Bergholz, O. F. (1910-1975), poet

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Categories / Literature. Book Publishing/Personalia
BERGHOLZ, Olga Fedorovna (1910, St. Petersburg 1975, Leningrad), poet, prose writer, publicist. She was a member of the Smena (shift) literature group, and one of the brightest representatives of the so called Komsomol literature of the late 1920s-30s. Upon graduating from Leningrad University (1930) pursued journalism in Kazakhstan. Before 1940 published a number of prose, children books, the collection Poems (1934) and The Book of Songs (1936), where she reflected on the inexhaustibility of life, faith, love, the feeling of unity with the people and her generation. From December 1938 to July 1939, she was in prison. From the very start until the end of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 Bergholz worked at radio (lived in the House of Radio - Rakova Street, today 27 Italyanskaya Street, memorial plaque), she became the voice of fighting Leningrad, her verses and poems February Diary, Leningrad Poem, In memory of Defenders), Your Road and others — War Chronicle of the Besieged City and An Expression of Belief in the Breakthrough of an Ordinary Leningrad Citizen. Bergholz is the author of the inscription at the Piskarevskoe memorial cemetery; Stalin's prize laureate (1950), for the poem Pervorossiisk. Her major literary works of the 1950-70s are — a free-verse prosaic narrative Day Stars (one part of which — 1959, had not been completed) and the final collection of poems Knot (1965) are penetrated by the recurrent motives of remembrance, high-stakes drama, attempts to grasp the destiny of an individual in relation to the country's historical path. In 1932-43 Bergholz lived at 7 Rubinsteina Street (memorial plaque); in the post-war years, at 22 Rubinsteina Street, 20 Chernaya Rechka Embankment. Buried at Literatorskie mostki. In 1978 a Street was named after O. Bergholz (former Martynosvkaya and Mirnaya Streets around Shchemilovka). In 1984 the O. Bergholz Museum was opened in school No 329.

References: Банк Н. Б. Ольга Берггольц: Критико-биогр. очерк. М.; Л., 1962; Павловский А. И. Стих и сердце: Очерк творчества О. Берггольц. Л., 1962.

T. M. Dvinyatina. Bergholz Olga Fedorovna
Chernaya Rechka River Embankment/Saint Petersburg, city, house 20
Italyanskaya Street/Saint Petersburg, city, house 27
Rubinsteina St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 22
Rubinsteina St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 7
Банк Н. Б. Ольга Берггольц: Критико-биогр. очерк. М.; Л., 1962
Павловский А. И. Стих и сердце: Очерк творчества О. Берггольц. Л., 1962 Literatorskie (Literary) Mostki, the museum-necropolis
1942