Frank-Wolf Matthies

Frank-Wolf Matthies (born October 4, 1951 in Berlin ) is a German writer.

youth

Frank-Wolf Matthies grew up in Berlin, where he attended the Polytechnic Oberschule and the Extended Oberschule with an old-language branch. After graduating from high school in 1970 he did an apprenticeship as an art fitter, which he had to break off due to illness. After that, Matthies worked in various professions, including as a dispatcher, taxi driver, corpse washer and camera assistant.

Oppositionist in the GDR

In 1973 he was arrested by the state security for "insulting and degrading a representative of the party and state leadership of the GDR". From 1975 he did alternative military service as a construction soldier , during this time there was another court case for "mutiny". In 1975 his first publications appeared in the GDR through the mediation of Franz Fühmann . Matthies has been a freelance writer since 1977.

After the publication of the prose volume “Uninhabited Room with Furniture” by Rowohlt Verlag 1980 and readings and discussions in his apartment (with Adolf Endler , Elke Erb , Robert Havemann , Wolfgang Hilbig , Günter Grass , Uwe Kolbe , Gert Neumann , Lutz Rathenow , Johano Strasser, among others ) Matthies was arrested again (with Thomas Erwin and Lutz Rathenow), but released after international protests. With the readings, which were carried out regularly until his arrest, Matthies created an important model for establishing a non-state / alternative public in the literary and art scene in Prenzlauer Berg .

Relocation to the West

At the beginning of 1981 Matthies left for West Berlin , where Günter Grass initially took him in. In the 1980s he was one of the initiators of important literary debates on the concept of the German cultural nation (with Grass and Johano Strasser), on German-German exile (e.g. in his correspondence with Werner Lansburgh ) and on the role of the Association of German Writers (VS, today in ver.di ).

His exit from the VS caused a sensation, which he left as one of the first authors in the early 1980s to protest against the association's handling of dissidents from Eastern Europe and the GDR, which plunged the VS into a crisis. While the VS district in West Berlin protested against the association's overly indulgent attitude towards the Eastern European dictatorships, the unionist Erwin Ferlemann described the authors, who were more or less forcibly relocated from the GDR, as the “ fifth column ”. At the federal delegates' conference of the association in Saarbrücken (March 30 to April 1, 1984), violent arguments broke out in which Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll distanced themselves from the policy of the then VS chairman Bernt Engelmann . In the period that followed, there were numerous other writers who left the GDR, such as Reiner Kunze and Jürgen Fuchs; and Günter Grass left the Writers' Union.

Matthies has lived in Joachimsthal since 1994 . He has been married to the teacher Petra Neumann since 1975. He is the father of four children.

Works

• Tomorrow. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1979. ISBN 3-49925-122-1
• Uninhabited room with furniture. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1980. ISBN 3-499-25148-5
• For Patricia in winter. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1981. ISBN 3-49925-160-4
• Exile. An exchange of letters. with Werner Lansburgh. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1983. ISBN 376630576X
• Diary Fortunes Suhrkamp 1985 ISBN 3-51811-311-9
• The longing = addiction, travel diary in letters. Amsterdam 1986.
• City. Prose. Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 1986. ISBN 3923997124
• Franz Lövenhertz. Fairy tale. Edition Mariannenpresse , Berlin 1987. ISBN 392251037X
• Laughter. Wolke, Hofheim 1987. ISBN 3923997167
• Inventory of Errors. Prose. Berlin hand press, Berlin 1988.
• The Labyrinths of Happiness, or The End of the World is a book. Kellner, Hamburg 1990. ISBN 3927623075
• Poet's Corner. 10 poems. Independent publishing house bookshop Ackerstrasse, Berlin 1992. ISBN 3861720337
• You are the place before the end of the world. Poems. John Gerard, Berlin 1992.
• Addresses from the notebooks for Patricia. Poems. Galrev, Berlin 1993. ISBN 3910161332
• Omerus Volkmund. Five stories. Galrev, Berlin 1994. ISBN 3-91016-154-5
• Aeneid . Novel. Berlin 1996. ISBN 3910161774
• Manifestos of DaDaerism. Six manifestos. Mariannenpresse, Berlin 1998.
• A liar must have a good memory. Narrative. Wekura, Berlin 1998.
• Looking for the lying lead or 1 junkie at King Ubus Hof. Berlin 2001.
• Destroy from the eroticism of the times. Galrev, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-93314-929-0
• Ghost train. Vol. 1-8. Wekura, Berlin 2003-2006.
• Ghost train. Vol. 9-13. Wekura, Berlin 2006–2007.
• Ghost train. Vol. 13 (2nd edition) - 19. Ubu archive 2007–2009.

Awards

• 1981 Berlin scholarship from the Berlin Senator for Culture
• 1981/82 scholarship from the German Literature Fund
• 1983/84 Villa Massimo Scholarship (Rome)
• 1998 Karl Kraus Prize
• 1998 Scholarship to Schloss Wiepersdorf

literature

• Short biography for:  Matthies, Frank-Wolf . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Renate Chotjewitz, Carsten Gansel (Ed.): Verfeindete loner. Writers argue about politics and morals , Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-7466-8023-9 and the representation of the VS-Landesverband Bayern Who we are: On the history of VS ( Memento of the original from July 24, 2007 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. . 

Web links

• Literature by and about Frank-Wolf Matthies in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of Frank-Wolf Matthies
• Frank-Wolf Matthies in the poet shop