Eric T. Hansen

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November 5, 2008: Eric T. Hansen at the Brandenburg Gate

Eric T. Hansen (born July 3, 1960 in Bellingham , Washington ) is an American author , journalist and satirist who lives in Berlin and publishes in German.

Life

Born in Washington, Hansen grew up in Kailua ( Hawaii ) from the age of six . Raised as a Mormon , he evangelized in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1981. According to a self-testimony, he said his last prayer when he was 30. In Germany he also met his future wife. In 1983 he returned to Hawaii to continue his linguistics studies at the University of Hawaii . In the same year he finally turned his back on Hawaii to get married.

First he studied literature of the German Middle Ages in Düsseldorf , later at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, and obtained his master's degree in 1989. He then worked as a freelance journalist in the field of culture and media. His articles have appeared in The European , Variety , The Hollywood Reporter , The Washington Post , Cicero and Süddeutscher Zeitung , among others . In 1989 he left the Mormon Church.

Since 2000, Hansen has mainly written books, runs several blogs and writes articles for German and American newspapers. Hansen is divorced and lives in Berlin with his partner and co-author Astrid Ule.

Topics and way of working

His first humorous non-fiction book Die Nibelungenreise - With the VW bus through the Middle Ages describes a twelve-month journey in the VW bus through Germany in search of traces of the Middle Ages. Hansen's other non-fiction books Planet Germany - An Expedition to the Home of the Hawaiian Toast and Germany Quiz - Everything you should know about this country and never dared to ask, take on "exotic" German customs from the point of view of an American. He sees himself in the tradition of writers like Art Buchwald or Mark Twain .

Hansen's books are based on intensive journalistic research, which becomes the basis of satirical exaggerations and the peculiarities of his subjects of study, which are further considered into the absurd - the 'Hansen Method', as Henryk M. Broder described it on Spiegel Online . However, his reputation suffered in 2014 when he misquoted a picture article about the riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992 in a column for Die Zeit . Astrid Ule works as an editor for all texts, and she was co-author of Deutschland-Quiz . She also created the illustrations for Planet Germany and Germany Quiz . Nibelungenfieber is the first satirical novel that Hansen and Ule wrote together as a team.

Hula ink

In 2015, Hansen founded his micro-publisher Hula Ink for mostly short literary works that cannot be published in print. Although Hula Ink generally publishes e-books, the publisher released its first printed publication in 2017, Hansen's long essay Losing my Religion in English and German.

Ule Hansen

In 2016 Hansen began to write a series of thrillers together with Astrid Ule under the pseudonym "Ule Hansen". In the same year the first volume of the Berlin trilogy about investigator Emma Carow was published under the title Neuntöter .

Works

Non-fiction

  • Planet Germany. An expedition to the home of Hawaiian toast. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-596-17324-8 .
  • The Nibelungen Reise. With the VW bus through the Middle Ages. Piper, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-24556-2 .
  • Germany quiz. Everything you should know about this country and never dared ask. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-17684-7 .
  • Nagging! The German's greatest pleasure. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-596-17859-9 .
  • Forbetter your English: English for Germans . Langenscheidt, ISBN 978-3-468-73821-0 .
  • Planet Middle Ages: An American traveling through time in Germany. National Geographic paperback, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-492-40393-1 (new edition of Die Nibelungenreise ).
  • with Astrid Ule: Planet America: An American explains his country. Bastei Lübbe, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-404-60692-4 .
  • The fearful superpower: Why Germany finally has to grow up. Bastei Lübbe, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-431-03874-3 .
  • Losing my religion: the Mormons and me. ISBN 978-3-946213-11-6 .

Novels

thriller

Emma Carow series

  • Red backs. Thriller. (with Astrid Ule, under the pseudonym "Ule Hansen") Heyne, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-453-43804-0 .
  • Copper beech. Thriller. (with Astrid Ule, under the pseudonym "Ule Hanse"), Heyne, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-453-43805-7 .

Web links

Commons : Eric T. Hansen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Deutschlandfunk ( Memento of the original dated November 24, 2017 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 / ondemand-mp3.dradio.de
  2. ^ Henryk M. Broder: Heimatbuch "Planet Germany". The Germans - Swedish bliss, despondent and hairy legs. In: Spiegel Online. February 7, 2007.
  3. ↑ Eric T. Hansen: We Amis column. The good side of the "Bild" newspaper. In: The time. April 19, 2014.
  4. ↑ Stefan Niggemeier : To be ashamed of. In: Bildblog. April 22, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Hansen, Eric T.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd July 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Bellingham , Washington , USA