Hartmut Barth-Engelbart (pen names, among others Carl Hanau, HaBE), (born April 1947) is a German author, songwriter and graphic artist.
Barth-Engelbart was born in 1947 as the eighth of nine children in a Protestant family of Michelstadt.[1] After completing his schooling, he was a reserve officer candidate from 1966, finally a trainer with the Bundeswehr.[2] In 1968, he began an apprenticeship as a typesetter at the Frankfurter Rundschau, but it lasted only one day, because on the following day he took part in an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in Frankfurt and fell from a canopy in the wake of political confrontations and broke his ankle joints on both feet.[1]
Barth-Engelbart began studying psychology and pedagogy in 1969, changed to primary school pedagogy after four semesters and passed his second state examination in 1978.[1] From 1971 to 1974 he was a lecturer at a primary school in Frankfurt-Rödelheim and a member of the strike committee of the lecturers. In 1972 he became a member of the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft junger Lehrer und Erzieher" (Association of Young Teachers and Educators) at the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (AjLE) and the GEW-Landesvorstands.[3]
In 1974, Barth-Engelbart became a member of the Communist League of West Germany (KBW),[1] for which he unsuccessfully ran for office in the state elections in Hesse in 1978.[4] A party expulsion due to lack of "line loyalty" preceded his resignation in 1979.[1]
From 1974 to 1978, Barth-Engelbart was deputy chairman of the staff council of the study seminar; from 1974 to 1976, he was involved in setting up the GEW Group and GEW chairman in Bruchköbel-Süd. He was expelled from the GEW in 1978, as a result of an incompatibility decision against the KBW.[3]
Since he was not immediately taken into the school service, in 1978, he worked until 1991 in different jobs.[1] In 1980, he became member of the Gewerkschaft Öffentliche Dienste, Transport und Verkehr [de], the strike leadership and the ÖTV regional board, then worked again, from 1991, in the school service.[3] In 1993, he became a civil servant, working as a primary school teacher.[1]
According to his own statements, he was a primary school teacher and children's choir leader until 2006. Since then he has been working full-time as a writer, songwriter and graphic artist.
Together with the composer and saxophonist Wolfgang Stryi of the Ensemble Modern, Barth-Engelbart organized several readings between 1991 and 2004.[5]
In September 2003, Barth-Engelbart initiated the Hanau Resistance Readings at Freiheitsplatz on the Viennese model.[6]