Hans Dieter Zimmermann

Hans Dieter Zimmermann (born July 29, 1940 in Bad Kreuznach ) is a German literary scholar and journalist. Most recently he was a professor at the Institute for Literary Studies at the Technical University of Berlin . In 2008 he retired .

Life

Zimmermann graduated from the Stefan-George-Gymnasium in Bingen am Rhein in 1959 . He studied German, history and philosophy at the University of Mainz and in 1961 for two semesters at the Free University of Berlin . From 1962 to 1964 he was editor-in-chief of the Mainz student newspaper nobis. In 1965 he was the features editor of the Spandauer Volksblatt in Berlin. He then did his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin) under Walter Höllerer with a thesis on political rhetoric. From 1968 to 1975 he was secretary of the literature department of the Akademie der Künste (Berlin-Hansaviertel) and at the same time worked for one year as an editor at Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden in 1969 . From 1971 to 1974 he was a lecturer at Hans Mayer's chair at the University of Hanover , where he also completed his habilitation.

From the summer of 1970 to the end of 1973 he supported Czech dissidents around the writer Pavel Kohout on behalf of the Academy of Arts . At the end of 1973 he was therefore arrested in Prague and deported. As a result, he was banned from entering the country for eleven years. At the beginning of 1976 he married Helena Becková from Prague. You have four children.

In 1975 Zimmermann was offered a professorship for modern German literature at the Goethe University in Frankfurt a. M. , where he re-established the poetics lectureship together with Siegfried Unseld and Helmut Brackert. He was a member of the Poetics Commission and a member of the jury of the Alfred Döblin Prize , chaired by Hans Werner Richter . In 1987 he was offered a professorship at the Institute for Literary Studies at the TU Berlin.

Zimmermann lives in Berlin.

Act

Zimmermann initially worked as a publicist and later he published articles in the media alongside his academic work. His dissertation on political speech and his projects at the Akademie der Künste dealt with literary forms of use. He organized an exhibition on comic strips, a series of events on banter and song, and summarized his findings on "trivial literature" in a publication. The fact that literature is located in a social field and the benefits it brings, for author and reader, is what he recorded in a much-noticed publication “On the Benefit of Literature” in Edition Suhrkamp. He pursued the investigation of the responsibility of writers in public discourse, noting how often authors irresponsibly adhered to the ideologies of the 20th century.

At the same time he was concerned with classical modernism, especially Franz Kafka and his environment. For this reason he carried out an analysis of the work of Franz Kafka and the work of the Swiss author Robert Walser , who was valued by him . He dedicated a biography to Heinrich von Kleist , who was admired by Kafka . Kafka was at the center of many years of occupation, as were the other German-speaking Prague authors such as Max Brod and Rainer Maria Rilke . Finally, Zimmermann turned to the Czech authors in order to reconstruct the cultural diversity of Prague before the Second World War. He organized four conferences on Kafka and the Prague German-speaking authors, most recently in 1992 at the Prague Goethe Institute . In 1994 a conference on Rilke followed. All of these conferences were published, including one with Polish writers and literary scholars, which he organized on behalf of the Guardini Foundation (Berlin), on whose Presidium he sat from 1988 to 2008. He summarized his knowledge of Kafka in the volume "Kafka for advanced students" 2004. For the 100th birthday of HG Adler , he held a conference in the Prague Literature House from October 20 to 21, 2010 .

Zimmermann's work on Czech literature is documented in the Czech Library , which was published by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt , an initiative of the Robert Bosch Foundation , which he was the managing editor from 1999 to 2007. In 33 volumes, German readers were introduced to important authors of Czech literature in German translation. In the twelve-volume series “The Germans and their Neighbors” edited by Helmut Schmidt and Richard von Weizsäcker , he published a volume that introduces the history and culture of the Czech Republic. Together with Hans-Gerd Koch, he is editing a ten-volume edition of Max Brod's works, which will be published between 2013 and 2015. Together with Dalibor Dobiáš he is editing the works of the Czech writer and diplomat Jiří Gruša in ten volumes, the first two volumes appeared in autumn 2014. A Czech edition will appear parallel to the German edition.

Memberships

• Circle of authors of the Federal Republic
• PEN center for German-speaking authors abroad
• Chairman of the Hans Werner Richter Foundation Bansin
• Chairman of the Hugo Ball Society
• Chairman of the Peter Huchel Memorial Association in Wilhelmshorst

Honors

• 2000: Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk by President Václav Havel
• 2008: Czech Literature Prize Magnesia Litera
• 2008: Medal of Honor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic
• 2015: Art Prize for German-Czech Understanding , Brno

Fonts

• The political speech. The usage of Bonn politicians. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1969 ff.
• On the use of literature. Preliminary remarks on a theory of literary communication. Edition Suhrkamp 885, Frankfurt a. M. 1977, 2nd edition 1979. (Translated into Turkish.)
• Trivial literature? Scheme literature! Urban Taschenbuch 299, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 978-3-17-007848-2
• The Babylonian interpreter. To Franz Kafka and Robert Walser. Edition Suhrkamp 1316, Frankfurt a. M. 1985
• Heinrich von Kleist, love and death. Athenaeum, Frankfurt a. M. 1989. (Rowohlt-Taschenbuch 12906, Reinbek 1991.)
• The madness of the century. The responsibility of the writer in politics. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1992.
• Franz Kafka: the process. Basics and thoughts on understanding narrative literature. Diesterweg, Frankfurt a. M. 1995
• Literature business east / west. The split in German literature from 1948 to 1998. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2000.
• Kafka for advanced learners. Beck, Munich 2004. (Translated into Czech and Hebrew.)
• Martin and Fritz Heidegger. Philosophy and Carnival. Beck, Munich 2005. (Translated into Spanish and Japanese.)
• Czech Republic. In the series The Germans and their Neighbors, twelve volumes, edited by Helmut Schmidt and Richard von Weizsäcker. Beck, Munich 2009. (Translated into Czech.)
• French capital, German province. Marcel Proust and the great war. Bad Kreuznach and the Imperial Headquarters. Rimbaud, Aachen 2014.
• Transformations. Of human sacrifices and God's sacrifices. Eos, St. Ottilien 2014.
• Theodor Fontane. The Prussian novelist . CH Beck, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73437-3 .

editor

• Comic strips. History, structure, effect and dissemination of the picture story. Exhibition catalog of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1969.
• From the spirit of the superhero. Comic strips. Colloquium on the theory of picture history. Series of publications by the Academy of the Arts Volume 8, Berlin 1970.
• Longing for the blood of a tyrant. Ballad, banter and song. Series of publications by the Akademie der Künste Volume 9. Berlin 1972.
• World of language. Examination of signs and sign systems of the present. Exhibition catalog of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1972.
• Trivial literature. Edited with Annamaria Rucktäschel. UTB 637, Fink, Munich 1976.
• Rationality and mysticism. Contributions by Ernst Bloch, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger and others Insel, Frankfurt a. M. 1981. (As Insel-Taschenbuch 2555 under the title "Secrets of Creation" 1999)
• What language did I learn. Texts by and about Franz Tumler. Series Piper 681. Munich 1986.
• Kafka and Judaism. Edited with Stephane Moses and Karl Erich Grözinger. Athenaeum, Frankfurt a. M. 1987. (Translated into Japanese)
• Always close to the fall ... On Robert Walser's work. Edited with Paolo Chiarini. Athenaeum, Frankfurt a. M. 1987.
• Poetics. Essays on the Frankfurt poetics lectures. Edited with Horst Dieter Schlosser. Athenaeum, Frankfurt a. M. 1988.
• Berlin and the Prague Circle. Edited with Margarita Pazi. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1990.
• After reading it again: Kafka's “Der Proceß”. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1992.
• Kafka and Prague. Edited with Kurt Krolop. De Gruyter, Berlin 1994.
• Scripture sense. Exegesis, interpretation, deconstruction. Edited with Paolo Chiarini. Guardini Foundation, Berlin 1994
• Rilke - a European poet from Prague. Edited with Peter Demetz and Joachim W. Storck. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1998.
• Myths and stereotypes on both sides of the Oder. Guardini Foundation, Berlin 2000.
• The creature. Anthology of an ecumenical journal. Guardini Foundation, Berlin 2003.
• Prague. A literary travel guide. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2007, ISBN 978-3-534-19521-3 .
• The consequences of the Reformation. On the criticism of the German intelligence , by Hugo Ball. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89244-777-1 .
• Czech Republic . Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57848-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Dieter Zimmermann in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Prof. Dr. Hans Dieter Zimmermann, TU Berlin - Biography ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Website of the TU Berlin. Retrieved January 4, 2015.
2. ↑ Who testifies for the witnesses? On the novels of the German writer HG Adler (1910-1988) from Prague. In: Prague Literature House. Retrieved on October 14, 2019 (German). 
3. ^ Robert Bosch Foundation - Czech Library. Robert Bosch Foundation website. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
4. ↑ Circle of authors of the Federal Republic - members. Website of the authors' group of the Federal Republic. Retrieved January 4, 2015.
5. ↑ Exil-PEN - list of members. ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Website of the PEN for German-speaking authors abroad. Retrieved January 5, 2015. 
6. ^ Hans Werner Richter Foundation. Website of the Hans Werner Richter Foundation. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
7. ^ Hugo Ball Society - Board of Directors. Website of the Hugo Ball Society. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
8. ↑ Peter Huchel House. ( Memento of the original from September 22, 2014 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. Website of the Peter Huchel Memorial. Retrieved January 5, 2015.  
9. ↑ Václav Havel awards medals to TU literary scholars. Website uni-protocol.de. Retrieved January 4, 2015.
10. ^ TU Berlin - press office . Website of the press office of the TU Berlin. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
11. ↑ TU intern - university newspaper . Supplement to TU intern, university newspaper of the Technical University of Berlin. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
12. ↑ Germanist Zimmermann receives art award.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. art-magazin.de. Retrieved October 15, 2015.