Fernand M. Guelf

Fernand Mathias Guelf (born April 26, 1955 in Diekirch , Luxembourg ) is a Luxembourg philosopher and writer.

Guelf studied philosophy, German literature, comparative literature and history. He lives in Berlin and Luxembourg, where he also works as an entrepreneur. In addition to the effects of a globalized and urbanized world on the way people think and act, Guelf is interested in the position of the individual within historical processes. He counteracts the initial situation by questioning traditional analysis schemes and values. In addition to philosophical works, Guelf also writes literary works, whereby the line is often fluid.

Urban research

Guelf's publications first deal with the philosophical and sociological dimensions of urbanism . He finds the key words for his heterogeneous presentation in Stadtluft macht frei (2009) in the traces that philosophy, literature and art have left in our thinking.

In his dissertation, Guelf gradually elaborated Henri Lefebvre's theses on urbanization and included them in his philosophical work. Guelf presents the diversity of thought processes as a uniform theory. His research retains the central thesis that the city is to be understood as an oeuvre , as a constantly developing total work of art . Henri Lefebvre takes the expression of human creativity largely from the Paris manuscripts of Karl Marx and interprets them in terms of a philosophy of practice . Due to the globalization and digitization that became apparent in the 1980s and 1990s, the development has lost its straightforwardness and predictability and is heading towards a critical turning point.

Essays

In the essay Shackles of Time (2011), the question of time becomes a question of human identity. The essayistic juxtaposition of philosophical and literary positions leads into a labyrinth in which time loses itself as a reliable category.

... poetically resides man (2012) is an essayistic inventory of language as a literary medium, to which Guelf ascribes magical potential.

Novels

In the novel I can only live at the beginning or at the end of the world (2013) the search of the individual for a tangible, controllable life is described. The protagonist realizes that human development is anything but straightforward. In the extremes he looks for one last chance of survival.

In search of Konrad (2014), the narrator finds himself in Berlin life at the beginning of the twentieth century - a world of artists, bon vivants, crooks, science and spiritualism. There he meets the dancer Cécile, who is just as mysterious as her entourage. All of them are mysteriously connected to Konrad, a gifted storyteller. On his trip to Paris, the narrator realizes that in his search, not only are the levels of time shifting, not just the same thing but the horror in history is repeated.

Sage dem König (2015) "Tell the king that the beautifully assembled house has fallen ... the springs are silent forever, the voice falls silent." The last Delphic oracle heralded the end of an era and it stands in the novel at the entrance to Georg Steiner's search for an identity in the digital age.

The State of Emergency (2020) Leon flies to Berlin on a winter morning. At the same time Eduard Berlin wants to turn his back. A terrorist attack at Tegel Airport brings the two together briefly. Leon falls victim to the attack and Eduard appropriates his papers. With the new identity, he also takes over Leon's past ... and Amelie, whom Leon met on the Darknet. Both have a peculiar relationship to death. The state of emergency depicts three different fates in flashbacks and individual shots, which approach each other in a dramatic way against the background of extraordinary events and social developments. The novel describes a paralyzed society that is unable to act at the mercy of a fatal development.

Publications

• City air makes you free. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59030-0 .
• The urban revolution. Transcript, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 978-3-8376-1511-1 .
• La révolution urbaine. Henri Lefèbvre's philosophy of global urbanization. Dissertation, TU Berlin 2010
• Shackles of time. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-85165-994-8 .
• ... man lives poetically. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7092-0047-6 .
• I can only live at the beginning or at the end of the world. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7092-0092-6 .
• Looking for Konrad. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-7092-0137-4 .
• Tell the king. Editions Phi, Luxembourg 2015, ISBN 978-99959-37-17-1 .
• The state of emergency. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2020, ISBN 978-3-7092-0406-1 .
• Creativity in the Urban Society. In: From system criticism to social transformation, Norderstedt 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-8822-4 .
• The illusion of progress. In: Perspectives on Henri Lefebvre. de Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin / Boston 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-049469-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Fernand M. Guelf in the catalog of the German National Library
• Own website

Individual evidence

1. ^ La révolution urbaine, Henri Lefèbvre's Philosophy of Global Urbanization