Artur Becker (writer)

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Artur Becker at the Römerberg Talks in April 2017

Artur Becker (* 7. May 1968 in Bartoszyce , Poland as Artur Bekier ) is in Germany living Polish-German writer .

Life

Becker grew up in Masuria as the son of German-Polish parents. He has lived in Germany since 1985, where he has written novels, stories, poems and essays and has worked as a translator. He lives in Verden .

After moving to Germany in 1985, he made up his German Abitur in Verden in 1989 and studied cultural history of Eastern Europe as well as German literature and linguistics at the University of Bremen until 1997 . Artur Becker made his debut in Polish in the Gazeta Olsztyńska in 1984 as a poet . In 1989 he changed the language and to this day writes exclusively in German . From 1990 he published mainly in the literary magazine STINT from Bremen . Becker took part in the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in 2001 and 2004 in Klagenfurt . He regularly writes essays and articles for the Frankfurter Rundschau , Ostragehege , the Rheinischer Merkur and other newspapers. He is also valued as a performer of lyrical appearances with the Bremen jazz band Swim Two Birds . Artur Becker is a member of the PEN Center Germany .

His best-known works include the novel Der Dadajsee (1997), which describes the return of a Polish guest worker from Germany to his homeland, and the novella Die Zeit der Smelt (2006), in which a German-Polish repatriate embarks on historical traces, to investigate the story of a murder committed by three concentration camp inmates towards the end of the war against a commandant of a satellite camp of the Stutthof concentration camp . In his picaresque novel The Heart of Chopin (2006) he ironically ironizes Polish romanticism using the example of an emigrant and car dealer milieu . Becker's writing style is often compared to that of Ernest Hemingway , but he himself mentions John Steinbeck and Isaac B. Singer as his stylistically and spiritually related authors. Becker's poetry , which, like that of Czesław Miłosz , deals primarily with theological issues, has also become more and more popular in Germany in recent years. This is mainly due to the author's numerous public appearances, who himself states that he has now completed more than 500 readings.

Becker's novel Vodka and Knives. Lied vom Drowning (2008) met with a wide response from the critics and is so far his most important and at the same time most controversial work. In this novel, the story of the Warmia is Dadajsee drowned girl Marta and his beloved Cuba Dernicki told that as a former Solidarity - Dissident has fled to the West. His return to his Polish hometown of Wilimy is like a descent into the underworld: the encounter with the past raises the question of who has more power - the dead or the living. The novel also tells the latest history of Poland - martial law , transformacja (the Polish turning point in 1989) and the years after.

Becker was awarded the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize from the Robert Bosch Foundation in 2009, and in 2012 he received the DIALOG Prize from the German-Polish Association of the Federal Association . This award honors people and associations who are “committed in an exemplary manner to the dialogue between peoples and cultures in Europe and to deepening German-Polish relations”.

In 2013 his novel From the Rising of the Sun to its Fall was published , which deals with the time of the fall of 1989 in Poland and alludes to the national drama Funeral by Adam Mickiewicz and Psalm 113 .

Works

Artur Becker's autograph
  • The Dadajsee . Roman, Stint Verlag, Bremen 1997, ISBN 3-928346-13-X
  • The singing from the magic tub . Poems (1998)
  • Jesus and Marx from the ESSO gas station . Poems (1998)
  • Lady with an ermine . Poems (2000)
  • Uncle Jimmy, the Indians and me . Roman (2001, 2003)
  • The Milky Way . Stories (2002)
  • Kino Muza . Novel (2003)
  • The time of the smelt . Novella (2006)
  • Chopin's heart . Novel (2006)
  • Vodka and knife. Song of drowning . Roman, Weissbooks.w , Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-940888-28-0
  • A kiosk with eleven million nights . Poems (2009)
  • My mother's lipstick . Roman, Weissbooks.w, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-442-74296-7
  • From the rising of the sun to its setting . Roman, Weissbooks.w, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-940888-06-8
  • Seven days with Lidia . Novelle, Weissbooks.w, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-86337-065-7
  • Cosmopolitan. Looking for a European home. Essays . Weissbooks.w, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-86337-105-0
  • Dandelions. In: people and masks. Literary encounters with the painter Felix Nussbaum. Edited by Jutta Sauer. zu Klampen, Springe 2016, pp. 70–78. ISBN 978-3-86674-525-4
  • The immortal Mr. Lindley . Weissbooks.w, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-86337-172-2
  • Urge to the east . Weissbooks.w, Frankfurt am Main 2019, ISBN 978-3-86337-119-7

Awards and grants

Web links

Commons : Artur Becker  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Reviews

personal data
SURNAME Becker, Artur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bekier, Artur (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-German writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Bartoszyce , Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship , Poland