Giwi Margwelaschwili

Who is Giwi Margwelaschwili?

Giwi Margwelaschwili is a German-language Georgian writer and philosopher.

He is the son of the notable Georgian intellectual Tite Margwelaschwili, who moved to Germany after the Red Army invasion of Georgia in 1921 and was chairman of the Georgian political emigre organization in Berlin. Due to allied bombing he attended three different gymnasium schools in Berlin and participated in the anti-Fascist youth movement Swing Kids.

After the war the family lived in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in the British sector of Berlin. In December 1945 Giwi and his father were abducted by the Soviet secret police NKVD and confined in the cellar of a Soviet commandantura in Berlin-Weissensee for six weeks. Subsequently he was detained in a Soviet Special Camp at Sachsenhausen. While his father was deported to Tbilisi and shot as a traitor after eight months of interrogation and torture, Giwi was released after 18 months in the camp. He was not allowed to return to West Berlin and moved to his relatives in Tbilisi.

Margwelaschwili learned Georgian and Russian, and graduated from high school. He studied English at the Tbilisi State University and was an aspirant for foreign languages. 1957-1970 he taught English and German at the Tbilisi Institute of Foreign Languages. In the 1950s, he composed his first novels and philosophic writings on phenomenology.