Claudio Lange

Claudio Lange (born December 18, 1944 in Santiago de Chile ) is a German - Chilean poet , artist and religious scholar .

Life

Lange began studying medicine in Chile in 1962, which he broke off. In 1963 he went to Germany and studied sociology at the LMU Munich and from 1967 religious studies at the FU Berlin , where he received his doctorate in 1972 with a thesis on the history of colonialism on Bartolomé de Las Casas . After returning to Chile in March 1973, after Pinochet's seizure of power in September, he had to flee to Germany again in October and received a return ban in 1974, which was only lifted in 1983. He reflected on this situation of the son of parents of German origin as a political refugee living in German exile in the volume of poetry, Return to Exile , published in 1980 . Since then, Lange has lived as a poet, author of religious studies and visual artist in Berlin and Andalusia . He is a member of the New Society for Literature (NGL) and was elected to its board from 1986 to 1989.

One focus of Lange's work on the history of religion and art is the interpretation of the Middle Ages as an epoch in which European identity was formed in opposition and conflict with Islamic culture. The term "anti-Islamism" used by Lange as a term for the epoch is central here. With a grant from the Reemtsma Foundation from 1989 to 1992 , he examined and photographed the numerous Romanesque sculptures in churches in the Mediterranean region that show Muslims in derogatory and degrading poses. One result of this work was the exhibition Islam in Cathedrals, shown from 2003 to 2004 at the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin - Images of the Anti-Christian in Romanesque Sculpture, as well as the accompanying photo book Der nackte Feind . In addition to his literary and scientific work, Lange is a painter and photographer and has presented his works in numerous exhibitions in galleries in Berlin, Munich and in Carboneras, Spain.

Works

• Colonialism: testimony of Bartolomê de Las Casas. Dissertation Free University of Berlin 1972.
• Milk, Wine & Copper. In memoriam Felix Huentelaf. March at two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 1979.
• with Cristián Vila: Dueto. Poetry. Editorial Nascimento, Santiago de Chile 1980.
• Return to Exile and Other Poems. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-499-25133-7 .
• with Cristián Vila: Al mar. Ed. Universitaria, Santiago de Chile 1981.
• Human dignity. Poem in 2 parts. Edition Mariannenpresse , Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-922510-12-4 .
• Museum of the utopias of survival. Transit, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88747-037-0 .
• Small tool. Seals until 1996. The Arab Book, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-86093-115-6 .

Editing and collaboration

• Modern Arabic literature. Das Arabisches Buch, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-923446-40-3 .
• with Gabriele Bartz and Alfred Karnein: The joys of love in the Middle Ages. Cultural history of eroticism and sexuality in images and documents. Belser, Zurich & Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-7630-2311-9 .
• The naked enemy. Anti-Islam in Romanesque Art. Photo book on the occasion of the exhibition Islam in Cathedrals - Images of the Anti-Christian in Romanesque Sculpture in the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, from June 22, 2003 to March 31, 2004. With a foreword by Almut Sh. Bruckstein and essays by Gil Anidjar and Claudio Lange. Photos by Claudio Lange. Parthas, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936324-13-1 .

documentary

• with Heiner Sylvester: The little greenhouse effect. Broadcast on Arte on August 7, 2003, on the ZDFdokukanal on July 19 and 20, 2003.

literature

• Matías Martínez : Lange, Claudio. In: Wilhelm Kühlmann (Ed.): Killy Literature Lexicon . Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area. 2., completely revised Ed. De Gruyter, Berlin 2010, vol. 7, p. 207 f.
• I hate, therefore I am. Claudio Lange on the emergence of the West as an opponent of the East. Interview in Friday 51 (December 14, 2001).

Web links

• Website of Claudio Lange
• Literature by and about Claudio Lange in the catalog of the German National Library