Gorch Fock was the pseudonym of the German author Johann Wilhelm Kinau (22 August 1880 - 31 May 1916). Other pseudonyms were Jakob Holst and Giorgio Focco.

Kinau was born the eldest child of fisherman Heinrich Wilhelm Kinau and his wife, Metta Holst, on the Elbe island Finkenwerder, near Hamburg. In 1895 he was apprenticed to his uncle, the merchant August Kinau in Geestemünde (today part of Bremerhaven), and from 1897 until 1898 he attended a commercial school in Bremerhaven. Later he was employed as an accountant in Meiningen, Bremen, Halle (Saale) and from 1907 at the shipping company "Hamburg-Amerika-Linie" in Hamburg. He married Rosa Elisabeth Reich in 1908, with whom he was to have three children.

In the First World War, Kinau was drafted to the German infantry in 1915. He fought in Serbia and Russia and later at Verdun. From 1916 he served in the German Navy. He died in the sinking of German cruiser SMS Wiesbaden in the Battle of Jutland. His body was found on the Swedish shore near Fjällbacka and interred on the island of Stensholmen with other German and British servicemen.

In 1904 Kinau started publishing poetry and stories in his native Low Saxon language. In 1913 he published his most popular work, the novel Seefahrt ist not, in which he describes the life of the deep sea fishermen of his home island.

Works

• 1910 Schullengrieper und Tungenkrieper
• 1911 Hein Godenwind
• 1913 Hamborger Janmaten
• 1913 Seefahrt ist not! (ISBN 3499141485)
• 1914 Fahrensleute
• 1914 Cilli Cohrs (play)
• 1914 Doggerbank (play)
• 1914-15 War poems in Low Saxon language
• 1918 (posthumously) Sterne überm Meer (Diary notes and poems)

External links

• Gorch Fock biography (in German)
• German Project Gutenberg: Gorch Fock
• Article about the cemetery on Stensholmen, by Peter Danielsson (in Swedish)