Herbert Genzmer

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Herbert Genzmer

Herbert Genzmer (born June 21, 1952 in Krefeld ) is a German writer and translator .

Life

Genzmer studied linguistics and English literature and art history at the Free University of Berlin , in Dusseldorf, Cologne and at the University of California, Berkeley , where he met a linguistic dissertation on "lies strategies in German, English and Spanish" doctorate . While studying at Berkeley, Random House offered him and a colleague the opportunity to write a language textbook for the first year of German as a Foreign Language based on Tracy Terrell's Natural Approach. The result was the textbook Contacts in 1987. A Communicative Approach. From 1987 Genzmer taught in the German department in Berkeley and directed the language program for German as a foreign language. In 1992 the Grammar Spectrum was published by Prentice Hall. After a three-year stay as a visiting professor at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Genzmer now lives in Tarragona and Krefeld.

In parallel to his linguistic activities, Genzmer has been writing prose for years. In 1986 his first book Cockroach Hotel , a collection of short stories, was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in Frankfurt. The novels Manhattan Bridge and Friday Night followed in 1987 and 1988. In 1989 he left California and settled in Tarragona, Spain, where he lived as a freelance writer and translator. Since then he has published thirty-three books, novels, travel books, linguistic works, and other non-fiction books, some of which have been translated into ten languages. He has translated twelve novels from American and British English and Dutch. His articles and short stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines such as Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Bücher-Magazin, Pending, Apero, drafts and metamorphoses. In 2012 Berlin University Press published his novel The Perfect Game and in 2014 his Grammar of the German Language Hear, Speak, Read, Write: Our Grammar .

writing style

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung once called Genzmer the most American of all German storytellers. And Christian Jürgens wrote in the book magazine that if Genzmer's books were to be regarded as translations from the American, they would all be bestsellers. Genzmer's stories are “like being written with a camera”, writes the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , “meticulous detailed recordings of landscapes, people, conditions, actions, combined with a special and deep interest in the exceptional situation”. Genzmer is the "breathless and relentless chronicler of general neglect," says the Westdeutsche Zeitung.

Genzmer's stories do not, or only rarely, take place in Germany; the USA, Spain, Portugal, France, Turkey are the places where Genzmer lived and lived, and in them the densest plot unfolds, which always touches on different genres without, however, committing to a specific one. His tone is always laconic, he often quotes elements from the crime thriller genre, but does not devote himself to it. The complex and exciting plot spins situations that completely overwhelm people, sometimes paralyze them or drive them into irrational actions, which usually aggravate their situation dangerously, whereby the element of tension takes priority.

Awards

Genzmer received:

Works (selection)

prose
Non-fiction
  • The German language. Origins, Development and Change. Marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-7374-1047-2 .
  • listening, speaking, reading, writing: our grammar . Berlin University Press, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-86280-066-7 .
  • German language. A crash course . Dumont, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-8321-9086-6 .
  • Culinary walks in Mallorca . Artwerk Verlag, Dortmund 2007, ISBN 978-3-938927-10-6 (together with Bernd Ewert ).
  • Dalís Catalonia. a travel companion . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2004, ISBN 3-458-34716-X .
  • Rhetoric. The art of speech . Dumont, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8321-7610-1 .
  • Costa Daurada . Edicions Tarraco, Tarragona 2003, ISBN 84-73200-74-8 .
  • Literary walks through New York . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 3-458-34583-3 .
  • California. A literary portrait . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2001, ISBN 3-458-34336-9 (as editor)
  • Barcelona (Europe Exquisite). Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1999, ISBN 3-85129-296-0 (as editor)
  • Dalí and Gala . The painter and the muse; a double biography . Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-87134-338-2 .
  • Language in motion. A German grammar . Suhrkamp Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / M. 1998, ISBN 3-518-39326-X (former title “Deutsche Grammatik”).
  • Contacts. A Communicative Approach . 3rd edition McGraw-Hill, New York 1996, ISBN 0-0722-9710-7 (together with Brigitte Nikolai, Tracy Terrell and Erwin P. Tschirner).
  • Spectrum. Grammar in context . Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1992, ISBN 0-13-517293-4 (with Helga Bister-Broosen and Penelope Pynes).
  • lying, mendacious, mentiroso. Contrastive Discourse Structures in German, English, and Spanish . Verlag Heinz, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-88099-210-X (Stuttgart work on linguistics; 206).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Genzmer, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Krefeld