Katja Behrens

Katja Behrens at a reading at the Erlanger Poetenfest 2012

Katja Behrens (born December 18, 1942 in Berlin ) is a German writer , translator and editor . Behrens was best known for her portrayal of Jewish culture in Germany. She also published books for children and young people. She also works as an editor.

resume

Katja Behrens was born in Berlin in 1942 and now lives in Darmstadt . The Jewish writer was able to hide from the persecution of the National Socialists in Austria from 1943 to 1945. In 1960 she began her literary career with translations from American (including William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller ). She lived in Israel from 1968 to 1970 . From 1973 she worked as a publishing editor, since 1978 as a freelance writer. She is a member of the PEN Center Germany and from 2007 to 2009 was its vice-president and “Writers-in-Prison Commissioner”.

Awards

• Sponsorship award for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 1978 ,
• Märkisches scholarship for literature 1978,
• 1982 Squidward Troll Prize ,
• Scholarship from Villa Massimo 1986 ,
• Visiting professor at Washington University , St. Louis 1986 ,
• and at Dartmouth College , Hanover 1991 ,
• Mainz town clerk 1992 ,
• Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf 1996 ,
• Premio internazionale "Lo Stellato" 2000 ,
• George Konell Prize of the State Capital Wiesbaden 2002 ,
• Children's and young people's book award LUCHS September 2002 ,
• Eugen Viehof Honorary Gift of the German Schiller Foundation 2002 .

Works

Narrative work

• The white woman. 1978
• Jonas. 1981
• The thirteenth fairy. Novel. Claassen Verlag , Düsseldorf 1983; Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-596-12185-X
• From one place to another. 1987
• Dancing in the water. 1990
• Solomon and the others. 1993
• The vagante. 1997
• Zorro - In the year of the horse. 1999
• "All seeing comes from the soul". The life story of Helen Keller . 2001
• Hathaway Jones. 2002
• "Everything for love, otherwise the world will end." Six romantics and their life stories. 2006
• Novel of a field . 2007
• The little mouse from Dessau. Moses Mendelssohn's trip to Berlin in 1743. 2009
• The robbery of the treasure trove of books. 2012
• Adam and the people of the trees. 2013
• Jaqui on the street. In:  people and masks. Literary encounters with the painter Felix Nussbaum.  Edited by Jutta Sauer. zu Klampen, Springe 2016, pp. 62–69. ISBN 978-3-86674-525-4
• At night, when shadows come from dark corners, 2017

Editing

• Women of Romanticism (1983)
• Soft water breaks the stone ( 1984 )
• Farewell Letters (1987)
• Whenever I think of you ... Letters of Romanticism (1999)
• I stayed - why? Jews in Germany - Today (2002)

Web links

• Katja Behrens website
• Literature by and about Katja Behrens in the catalog of the German National Library
• Writers in Prison Report 2007 of the PEN Center Germany von Behrens, Vice-President and Writers-in-Prison Representative of the PEN Original sound and text version in the open archive of radio-luma
• Behrens at literaturport.de

notes

1. ↑ Review on Literaturkritik.de