Eugene Egner

Eugen Egner (born October 10, 1951 in Ingelfingen ) is a German writer , illustrator and musician .

Eugen Egner at a Gorilla Moon concert in "Ort", Wuppertal 2012

Eugen Egner's Synthetic Deer - Monument in Weyhausen (Eschede)

Life

Egner has lived in Wuppertal since 1955 . In the 1970s and 1980s he worked as a graphic designer and illustrator for Die Sendung mit der Maus, among others, and worked as a rock musician mainly in the band Armutszeugnis under the pseudonym Eugen Euler together with RME Streuf and as a human Oyler together with Tim Buktu .

He had the first publications of his drawings (comic series) in 1971 at Hörzu . The first cartoons appeared in 1978 in the Wuppertal city illustrated "Kulturmagazin". In 1986 the Wuppertal Sisyphos publishing house published the volume “When the Erlkönige took liberties” (drawings and a picture story). Loriot showed Gerd Haffmans ' book , who then invited Egner to collaborate on the literary magazine Der Rabe . In 1989 the fictitious diary text “The Last Year” was published in “Rausch-Raben”, from which the “Diary of a Drinker” later emerged. From 1992 onwards, Egner's books were also published by Haffmans Verlag .

From 1988 his drawings and texts were found in the magazines Titanic (here he has been a permanent employee since 1989), taz , Der Rabe , Frankfurter Rundschau , Kowalski , Eulenspiegel , Italy, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , Die Zeit , Junge Welt , Rolling Stone . Since then, Egner has written numerous short texts and radio plays for Westdeutscher Rundfunk . To date, his books have been published by around a dozen different publishers.

Egner's texts are predominantly in the realm of the surreal and the grotesque, whereby his shorter texts are often even more absurd than his novels and stories. Often the perception of reality and changes in consciousness (dream, intoxication, delusion) are thematized, the "wonderful" and "other".

One can also see a clear influence by Kafka, various writers of the Romantic period (especially ETA Hoffmann ), Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti , Lewis Carroll , Donald Barthelme , Charles Fort as well as works by psychiatric patients (e.g. the Prinzhorn collection and Gugging artists ) detect.

In his volume of short stories "Die Eisenberg-Konstante", published in 2001, a stronger turn to the uncanny fantasy was indicated, which was then carried out with "Poison God" (2003). Egner's short texts also have these characteristics, but overall they are still more funny and absurd than the stories.

In 2006 Egner turned back to music as a guitarist. Foundation of the improvisation trio Gorilla Moon with Dietrich Rauschtenberger (dr) and Dietmar Wehr (b).

In 2014, based on Egner's novel, the opera “Der Universums-Stulp,” a musical picture story in three volumes, premiered in the Wuppertal Opera House. Stephan Winkler composed the music, Thierry Bruehl took care of the production .

Awards

• 1992 Hamburg comic sponsorship award
• 2003 Kassel Literature Prize for Grotesque Humor
• 2011 Bernd Pfarr -Sondermann for comic art
• 2018 From the Heydt Culture Prize of the City of Wuppertal

Works

Books

• When the Erlkönige took liberties. Sisyphos, Wuppertal 1986.
• Happy is he who forgets that he cannot be saved. Cartoons and picture stories. Semmel, Kiel 1991.
• From a drinker's diary. Haffmans, Zurich 1991. (New edition: Frankfurt am Main 2007)
• The artificial man. Picture story. Haffmans, Zurich 1992.
• The bleating of the flowers. Cartoons and picture stories. Semmel, Kiel 1992.
• When Santa Claus was a woman and other amazing stories. Short texts and stories. Haffmans, Zurich 1992.
• Masterpieces of the gray period. Texts and drawings. Weisser Stein, Greiz 1992.
• The universe faceplate. Novel. Haffmans, Zurich 1993 / Publié, Bremen 2014.
• Baptized slippers and cats with floral patterns. short texts. Reclam, Leipzig 1996.
• What happened to the Pygmac expedition? Novella. Weisser Stein, Munich 1996.
• The diaries of WA Mozart. Haffmans, Zurich 1998.
• Milk-based androids. Novel. Haffmans, Zurich 1999 / Publié, Bremen 2017.
• The emergency requires everything. Literature presentation of a language eating. Wehrhahn, Hanover 2000.
• The Eisenberg constant. Five fantastic stories. Haffmans, Zurich 2001 / two thousand and one, Frankfurt 2004.
• From the human world. Texts and picture stories. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 2001.
• Androids From Milk. English translation of "Milk-based androids". Dedalus, 2001.
• Implementation of the airspace. Short texts. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 2002.
• Poison of god. Five stories. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 2003.
• When Santa Claus was a woman. Story, illustrated by Rudi Hurzlmeier and Michael Sowa. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
• Home. Nine macabre stories. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 2007.
• Dirt. Stories. KuK, Bellheim 2008.
• The dream nozzle. Short prose with a foreword by Max Goldt. KuK, Bellheim 2009.
• Eugen Egner's colorful world of happiness. Volume 1, cartoons, comics and picture stories. Monsenstein & Vannerdat, Münster 2009.
• Schnölb! The small but nice Eugen Egner reading book; New rare prose & assorted cartoons. Anniversary ribbon for the 60th birthday. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2011.
• Laughing dead in sleep. KuK, Bellheim 2012.
• The adventure milk book by Lupe and Millibar. Gallery art complex, Wuppertal 2016.
• The man and the schnitzel and other collages. KX Editions / Galerie Kunstkomplex, Wuppertal 2017.
• The real context . Fantastic stories. KuK, Bellheim 2017, ISBN 978-3937897585 .

Radio plays

• 1988: The Terrible Daughters. WDR
• 1990: The child prodigy. WDR (children's radio play)
• 1991: The second man. WDR (children's radio play)
• 1996: Eddy's electrical experience. WDR (children's radio play)
• 1997: From a Drinker's Diary - The Last Year. SWF
• 1997: Time machine for Neanderthals. WDR (children's radio play)
• 2003: The emergency demands everything. WDR
• 2004: Darwin's Gap. WDR
• 2006: What is Harry Absolut actually doing? WDR
• 2006: The shadow maiden. WDR
• 2008: Shuk. WDR
• 2008: Olga La Fong. WDR
• 2009: The elimination. WDR
• 2011: everything comes back. WDR
• 2012: Too young to own pants. WDR
• 2014: The landscape. WDR
• 2015: The late bus. WDR
• 2017: Aldartenstrahl. WDR
• 2019: Alter Ego. WDR

More work

• Harry Rowohlt reads “From the Diary of a Drinker” and other texts by Eugen Egner. CD. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt 2001.
• The diaries of WA Mozart, spoken and staged by Herbert Feuerstein. CD. Random House, 2005.
• Drink decently. Illustrations for the German edition of Kingsley Amis "On Drink", Rogner & Bernhard, Berlin 2008. The heirs of Kingsley Amis, who died in 1995, didn't like Egner's illustrations so much that in 2009 they had the sale of this edition banned.
• I have to drink Participation in the film contribution to the arte theme evening "Poets and Alcohol", 2010.
• The universe faceplate . Libretto for the opera based on his own novel. Music by Stephan Winkler UA at the Wuppertal Opera House, 2014.

Web links

• Literature by and about Eugen Egner in the catalog of the German National Library
• www.eugenegner.com Official homepage of Eugen Egner, still almost empty
• The great Eugen Egner exhibition. ( Memento from February 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Caricatura Kassel 1996.
• Wonderfully funny lecture on Eugen Egner by Heiko Arntz, given at the Old University of Marburg, January 11, 1996, as part of the Marburg Comedy Days.
• The Eugen Egner homage page is simple and informative
• Eugen Egner's doll studio in Titanic magazine
• Unseen and Unheard of II. Artists react to the Prinzhorn Collection , ed. v. Ingrid von Beyme and Thomas Röske, Heidelberg 2014
• Radio plays by Eugen Egner in HörDat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The synthetic stag ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ kunstkomplex.net: Eugen Egner