Christoph Derschau

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christoph Derschau (born February 13, 1938 in Potsdam , † November 7, 1995 in Hamburg ) was a German poet .

Life

Derschau worked from 1964 to 1967 as the director of the "Galerie im Center" in Göttingen , where he organized exhibitions, happenings and readings. After dropping out of a degree in economics and journalism, he worked for various television stations from 1967: from 1967 to 1969 as a dramaturge for radio and television plays at Saarländischer Rundfunk and then until 1972 in the television play department of Norddeutscher Rundfunk . He then worked as a freelance writer, journalist and translator for several years. From 1976 he worked as a photo documentary for the Hamburger Illustrierte Stern .

At the beginning of the 1960s, Derschau began writing lyrical texts, initially inspired by the poetry of Jacques Prévert and then mainly by the late Dadaist French “ pataphysicists ” who succeeded Alfred Jarry . During this time he also worked on theater experiments, with the improvisation So ein Theater! Which premiered at experimenta 4 in Frankfurt in 1971 . a certain success was granted. After experimenting briefly with the epigram-like forms of agitprop lyrics after 1968 , at the beginning of the 1970s he turned to an inwardness aimed at authenticity, which is characteristic of what was then known as New Subjectivity .

For literary breakthrough Derschau finally helped the small publisher Benno Käsmayr in whose MaroVerlag the poetry collection The head full of booze and cinema with the programmatic subtitle poems of love, death and the daily minutiae appeared. With this volume, which can now be considered a lyrical bestseller with a total print run of over 3,000 copies, it became the ideal typical representative of everyday poetry, which translates biographical moments, subjective moods and affects as unfiltered as possible into poetry that often flirts with its artlessness, which also before Banality is not afraid of:

And a few days later
I think about what I have written about
this woody language
and am actually glad
not to be one of those
who need to run
around with a claim to art.

This attitude has been criticized many times, for example by Helmut Heißenbüttel and Harald Hartung . Others like Peter Hamm attested the “anarchic Derschau, which most naturally moves in the subcultural scene”, a “convincing simplicity that is reminiscent of American models”. This American models had to be not far searched, they were close, both in publishing, as Charles Bukowski , the "dirty old man" of the US Underground -Lyrik, the most successful author of MaroVerlags was, and emotionally, as Bukowski admired by Derschau than Role was considered and quoted again and again. Other fixed points in Derschau's poetry were Ezra Pound (the Green Rose from 1981 revolves around a poem Pounds), Djuna Barnes ( monologue in the kitchen from 1982 is dedicated to her), of course Arthur Rimbaud as the prototype of the Poète maudit and still Alfred Jarry.

In the 1980s, the public's interest in everyday poetry died out and Derschau's other works received little attention. From 1985 Derschau began staging marathons with poetic interludes as literary events, which was not without risk for the author in view of his health, which had been burdened by lung diseases since childhood. In the last years of his life, Derschau dealt with opera music and worked on a libretto about the Tibetan mystic, tantra master and poet Milarepa . In autumn 1995 he died of a virus infection.

Appreciations

  • 1972 Award of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg

Works

  • With the jackals or the beauty of chaos. Prose. Paria-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1989.
  • So now and then scratch your own skin. With an interpretation by Günter Kunert . Selected poems. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-25020-X . New edition: MaroVerlag, Augsburg 1999.
  • Monologue in the kitchen. Poems. Traces of light, Bern 1982.
  • Green rose. Poems. Verlag Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 1981.
  • Derschau live in Wuppertal. S-Press-Tonbandverlag, Wuppertal 1980.
  • The good clouds. Modern & Polaroid Haikus. Renner, Erlangen 1980, ISBN 3-921499-45-3 .
  • The shores of the saltless Caribbean. Widescreen poems about cities, stars and strong women. Poems. Pohl and Mayer, Kaufbeuren 1977.
  • Such a theater. Theater & radio plays, features. Betzel, Wiesbaden 1977.
  • Head full of booze and cinema. Poems of love, death and the daily odds and ends. Maro-Verlag, Gersthofen 1976.

as editor:

  • International Poetry Calendar 1983. Night Machine, Basel 1983.

Theatre:

  • What a theater! Improvisation. World premiere: Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt , Kammerspiele, June 3, 1971. Director: Gruppe Hamburg (collective).
  • BRATATATA-WHAAM! or white out, Mao in !. World premiere: play-along seminar by Claus Bremer , Innsbruck, 1969.

Broadcast:

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from: Michael Braun: Derschau, Christoph. In: Munzinger Online / KLG.
  2. ↑ Harald Hartung: The one-dimensional poetry. In: Neue Rundschau 1978. H. 2, p. 225f.
  3. ↑ Peter Hamm: A pink Katzenjammer . In: Der Spiegel , August 16, 1976
personal data
SURNAME Derschau, Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lyric poet
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1995
Place of death Hamburg