Georg Meier (writer)
Georg Meier (born November 5, 1947 in Gießen ) is a German writer and cook .
Life
Childhood and youth
Georg Meier was born on November 5, 1947, the second of three children in Giessen. His mother was a housewife, his father was a successful scrap dealer in the post-war period. At the age of 15, Meier dropped out of secondary school, left home and completed an apprenticeship as a cook in Kitzingen and Gießen until 1966 .
"Apprenticeship and wandering years"
After his final exam, Meier hitchhiked around Europe for almost two years and lived as a bum and beatnik in Marseille , Copenhagen, London , Hamburg , Berlin , Genoa , Marseille and Barcelona . He had experiences with drugs and the police. In November 1967 he returned to Hamburg.
After his mother's death in 1968, Meier commuted between Hamburg and his hometown Gießen. When the police in Hamburg found hashish on him, he was arrested because he did not have a permanent place of residence and was considered a fugitive. Four months in prison followed, one of which he served in Hamburg and four in Giessen. The remainder of the sentence was suspended with the condition that he lived with his father in Giessen. In February 1969 Meier went to Hamburg, where he worked for six months.
From March 1970 Meier traveled to India via Istanbul and then to Israel . Regular drug use was part of his everyday travel life; Among other things, earns money as a dealer. From Tel Aviv he reached Europe with the help of the German consulate. He finally returned to Gießen via Marseille and lived in a commune . He was detained for two more months for violating his probation requirements.
Meier's next trip to India in 1971, on which he gave up his morphine consumption, he broke off in Kabul due to lack of money and returned to Gießen via Istanbul, Israel and Paris. The next trip to India with his future wife Cora also ended prematurely in Pakistan because Meier fell ill.
Homecoming and literary creation
Since the beginning of 1972 Meier lived with Cora in Giessen in squatted houses and shared apartments and worked in a drug counseling center. In 1974 the couple leased a restaurant in Limburg an der Lahn ; In 1975 they get married. In 1976 she moved back to Hamburg, where in January 1976 she opened the blues bar "Hooker". The pub "Holzwurm", which opened shortly afterwards, developed into a popular late night bar for night owls. The pub restaurant "Abendroth", which opened in 1991, was run by Cora and Georg Meier until 1998.
Meier has been writing poems since his youth, but these remained largely unpublished. His first novel, which he has been working on since 1999, was published in March 2008 under the title "Everyone Was In Woodstock Except Me And The Beatles". In 2009 the novel "Hardness 10" followed. In the 2009 anthology "Rock stories" he published the short story "Jeff Beck". In 2010 his third novel "With the Gibbon and John Lennon to Ancona" appears. In the spring of 2011 he published the story “No long way from the pudding shop to the Père Lachaise”.
Novels
Everyone was in Woodstock - except me and the Beatles
Meier's first novel is clearly inspired by autobiography and has criminalistic elements. In retrospect, the successful but unhappy property owner and family man Michel tells of his youth in the 1960s among beatniks and bums , of traveling and drug use, demonstrations and clashes with the police. The narrator describes the attitude towards life of the post-war generation, who wanted to distance themselves from their parents at all costs, escape the confines of their home and get to know real life. The music permeates the narrative present and the past and sometimes seems like a final emotional connection between the aging protagonist and his youth.
At the present level of the novel, there are dubious entanglements. Driven by the fear of a mysterious Japanese pursuer, a wild escape takes place via Turkey , Venice and Munich . In the end, the opaque situation dissolves in a surprising twist.
Hardness 10
The narrative present of Meier's second novel is the post-war year 1947, the setting in the heavily destroyed Gießen, where the 57-year-old protagonist Heinrich Witt tries to set up a freight forwarding company with his employees. In Gießen there is an explosive mixture of expellees, black marketeers, criminal figures and unteachable Nazis.
On a second narrative level, Witt's adventurous life story is woven into retrospectives and letters. In 1910 he went from Gießen to Hamburg and from there to Dar es Salaam in German East Africa . There he came across a diamond fortune by accident. When the war breaks out, it is drafted. However, he managed to escape before coming to the front and lived in Istanbul for a while. After returning to Germany in the 1920s and building up a hotel business, Witt alienated himself from his family loyal to the regime, of which only his son, an SS man, survived the war during the Nazi era .
After the end of the war, Witt returned to Giessen and tried to start over. The impending birth of his grandson fills him with anticipation. When the child is born, it turns out that the father is obviously not Witt's National Socialist son, but a colored US sergeant. For Witt a wonderful turn of fate, because the grandson Martin bursts the staid world of his son Franz disguised by the Nazi ideology and reminds him of a friend in Africa. Martin and Heinrich Witt will share a deep affection; Witt finds his own cosmopolitanism and impartiality in Martin. The last chapter is told from Martin's point of view. It's 1967 and he dreams of leaving Gießen behind and hitchhiking south.
With the gibbon and John Lennon to Ancona
Willi Windhorst, an aging coke dealer , tries to manage a regular everyday life. The loner really only feels comfortable and safe in his Hamburg condominium; over the years he has become suspicious and paranoid. His social contacts are almost limited to his clientele, who are constantly shrinking.
“Achterbahn-Arno”, son of a showman family and the size of a neighborhood on St. Pauli , who runs a forwarding company, pulls him out of his calm . Like Willi, he tries to live legally despite his connections to the Hamburg underworld. Arno is a Willis customer, but the two are particularly united by their admiration for rock'n'roll , the Beatles and memories of times together in the Hamburg Star Club . Arno suggests Willi a lucrative illegal business, after which he could finally retire. Then Willi catches up with the past in the form of one of his former roommates. Willi broke with the WG members thirty years ago when they wanted to join the RAF . It turns out that they shot another alleged traitor and buried it on Willis' unused property on the Dove Elbe . Now the property is to be declared building land and the murderers fear being exposed. A meeting is arranged at which Willi should receive his hush money. For his safety he takes Arno and his gun with him. The situation escalates and Willi shoots his former roommate Erik in self-defense. Arno also gets into a gang war that he is no longer able to cope with and that he draws Willi into. Now Willi not only has to leave the beloved apartment, but also Hamburg. The unequal couple fled to Italy together.
Publications
- Everyone was in Woodstock - except me and the Beatles. Dittrich Verlag, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-937717-77-7 .
- Hardness 10. Dittrich Verlag, Berlin 2009. ISBN 978-3-937717-34-0 .
- Beck-Ola In: Rock Stories, ed. by Thomas Kraft, Langen Müller, Munich 2009. ISBN 978-3-7844-3195-6 .
- With the gibbon and John Lennon to Ancona. Dittrich Verlag, Berlin 2010. ISBN 978-3-937717-40-1 .
- Not a long way from the pudding shop to the Père Lachaise. Dittrich Verlag, Berlin 2011. ISBN 978-3-937717-64-7 .
- The year of the miraculous Elvis multiplication. Dittrich Verlag, Berlin 2012. ISBN 978-3-937717-72-2 .
Web links
- www.dittrich-verlag.de
- Official homepage of Georg Meier
- Short biography and information on Georg Meier's work at Literaturport
- Video of a reading with Martin Semmelrogge
- Book review on "With the Gibbon and John Lennon to Ancona" in the Gießener Allgemeine
- Book review for "With the Gibbon and John Lennon to Ancona" at globe-m.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Meier, Georg |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 5, 1947 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | to water |