Irina Wittmer

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Irina Wittmer (* 26. February 1953 in Karlsruhe as Eveline Irina nail ) is a German writer .

Irina Wittmer (2015)

Life

Irina Wittmer grew up in the northern Baden village of Linkenheim . Parents, grandparents, an aunt with her family and a refugee woman lived together in a half-timbered house. The grandfather ran his carpentry and joinery in the courtyard , the father earned his living as a civil servant in the city, the women ran a small farm. After primary school, Wittmer attended a girls' high school in Karlsruhe . A brother was born in 1966, and soon afterwards the family moved to La Paz in Bolivia , where the father was doing an expert job in water management. After school difficulties and revolting against his parents, Wittmer decided at the age of 17 to become self-employed. She traveled back to Germany alone and completed an apprenticeship there. In 1975 she married Volker Wittmer. She worked as an operating room nurse and taught at a nursing school . The couple lived from 1981 to 1983 in Mexico Cuernavaca and has a son. Irina Wittmer lives in Mainz today .

plant

Wittmer began working as a writer at the age of 35. She was initially encouraged by radio broadcasts on Bayerischer Rundfunk , Südwestfunk and Saarländischer Rundfunk . In 1991, Patio-Verlag published a winter story for H. - The movement created by repetition .

The 1998 novel The Voice of the Queen of the Night while practicing, in which she plays with motifs from her childhood and youth in Linkenheim in Baden, provoked irritation. Again and again she mentally returns to the village.

Inspired by reading the novel Exodus , which she read in La Paz at the end of the sixties, and because she was confronted there with the tension between refugee Jews and Nazis, Irina Wittmer dealt with Jewish history and culture as a teenager. For six years she was the first chairman of the association that campaigned for the new synagogue in Mainz . She initiated the series of talks, Keyword: Jewish, and was significantly involved in establishing the Magenza Foundation for Jewish Life in Mainz . She is a member of the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO) in Frankfurt.

Wittmer's work is also about the success and failure of creating happiness through art. As part of her project philosophy meets handicraft, she developed a reading and writing workshop for young people in training. The essay The actuality of the beautiful - art as game, symbol and celebration by Hans-Georg Gadamer provided the idea . Under the motto “We think, we speak. In writing, however, we gain clarity ”, encourages Irina Wittmer to rethink and organize life in playful, autobiographical writing.

By working on a radio feature about Anna Seghers' life , Wittmer was inspired to write her book Outing for the Dead Brides - Eight Fictional Encounters with Anna Seghers and the Jewish Mainz . Here Wittmer draws a direct connection from the Crusades to the time of National Socialism and the rule of Stalin . The book led to conflicts with the Anna Seghers Society. Its chairman, Hans-Willi Ohl, said at a reading in the Mainz City Library in 2017 about “the fictional omissions of the Mainz writer who, without being Jewish herself, made a strong case for Jewish life in Mainz and is now daring to do so to put a teacher at Anna Seghers School in a concentration camp suit; teachers don't deserve that (...) "

In 2010 the author was a guest for a reading in Ottawa. The literary echo on campus radio at Carleton University in Ottawa has worked with her again and again since then.

In 2013, Irina Wittmer gave a lecture on the effects of the Shoah on Jewish families to this day in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism . The lecture was later published in the anthology Jewish life stories under Hitler's spell to this day in the series of publications of the state parliament.

The author used her stay in the USA in the summer of 2013 to translate her story How Berel ben Gerschom helped city leaders, which was set in Mainz at the time of the Crusades , into American English. Berel ben Gershom - The Story About a Pious Man Who Seized the Day is available in a bilingual book edition. Encouraged by Gadamer's dictum that poetry teaches us how things can always go, it teaches us to see the general in human action and suffering, Wittmer points in her story to the “regular pattern” of the millennial history of the Jews in Europe. For the CD Klingendes Rheinhessen , released in 2015, Prime Minister Malu Dreyer also read from the story.

For four years Wittmer worked on “In Praise of Friendship - A Philosophical Consideration from a Personal Point of View”. Personal friendship experiences and diary notes were linked with the thoughts of venerable poets and thinkers. In 2018 the work was published under the title Notes on Friendship .

Irina Wittmer has been a member of the advisory board for the Elisabeth Langgässer Literature Prize of the city of Alzey since 2011 .

reception

“It was Wittmer's first publication that immediately advanced to the Rhineland-Palatinate Book of the Year . This not least because of the virtuoso use of language and the unconventional narrative structure. In ever new approaches, in the dynamic interplay of repetition and variation, Wittmer's story circles reality, which finally seems to melt into endless cascading sentences. "

- Literature Lexicon Rhineland-Palatinate

“Wittmer approaches the famous colleague in a tone of his own. Your prose cannot be consumed casually, it challenges you to read it carefully. "

- Gerd Blase, Rheinzeitung, October 30, 2008

"With her new book Wittmer is returning a little bit to philosophical, autobiographically inspired writing, revealing even more of her self than in earlier works."

- Brigitte Specht, district magazine 6/2015

Awards

Irina Wittmer (2009)
  • 1991: A winter story for H. - The movement created by repetition is awarded the Book of the Year prize by the sponsorship group of German writers in Rhineland-Palatinate .
  • 1993: Invitation from the Bertelsmann Foundation to take part in further training for authors in the translators' college in Straelen.
  • 1995: Martha-Saalfeld-Förderpreis des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz for work on the novel The Voice of the Queen of the Night while practicing .
  • 2007: Nomination for the Franco-German Journalism Award with the radio feature A Jew paints Jesus - The Chagall Windows of St. Stephan in Mainz .
  • 2008: Appointment as Author of the Month by the Mainz Literature Office for Rhineland-Palatinate.

Publications

Books

  • A winter story for H. - The movement created by repetition. Patio-Verlag, Neu-Isenburg 1991.
  • A country doctor's Sunday trips. Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-86099-435-2 .
  • What are you going to die for? Patio-Verlag, Neu-Isenburg 1995.
  • The voice of the Queen of the Night while practicing. Gollenstein-Verlag, Blieskastel 1998, ISBN 3-930008-26-2 .
  • Linda Haselwander. Rhein-Mosel-Verlag, Alf / Mosel 2005, ISBN 3-89801-203-4 .
  • Excursion of the dead brides - eight fictional encounters with Anna Seghers and the Jewish Mainz. Private print, 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-028847-0 .
  • Berel ben Gershom - The Tale About a Pious Man Who Seized the Day. Private print, 2014, ISBN 978-3-942594-64-6 .
  • Where the cladding has holes - eighteen selected stories. Verlag Donata Kinzelbach, Mainz 2015, ISBN 978-3-942490-26-9 .
  • Notes on friendship. Private printing, Mainz 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059441-0

Contributions to anthologies and yearbooks (selection)

  • 1994: In memoriam Oma Kau (Brandes & Apsel)
  • 2001: nothing like old hat? An experiment about women and their language (Brandes & Apsel)
  • 2014: You Are My German Half - Jewish life stories under the spell of Hitler to this day, series of publications by the Landtag Rhineland-Palatinate, ISSN  1610-3432
  • 2016: To the east, forward (Literaturland Rheinhessen, published by the state capital Mainz, volume 65)
  • 2018: Anna's wedding (area drafts 2, publisher Au / Wasner on behalf of the Ministry for Science, Further Education and Culture Rhineland-Palatinate)

Radio plays

  • 1995: From the clever Else, radio play, SR
  • 1996: A Death Course for Beginners, Production SR. Takeover and original broadcast under the title Live correctly, die more beautifully through HR.
  • 2001: Leonies Schirm, radio play, DeutschlandRadio Berlin

Radio features

all for the SWR, about 55 minutes
  • 2003: Only slow sentences are erotic - from the life of a writer
  • 2003: And I don't stop asking - the splendor and misery of the last two synagogues in Mainz
  • 2006: A Jew paints Jesus - The Chagall Windows of St. Stephan in Mainz
  • 2007: In search of the real blue - An experiment about Anna Seghers

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marianne Hoffmann: A book that not everyone likes. In: Allgemeine-zeitung.de. April 7, 2017. Retrieved October 28, 2017 .
  2. ^ Archives of Das literäre Echo
  3. ↑ CD contents. (No longer available online.) Klingendes-rheinhessen.de, archived from the original on March 18, 2016 ; accessed on March 20, 2016 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.klingendes-rheinhessen.de
  4. ↑ Andreas Riechert: Purified Poetry  ( 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. . @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.wiesbadener-tagblatt.de  In: Wiesbadener Tagblatt. October 26, 2011, accessed November 13, 2011.
  5. ↑ Irina Wittmer. In: Josef Zierden: Literature Lexicon Rhineland-Palatinate. 1st edition. Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt am Main 1998.
  6. ↑ Gerd Blase: Irina Wittmer is author of the month - On the high art of leaving out . In: Rheinzeitung. October 30, 2008.
  7. ↑ Brigitte Specht: Philosophical reflections in: Die local 6/2015 west , Medien Verlag Reiser, Mainz 2015, p. 8, digitized

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wittmer, Irina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nagel, Eveline Irina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe , Germany