Erasmus Schöfer

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Erasmus Schöfer (born June 4, 1931 in Altlandsberg ) is a German writer .

Erasmus Schöfer, writer, in the Literaturhaus Cologne (June 15, 2008)

He became known nationwide from 1970–1973 as co-founder and spokesman of the work group literature in the world of work . His main work is the novel tetralogy Die Kinder des Sisyfos , published between 2001 and 2008 , in which Schöfer tells the story of the West German 1968 movement in the form of a contemporary novel and, based on the biographies of the characters in the novel, through the political and social struggles of the 1970s and 1980s Followed up for years.

Life

Erasmus Schöfer was born the son of a teacher. From 1949 to 1953 he attended a secondary school in Berlin , where he graduated from high school. He then studied German , linguistics and philosophy at the universities in West Berlin , Cologne , Bonn and Freiburg im Breisgau , interrupted by a three-year activity as a factory worker in Berlin and Cologne. In 1960 he received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Bonn . After a brief interlude in the scientific field, he has been working as a freelance writer since 1962 .

In 1965 Schöfer moved to Munich , where he became involved against the emergency laws and later in the Easter march movement. In 1969 he was a co-founder of the " Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt ", whose spokesperson he was until 1973 and for which he oversaw numerous publications. After living on the Greek islands of Patmos and Ithaca for a few years , he has lived in Cologne since 1970 , where he belonged to the DKP . In addition to volumes of prose , the work of the left activist Schöfer also consists of numerous radio plays .

Erasmus Schöfer has been a member of the Association of German Writers since 1970 (temporarily as a member of the federal executive board) and of the PEN Center Germany since 1980 . In May 2009 he founded the "Action Independent Rhein-Ruhr Authors" (AURA 09 eV) chaired by Eva Weissweiler together with other former district, state and federal board members of the Writers' Association . He received the ARD Kurt Magnus Prize in 1964 , a working grant from the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1974, 1977 and 2001, and a grant from the German Literature Fund in 1981 and 1992 . In 2008 he was awarded the Gustav-Regulator-Prize of the city of Merzig and the Saarland Broadcasting Corporation.

Schöfer was married to the actress Christiane Bruhn and has four children.

plant

According to the literary scholar Rüdiger Scholz, Erasmus Schöfer is “a committed writer who combines practical social engagement with political-critical literature, a littérature engagée who takes sides for the workers, for the socially declassified, against the destruction of nature and nuclear power plants, for a democratization of the German society ". Scholz sums it up elsewhere: "Although he has a doctorate, Erasmus Schöfer is not an academic writer, neither in terms of origin, nor in terms of his own career, nor in terms of the topics of his literature." He worked for several years in factories in Berlin and Cologne. As a co-founder of the “Working Group on Literature in the Working World”, he helped shape its history. He has published four books in the series, e.g. Sometimes with others: A construction crane falls over , 1970; Writing Realistically , 1972; The red grandfather tells , 1974; The children of the red grandfather tell , 1976; Strike reports , 1974; Works council reports , 1977.

His radio plays from the 1970s - colleague Zander intervenes , 1972; Let's do today what will be beautiful tomorrow , 1974; Swedenborg or the Forms of Truth , 1980, - depict the problems of companies from the point of view of workers, as do his films: Bittere Pillen , 1975; Persecution , 1977. Also with plays like Maybe I'll be a corpse tomorrow , 1971; The citizens of Weiler , 1982, he addressed the political struggles of and in the working class. Schöfer was co-initiator of the industrial theater "Der Wahre Anton", for which he also wrote and performed plays.

Schöfer's literature moves in the tradition of social reportage and socially critical theater, radio play and film, but in scenic narrative forms. David Salomon judges:

The great strength of Schöfer's novels is that all of the political and private events told in them arise from the characters' everyday lives. The conversations that the characters have with each other are everyday dialogues in which private and political hopes are mixed, disappointments are articulated or language fails.

This style has been developed in the short stories and novels since the 1980s. With the depiction of the political situation in Greece after the era of fascism in Death in Athens of 1986, the narrated world becomes more complex. The political events are told from private relationship stories and thematize the relationship between private and public in bourgeois and proletarian life stories. This style also determines Schöfer's great main work, the novel cycle The Children of Sisyfos .

Sisyfos tetralogy

The four-volume cycle of novels Die Kinder des Sisyfos on German and European history between 1968 and 1989 brings to mind and preserves the memory of a left that initiated considerable changes, but failed to achieve its goal of a humane socialist society.

With this work, Schöfer is the first author to condense recent history in a comprehensive narrative work in a wealth of historical details on the thread of personal-private relationship stories. From the perspective of the student and later history teacher Viktor Bliss, his girlfriend Lena and the works council Manfred Anklam, the beginning of the student revolt in 1968 and its consequences are told from the perspective of those actively involved, with a narrative style that tries everything to create closeness towards experiments such as parallel printing of simultaneously thinking figures. The abundance of facts and the accuracy of the description of events make the work an outstanding contemporary historical novel. The novels also characterize detailed representations of industrial work, in the second volume glass production, in the fourth volume steel production. With the Sisyfos tetralogy, two and a half decades of recent history are told in a broad novel for the first time.

The first volume: Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung (2001) tells on 500 pages the history of the Federal Republic of Germany at the end of the 1960s from the perspective of the democratic left movement. He mainly plays in Munich.

The second volume, Twilight (2004), spreads the struggles of the 1970s over 600 pages. Schöfer strengthens the means of assembling minutes, diary entries, reports and other documents in order to create a narrative authenticity of the real story from the perspective of left-wing democrats. The central figure Armin Kolenda from Düsseldorf changes from miner to social worker, from there to political activist to journalist. The events are not fictional, but historical: the struggle for the preservation of the Süßmuth glassworks in Immenhausen, Hesse, for the Wyhl nuclear power plant in Kaiserstuhl , against the impending closure of the Mannesmann pipe works in Düsseldorf-Reisholz . Schöfer's participation in the fight against the Wyhl nuclear power plant, which he had already written about in a work group volume, shows that all of this has not been read, but experienced. The Düsseldorf work group in which Kolenda is active is also historic: Schöfer himself published a work group volume with this workshop: The children of the red grandfather tell stories . In this struggle, parallel to political developments, there are also defeats in private relationships.

The third volume Sonnenflucht (2005) appeared for the first time in 1986 under the title Death in Athens . It is devoted to the reactions to the defeats in the second half of the 1970s. In the third volume things get tight for the protagonists, who are psychologically stable characters. After separating from his wife Lena, Bliss flees to a Greek island. Anklam travels after him to get him back. When they arrive in Athens, a young communist has just been murdered there and Bliss is starting an investigation. But the depression quickly catches up with him. The damage to his inner self leads to damage to the body: at the beginning the hero lies in the hospital, unable to move, with severe burns, only connected to the outside world through the taped letters of the Greek Katina, the closest friend of the murdered Sotiria, whom Bliss has only just met . He suffered the burns during a rescue operation during a forest fire. According to the author, the killing of Sotiria Vasilakopoulos on July 28, 1980 in Athens is historic, as are many events in the first two volumes. With his third Sisyfos novel, Schöfer opens the German perspective to the European one. The eventful history of Greece since 1945 and the role of the left comes into focus, conveyed through the current industrial struggles of the workers. The novel pays homage to the Greek poet and communist Jannis Ritsos , whose work "Neighborhoods of the World" Schöfer himself translated into German. The funeral service for Sotiria is mixed with mourning over the powerlessness of the European left. The fascinating thing about this novel is the intertwining of individual, private and political history. Rousing Schöfer's style of showing the inner life of his characters in actions and everyday conversations, without prolonged emotional outbursts, but with the power of language to condense sensual current perceptions and reflections on one's own life and social history.

The fourth part of the Sisyfos tetralogy, Winterdämmerung (2008), a 619-page novel, takes the characters through the 1980s to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Chapters on the struggle for the West Runway at Frankfurt Airport in 1981, the Bochum concert " Artists for Peace " in 1982 and the struggle for the Krupp steelworks in Rheinhausen in 1987 deal with historical events. The invented characters are juxtaposed with historical figures such as Robert Jungk and Peter Härtling . The fictional conversation between Bliss and the Giessen psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter is a highlight .

According to Rüdiger Scholz and Sabine Kebir , the historical political novel Lion Feuchtwangers and Peter Weiss ' monumental work The Aesthetics of Resistance find a new beginning and a continuation with Schöfer. In an interview, Schöfer himself stated that he wanted to create something analogous to Weiss' aesthetic with the novels . At the same time, the reception of Weiss' work in the 1980s pervades the volume Winterdämmerung (Scholz) as a leitmotif . The weighing judgments that Schöfer puts in the mouths of his characters are critical not only of the conservatives, but also of left-wing sects, the RAF and the DKP. His style is considered by reviewers such as David Salomon and Dietmar Dath to be a fine art of dialogical storytelling, despite the apparent lack of decoration.

reception

The left-wing weekly newspaper Jungle World ruled: "Erasmus Schöfer has so far been known less for his literary achievement than for his political commitment." Dietmar Dath put Schöfer's Sisyfos novels on a par with the literary descriptions of German social conditions by Alfred Döblin , Peter Weiss and Ronald M. Schernikau . Frank Benseler , Marianne Walz and others founded the association "Kinder des Sisyfos eV - Freundeskreis Erasmus Schöfer" in 2011, which has set itself the task of making Schöfer's main work better known and discussing it. In April 2013 a symposium "The Children of Sisyfos - Beauty and Justice" took place in the Cologne Central Library. David Salomon, Jürgen Link and Werner Jung and the author himself spoke there .

Works

Non-fiction books and essays

  • The language of Heidegger. Pfullingen 1962.
  • with Paula Keller: Can the DKP still be saved? Talks with critical communists. Hamburg 1989.
  • The transparent poet. Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-937717-38-8 .

Poetry

Radio plays, short stories, novels

  • The truth is change. Berlin 1968.
  • Maybe I'll be a corpse tomorrow. Frankfurt am Main 1970.
  • Bitter pills. Persecution. The hut is ours. Fischerhude 1978.
  • The citizens of Weiler. Frankfurt am Main 1978.
  • Tales of struggles, tenderness and hope. Frankfurt am Main 1979.
  • The storm. Cologne 1981.
  • Death in Athens. Novel. Dortmund 1986.
  • Fly bird die. Cologne 1987.
  • A spring of mad hope. Roman, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-920862-67-8 .
  • Twilight. Novel. Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-920862-58-9 .
  • Escape from the sun. Novel. Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-937717-16-1 . (Revision of death in Athens )
  • Winter twilight. Novel. Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-937717-27-2 .
  • Calendar stories of the Rhenish resistance researcher. (with an afterword by Jörg Sundermeier ), Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95732-189-3 .

Work editions

  • This side of good and bad. Articles for the features section . ed. and commented by Werner Jung, Karolin Schmitz and Volker Zaib. Klartext, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0384-5 .
  • Well, listen! Six selected finds. ed. v. Christiane Altenburg. Essen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8375-0523-8 .
  • Collective writers. Texts and letters on the work group literature in the world of work. ed. by Volker Zaib and Werner Jung. Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8375-1131-4 .
  • The children of Sisyfos. In 5 volumes including an accompanying volume . Dittrich, Weilerswist 2018, ISBN 978-3-947373-23-9 . (The accompanying volume, written by Schöfer and Jens Jürgen Korff , provides an explanatory dictionary of persons and subjects on the subjects and locations of the four novels)

Editing

  • with Karl D. Bredthauer and Heinrich Pachl : A construction crane overturns. Munich 1970.
  • The red grandfather tells. Frankfurt am Main 1974
  • The children of the red grandfather tell. Frankfurt am Main 1976
  • with Heinrich Droege and Rudi Kaske: Works council reports. Cologne u. a. 1977.

literature

  • Rüdiger Scholz: Intellectual revolts and industrial struggles in the Federal Republic of Germany 1968 to 1989. Erasmus Schöfer's “Sisyfos” novels. In: Peter Weiss Yearbook. Volume 14. Edited by Michael Hofmann, Martin Rector and Jochen Vogt. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2005, pp. 157-182.
  • Rüdiger Scholz: Greece no longer heals. Erasmus Schöfer's third Sisyfos novel Sonnenflucht between realism and symbolism. In: Peter Weiss Yearbook. Volume 15. Edited by Arnd Beise, Michael Hofmann, Martin Rector and Jochen Vogt. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2006, pp. 153-170.
  • Volker Dittrich (Ed.): Smiling invisibly, he dreams of liberation. Erasmus Schöfer out and about with Sisyfos. Dittrich, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-937717-20-X .
  • Rüdiger Scholz: Social Struggles in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1980s. Erasmus Schöfer's fourth "Sisyfos" volume Winterdämmerung. In: Peter Weiss Yearbook. Volume 18. Edited by Arnd Beise and Michael Hofmann. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2009, pp. 35-61.
  • Thomas Wagner (ed.): In the back the stone burden - Sisyfos company. Erasmus Schöfer's romantic tale . Dittrich, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-937717-74-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the finding aid for the Vorlass in the Fritz-Hüser-Institut, introduction.
  2. ^ Rüdiger Scholz: The Sisyfos tetralogy by Erasmus Schöfer . Neue Gesellschaft / Frankfurter Hefte 10/2009, p. 78.
  3. ↑ Rüdiger Scholz: Erasmus Schöfers role in the work group literature of the working world ... In: Thomas Wagner (Hrsg.): In the back the stone load. Berlin 2012, p. 299.
  4. ↑ David Salomon: Realism and Totality. In: In the back the stone load. 2012, p. 212.
  5. ^ Rüdiger Scholz: Social struggles in the Federal Republic of the eighties ... In: In the back the stone load. 2012, p. 141.Sabine Kebir : Narrated in step with the times ... In: Ibid, p. 84.
  6. ↑ David Salomon: Realism and Totality. In: In the back the stone load. 2012, pp. 211ff.
  7. ↑ Jörg Sundermeier : Chronicle of the fall and the liberation of the left. A four-volume epic about the German left by Erasmus Schöfer. In: Jungle World. No. 30, July 23, 2009.
  8. ↑ Dietmar Dath: Four flights of stairs through Döblin. In: New Rundschau. 1/2009, p. 23f.
  9. ↑ official website
  10. ↑ http://www.verbrecherverlag.de/book/detail/856. Retrieved June 4, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Schöfer, Erasmus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Altlandsberg near Berlin