newspaper – it was printed on DIN A2 plates – the company moved to more suitable premises at Weder Street 91 in Britz. In August 1969, after the publication of issue 25, the company was raided for the first time. This was because the then Senator of the Interior, Kurt Neubauer, was depicted on the cover with the words "Wanted for kidnapping", which was considered offensive by the authorities. Further searches followed as part of a criminal investigation into Agit 883, including the anti-Vietnam War texts in issue 61 of May 1970, which the commander of the American sector in Berlin had reported to the police. Zahl was acquitted of the charges brought against him because it could not be proven that he, as the printer, knew the text.Peter-Paul Zahl: Lebenslauf einer Unperson. In: Erich Fried, Helga M. Novak: Am Beispiel Peter-Paul Zahl. Eine Dokumentation. p. 37
After internal disputes within the magazine's editorial staff, Zahl left Agit 883 in 1971 and founded the underground anarchist magazine Fizz, which published ten issues until 1972. The magazine advocated the creation of an urban guerrilla movement and drew on American subcultural movements such as Black power and the Weather Underground.Fizz. Der kurze Sommer der gedruckten Anarchie – oder die Notwendigkeit klandestiner Zeitungen. On haschrebellen.de, accessed March 24, 2012 Fizz was considered the mouthpiece of the Berlin blues, especially the local group of so-called hash rebels. A large part of the violent Tupamaros West Berlin group, which was based on the concept of urban guerrilla warfare and merged with the 2 June Movement in early 1972, was recruited from this group.
As early as 1970 Zahl was involved in a small, clandestine organization called "Up against the Wall, Motherfuckers!" that specialized in forging passports for GIs stationed in Berlin who were unwilling to serve in the war to escape to Sweden.
In 1971 the authorities charged Zahl with public incitement to commit a crime and reopened the case against him. The case concerned a poster designed by future RAF member Holger Meins. It bore the title "Freedom for All Prisoners!" and had been confiscated from the print shop in May 1970. The image consisted of a sunflower stylized by a grenade and shell casings, with the names of international guerrilla and liberation movements such as the "Vietcong" in what was then South Vietnam, the Tupamaros in Uruguay, and the Black Panther Party in the U.S. inscribed on the petals.Image of the poster designed by Holger Meins at the end of April 1970 and published at the beginning of May on palestineposterproject.org, accessed on May 28, 2012 Zahl was sentenced to six months' probation on April 17, 1972.Heinrich Hannover: Die Republik vor Gericht. 1954–1974. Erinnerungen eines unbequemen Rechtsanwalts. Aufbau Taschenbuch Publisher, Berlin 2000, , p. 410
Imprisonment 1972–1982
Gunfight