Kay Hoff

Kay Hoff at a lecture (around 2006)

Kay Hoff (born August 15, 1924 in Neustadt in Holstein as Adolf Max Hoff ; † March 26, 2018 in Berlin ) was a German writer .

Life

Kay Hoff was the son of a wine merchant . After attending the Johann Heinrich Voss School in Eutin , where he graduated from high school in 1942, Hoff volunteered for the Wehrmacht . In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets . After his release, he studied psychology, German and art studies at the University of Kiel from 1945 to 1949 . He finished this study with the graduation to the doctor of philosophy .

From 1950 to 1952 Hoff worked as a librarian in Düsseldorf . He then worked as a freelance journalist and writer. From 1958 to 1967 he was part of the editorial team of the Neues Rheinland magazine and from 1965 to 1972 he was co-owner of the Guido Hildebrandt publishing house in Duisburg. From 1970 to 1973 he stayed in Israel and headed the cultural center of the German Embassy in Tel-Aviv . He then lived again as a freelance writer in Germany. After stays in Berlin, Amelinghausen and Lübeck, he moved back to Berlin in 2006.

Kay Hoff's work includes short stories, novels, poems, radio plays and radio features. The predominant theme is coping with a follow-up in the “ Third Reich ” that was subsequently felt to be guilty , the conditions of which are shown in a bourgeois manner in Hoff's most successful novel Bödelstedt or Würstchen . In his poetry, Hoff used a very shortened style in order to give immediate expression to his thoughts, which are often characterized by melancholy.

Hoff donated his literary estate to his hometown. The documents were scientifically processed on behalf of the city of Neustadt; they are publicly available in the local library .

Kay Hoff had been a member of the PEN since 1969

Awards and honors

• 1959 Prize for Literature from the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
• 1965 Ernst Reuter Prize
• 1968 Georg Mackensen Literature Prize
• 1994 guest of honor at Villa Massimo in Rome

Works

• The change in poetic self-image in the first half of the 18th century , Kiel 1949
• At home in Babel , Stierstadt im Taunus 1958
• Zeitzeichen , Düsseldorf a. a. 1962
• The Chance , Hamburg 1965
• Skeptical Psalms , Duisburg 1965 (etchings: Friederich Werthmann)
• Bödelstedt or sausage bourgeois , Hamburg 1966
• With lots of nice speeches , radio feature, Hamburg 1966
• An honest person , Hamburg 1967
• A story , Krefeld 1968
• Network , Hamburg 1969
• Drei , Stuttgart 1970
• Intermediate lines , Darmstadt 1970
• We travel to Jerusalem , Düsseldorf 1976
• Inventory , Düsseldorf 1977
• Did I hear right? , Freiburg u. a. 1980
• Against the strike of the hour , Düsseldorf 1982
• Janus , Düsseldorf 1984
• Currently , Stuttgart 1987
• Time gain , Düsseldorf 1989
• Early poems , Krefeld 1994
• Premarital Conversations or In the Golden Section , Siegen 1996
• Zur Neige , Krefeld 1999
• The head in the loop , Kiel 2000
• Collected works in individual editions , Siegen: Carl Böschen Verlag
  1. Bödelstedt or sausage bourgeois , 2002
  2. An honest person , 2003
  3. Three , 2003
  4. We travel to Jerusalem , 2003
  5. Janus , 2003
  6. Premarital Conversations or The Golden Ratio , 2003
  7. The head in the noose , 2003
  8. Short stories and autobiographical prose , 2005
  9. Poems , 2004
  10. Radio plays, audio pictures and radio features
      1. Radio plays , 2005
      2. Audio images and radio features , 2005
• Reminiscences , Siegen 2006

Literature (selection)

• Thomas Wörther: Writings of an Inconvenient. Kay Hoff's prose work . Carl Böschen Verlag, Siegen: Carl Böschen Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-3-932212-79-6 ( online ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Kay Hoff in the catalog of the German National Library
• Vorlass Kay Hoff (page dedicated to Kay Hoff, town of his birth Neustadt in Holstein)
• Kay Hoff: Collected works in individual volumes (PDF printouts of all 10 (in 11) volumes of the work edition published by Verlag Carl Böschen in Siegen from 2002–2005 on the server of the Kiel University Library)
• Thomas Wörther: Finding aid for the holdings of Kay Hoff's estate (Berlin 2008)
• Hans Dieter Zimmermann: Speech to Kay Hoff on his 80th birthday (Lübeck, August 2004)
• Ralf-Henning Steinmetz: Kay Hoff on her 90th birthday (Neustadt in Holstein, September 20, 2014)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mourning the writer Kay Hoff . Lübecker Nachrichten, March 28, 2018
2. ^ Vorlass Kay Hoff. In: Internet site of the city library. City of Neustadt in Holstein, accessed on November 11, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Abridged excerpt printed in: Festschrift for the ceremonial handover of the extension building for science classes . Eutin 1984, p. 113 f.