Karl Werner Plath

Karl Werner Plath (born April 10, 1951 in Delitzsch , † March 18, 2006 in Berlin) was a German poet , Germanist, songwriter , radio play writer and post-poet of Shakespeare sonnets.

life and work

Karl Werner Plath was born in Delitzsch in Saxony in 1951. His brother is the nine years younger journalist and theater scholar André Plath . After elementary school, Karl Werner Plath began training as a press worker with a high school diploma in Wolfen and became a member of the SED in 1970 . A study that he began at the officers' college of the border troops of the GDR “Rosa Luxemburg” , he broke off a short time later for psychological reasons. Through the mediation of Helene Weigel , whom he met in 1967 as the winner of the GDR reciter's competition in Jena, Karl-Werner Plath got work from 1970 to 1972 as assistant to the director Kurt Veth at the GDR television . After a one-year traineeship at the Leipzig evening newspaper Azet , he left the paper and became a full-time FDJ secretary in the chocolate factory in Delitzsch.

In 1974 he began studying German at Humboldt University . For five years he was a member of the FDJ leadership for agitation and propaganda and worked on the culture committee of the SED party youth. In October 1979 he lost his party membership due to a violation of study discipline and ended up in Berlin's St. Josephs Hospital in January of the following year because of psychotic episodes . In the following years he worked as a proofreader and published books of poetry for smaller publishers.

On Rose Monday in 1984, Plath attempted to kill himself by climbing into the lion cage at the Leipzig Zoo . The self-disclosure to the State Security as a public enemy was ignored due to suspected mental illness. This was followed by a stay in a Catholic psychiatric hospital and work as a library manager.

Between 1993 and 1996 the now seriously ill alcoholic tried to get back on his feet as a freelance journalist with cultural reporting for newspapers. Together with the author and director Bernhard Wolf, who was born in Ulm in 1955, he also wrote a radio essay and a radio play for the cultural program of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. Karl-Werner Plath lived lonely, sick and neglected for many years without a permanent residence, mainly in Berlin, but also in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Cologne and Hamm, where he found himself in pubs and restaurants with acrostic poems, (poems in which the vertically read first letter of a word verses) give the name of the guests a living fictitious .

In March 2006, at the age of 54, Karl Werner Plath was found dead at a Berlin S-Bahn station.

Quote

“ The Yellow Caterpillar's monologue

I only crawl with difficulty on cold earth

And I'm afraid that someone will crush me

Who knows who I really am!

The yellow caterpillar now

But in me there lives a wonderfully colorful butterfly ... "

- Karl Werner Plath

Radio

The institution is moving , radio play together with Bernhard Wolf, with Elsa Grube-Deister , Marylu Poolman , Edwin Marian , Wolfgang Winkler , Jutta Hoffmann u. a., directed by Robert Matejka , MDR KULTUR 1998
In the peace of mankind - In the war in the fatherland: Fritz Haber and the ammonia synthesis, radio essay together with Bernhard Wolf, MDR KULTUR 1999

Song lyrics

But the fire of this earth. Composition: Rainer Uebel, Electra-Combo , Dresden, 1974, AMIGA-Single 4 56 0411974
Iron. Composition: Lutz Heinrich, arrangement: Ralph Stolle, Gruppe SET , Leipzig, on the LP Hallo , 1/1975, AMIGA-LP 8 55 346
Tshigite legend. Composition: Dieter Wiesjahn, Babylon , Berlin, 1976, on the Amiga CD - 88697498062, 2009

Movie

Bernhard Wolf and Maya Klett: Poetry and madness - 1 homage to an unrecognized poet .... Music: Jens Kruse, dramaturgy: Maya Klett, Starring: Karl-Werner Plath, director: Bernhard Wolf, 70 minutes, Euro Art Berlin / United Network 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Aleksandra Rybinski: Bistrologist by profession: Karl Werner Plath is a familiar figure in the bars of Prenzlauer Berg. His sad career as a restaurant poet was by no means in the cradle. The poor poet. In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 12, 1999, p. 13.
↑ Mark Siemons: Sixty-eighters are always needed - the generations of the GDR and the new Germany. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 25, 1995, p. B1.

personal data
SURNAME	Plath, Karl Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Plath, Karl-Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German lyric poet
DATE OF BIRTH	April 10, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH	Delitzsch
DATE OF DEATH	March 18, 2006
Place of death	Berlin

[1] Aleksandra Rybinski: Bistrologist by profession: Karl Werner Plath is a familiar figure in the bars of Prenzlauer Berg. His sad career as a restaurant poet was by no means in the cradle. The poor poet. In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 12, 1999, p. 13.

[2] Mark Siemons: Sixty-eighters are always needed - the generations of the GDR and the new Germany. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 25, 1995, p. B1.