Veit Heinichen

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Veit Heinichen (2019)

Veit Heinichen (* 1957 in Villingen-Schwenningen ) is a German writer .

Life

After studying business administration and working at the headquarters of Daimler-Benz AG , Veit Heinichen decided on a second career and completed an apprenticeship as a retail bookseller. He then switched to publishing and worked for well-known literary publishers in Zurich, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. In 1994 he was a co-founder of Berlin Verlag and its managing director until 1999.

In 1997 he moved to Trieste ; he had visited the city for the first time in 1980 and has since commuted between Germany and Italy. His novels about the policeman Proteo Laurenti are also set in Trieste. Since 2003 his books have been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Slovenian, Greek, Czech and Polish. So far, eleven novels have been published (ten of them with Commissario Laurenti), as well as the travel book Trieste - City of Winds , written together with star chef Ami Scabar .

Attacks and lawsuits

In February 2009 the author went public for a character assassination campaign against him. For more than a year, the public prosecutor and the police investigated the perpetrators of the action, which was intended to denigrate the author as a pedophile. A special feature was the highly professional approach taken by the perpetrators: neither fingerprints nor DNA traces could be found on hundreds of anonymous letters. A number of house searches of suspects were also unsuccessful. The case attracted international media interest, and the French daily Le Monde dedicated the third page to it.

In January 2010, a former board member as well as the former tax advisor and a former lawyer of the Hypo Alpe Adria Group, the Klagenfurt financial institution acquired by BayernLB, filed an injunction against the Residenz Verlag and Veit Heinichen. In his foreword to the book Tatort Hypo Alpe Adria by the author Richard Schneider, Heinichen had described Hypo as the “Mafia's house bank” and praised the book as a key work on the “overall presentation of an international criminal clique”. Heinichen was defended by the Viennese media attorney Gerald Ganzger (law firm Lansky, Ganzger & Partner) and won in all three instances against the plaintiffs, who have since been finally convicted in several cases by various courts.

The European present in the mirror of the crime novel

Veit Heinichen's novels are set in Trieste and the border region of the Upper Adriatic, between Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Germany. According to the author, it is an intersection of Europe, where the three great European cultures meet: the Romance, Slavic and Germanic, and an ideal observatory of the political-historical, economic and social changes in Central Europe. This area has been most clearly marked by the course of developments in European history from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. The multiethnic and multilingual border and port city of Trieste is an ideal starting point for Heinichen's novels, which focus and analyze topics of the highest relevance: crimes with a nationalistic background, trade in people and organs, international corruption, technology theft, speculation in raw materials, interdependence of politics, Economy and organized crime or the aftermath of colonialism. These are subjects for which the author researched for years and which, in his ironic to sarcastic narrative style, is not limited to the classic group of three perpetrators, victims and investigators, but above all illuminates the fundamental role of society.

The protagonist is the Vice-Questore and Commissario Proteo Laurenti, who was born in Salerno (Campania), a “stubborn, likeable thick-headed”, “mentally athletic in the ranks of great commissioners”, who often does not stick to the rules himself and likes to do so because of him unconventional kind of irritating the authorities. He has been married for almost thirty years to Laura, a Friulian from San Daniele, who is the co-owner of an auction house in Trieste. They have three grown children, of whom the eldest daughter Livia now works as a secretary in a Frankfurt law firm, while the youngest child, son Marco, is training to be a chef in a top restaurant in Trieste. Patrizia, the second born, became the mother of a girl, so Proteo Laurenti was a grandfather. Since his mother-in-law moved in with the family, the inspector has referred to himself as the “male minority” in the house. In the past, a few readers' voices strongly criticized the fact that Proteo Laurenti is not so strict about marital fidelity. In particular, his liaison with the Croatian attorney general Živa Ravno met with repeated criticism. But wife Laura also allows herself an affair at times. The eccentric retired coroner Galvano calls her behavior a typical case of “parallel loyalty”.

Laurenti's opponents do not necessarily change from case to case, but are part of a network that spans borders, a shadow society that protects one another and tries to expand its power and profit by ignoring all democratic rules.

The eight episodes of the Proteo Laurenti novels not only show the changes in a city and its surroundings during the time of the EU expansion to the east, but Veit Heinichen is “far more than a clever narrator of exciting crime stories, he is one Kind of chronicler of the European upheaval [,] through which one learns to see Europe with different eyes. "

In addition to other lifestyle habits, Heinichen also tells the culinary confrontations to which his protagonists are exposed. "Veit Heinichen is the Fellini of the crime novel, but also its Jamie Oliver."

"Taboos and habits", says Heinichen, "are the collective property of society, telling them brings those who have used them up to now into great turmoil." "I feel the detective novel is an adequate means of depicting our society."

In his 464-page thriller Borderless (Piper 2019), the protagonist of which is Commissario Xenia Zannier, the entanglements between internationally active organized crime and corrupt political practice are illuminated.

Awards

  • 2003 At the Premio Franco Fedeli (Bologna) the Italian translation of Die Toten vom Karst was chosen as one of the three best Italian detective novels of the year.
  • 2004 Also Premio Franco Fedeli (Bologna) in the following year for death on the waiting list .
  • 2005 Radio Bremen Crime Prize for its "sensitive, entertaining and precise research into the historical-political interrelationships that characterize Trieste as the location of Central European culture."
  • 2010 Premio Azzeccagarbugli (Lecco) for The Peace of the Stronger as the best foreign language novel.
  • 2011 XIII Premio Internazionale Trieste Scrittura di Frontiera
  • 2012 Gran Premio Noé (Gradisca)
  • 2012 at the European Crime Fiction Star Award (Unna) with Petros Markaris and Fred Vargas in the final round.
  • 2013 Premio Speciale of the Camera di Commercio, Industria, Artigianato e Agricoltura Trieste.
  • 2014 Premio Selezione Bancarella

Works

Film adaptations

Between 2005 and 2008 the novels Give everyone his own death , Die Toten vom Karst , Death on the waiting list , Death throws long shadows and Dance of Death were filmed for ARD under the title Commissario Laurenti . The main role of the Commissario Proteo Laurenti was played by the actor Henry Hübchen , that of his wife Laura was interpreted by Barbara Rudnik . Other roles included Götz George , Hannelore Hoger , Florian Panzner , Hanns Zischler , Catherine Flemming , Sophia Thomalla , Anne Bennent , Sergej Moya .

Documentaries (selection)

  • 2005 Veit Heinichen / Giampaolo Penco: Le lunghe ombre della morte , 90 minutes, VideoEst / RAI.
  • 2005 Veit Heinichen - My Trieste . A film by Günter Schilhan, 3Sat.
  • 2008 Trieste - Coffee, the city and its lovers . A film by Elisabeth Weißthanner, BR.

Web links

Commons : Veit Heinichen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus-Peter Walter (Ed.): Reclams Krimi-Lexikon . Authors and works. Philipp Reclam Jun., Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-15-010509-9 , p. 202.
  2. ↑ 3sat from July 2008: "Inter-City special" Veit Heinichen - Mein Triest
  3. ↑ News Orf.at ( Memento of the original dated February 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.orf.at
  4. ↑ Le Monde, March 11, 2009
  5. ^ Die Zeit, May 11, 2010
  6. ↑ APA / OTS, November 17, 2011
  7. ↑ Interview with Jörg Steinleitner in: Krimi. The magazine for word and manslaughter 2005.
  8. ↑ 3sat My Trieste
  9. ^ Spiegel Special, October 1, 2003
  10. ↑ a b Literature: Espresso with power . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 2011 ( online - April 23, 2011 ).
  11. ^ Hamburger Abendblatt, March 28, 2013
  12. ↑ Der Standard, July 17, 2009
  13. ↑ Crime Couch
  14. ↑ Walter Grünzweig: New crime thriller by Veit Heinichen: Korrupte Politik , review in Der Standard from May 25, 2019, accessed June 5, 2019
  15. ↑ Wuz Italy
  16. ↑ edizioni e / o
  17. ^ Radio Bremen, September 28, 2005
  18. ↑ Premio Azzeccagarbugli 30 June 2010
  19. ↑ Book Market, December 6, 2011
  20. ↑ Messaggero Veneto, May 20, 2012
  21. ^ Camera di Commercio di Trieste, December 17, 2013
  22. ↑ edizioni e / o
  23. ↑ Fernsehserien.de
  24. ↑ 3sat
  25. ↑ Kulturforum, June 1, 2008
personal data
SURNAME Heinichen, Veit
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German crime writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Villingen-Schwenningen