Klaus Merz

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Klaus Merz (2015)
Movie poster for Merzluft (Poster: Beat Solèr )

Klaus Merz (born October 3, 1945 in Aarau ) is a Swiss writer .

Life

Klaus Merz grew up in Menziken , Aargau , where his parents ran a bakery. After graduating from secondary school , he taught, interrupted by longer stays abroad, as a lecturer for language and culture at a higher technical school.

In 1967 he made his debut with the volume of poetry With collected blindness . Since then he has published over twenty other publications with poems, short stories, short novels and essays; He has also written radio plays, TV scripts, theater works and children's books. Most of his works have been published by Haymon Verlag in Innsbruck since 1994 ; the book covers are designed by Heinz Egger . His works have been translated into many languages.

Since 2011, Haymon has published a 7-volume edition of the work, which is overseen by the literary scholar and author Markus Bundi.

In 2007 he was honored by the Strauhof Museum of Literature in Zurich with the exhibition "The Stillte Look - The Writer Klaus Merz and the Pictures".

In 2003 he published the collected works of his disabled brother Martin Merz (1950–1983) at Haymon under the title Zwischenland .

Klaus Merz was a member of the Olten Group and was its president from 1995 to 1997. Today he lives as a freelance writer in Unterkulm , where he and his wife Selma Merz were granted honorary citizenship.

In 2015 the film Merzluft , which has the texts by Klaus Merz as its central theme, celebrated its premiere at the Solothurn Film Festival.

reception

"Merz convinces as a lyricist and as a narrator thanks to his ability to formulate easily as well as succinctly and precisely - a skill that we only find in very few authors," said Jury Chairman Jochen Hieber in the press release of the Frankfurter Allgemeine FAZ on Hölderlin -Price fixed in 2012.

“It is almost magical what the Swiss Klaus Merz, born in 1945, succeeds time and again: on the one hand, it is the radical scarcity that is part of his stylistic devices. And on the other hand, he can look by the great world historical events by a hair's breadth and still see the essentials. What that is is just a matter of definition.

“Firma” are two books in one, prose and poetry, with the prose also being highly rhythmic. Over a period of 50 years, Merz designed scenes from the everyday life of a company, narrated in the almost choral we-form. We as readers, on the other hand, do not find out what this company produces or sells, but that is also not important. The company was founded on July 20, 1968 in a bathing establishment. The company founders have been sitting there since morning; shortly before dusk they put their signatures on the contracts. The branches protrude from the cemetery next door onto the site. So everything is together.

Merz's prose pieces as well as his poems have a cheerful tone, and yet death is always present. But not in big historical contexts: On September 11th, 2001, there is a fire, but it is the felt supplies of the subtenant, a hatter, that are on fire. No high pitched note, no pathos: “We only keep records sporadically. It's about memorabilia. ”» (SWR best list with "" firma "", March 2019)

Awards (selection)

Works

Single issues

  • With collective blindness . Poems. Tschudy, St. Gallen 1967.
  • Debris - my country . Poems. Sauerländer, Aarau 1969.
  • Four pretexts don't make a house . Poems. Artemis, Zurich 1972.
  • Compulsory exercise . Stories. Sauerländer, Aarau 1975.
  • Latent material . Stories. Sauerländer, Aarau 1978.
  • The draft . Narrative. Authors Edition, Munich 1982.
  • Country life . Stories. Howeg, Zurich 1982.
  • Boat rental . Prose, poetry. Howeg, Zurich 1985.
  • Tremolo debris . Stories. Ammann, Zurich 1988.
  • News of walking upright . Prose, poetry. Howeg, Zurich 1991.
  • At the foot of the camel . Stories & intermediate stories. Haymon, Innsbruck 1994, ISBN 3-85218-156-9 .
  • Short announcement . Poems & prose. Afterword by Werner Morlang . Haymon, Innsbruck 1995, ISBN 3-85218-196-8 .
  • Jacob is sleeping. Actually a novel . Afterword by Peter von Matt . Haymon, Innsbruck 1997, ISBN 3-85218-229-8 ; Fischer paperback, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-596-16907-0 .
  • Will you come to the sea with me, miss? Novel. Haymon, Innsbruck 1998, ISBN 3-85218-270-0 .
  • Yarn . Prose and poetry. Haymon, Innsbruck 2000, ISBN 3-85218-324-3 .
  • Adam's costume . Three stories. Haymon, Innsbruck 2001, ISBN 3-85218-361-8 .
  • The tournament of pencil knights. Eighteen encounters . Afterword by Markus Kutter . Haymon, Innsbruck 2003, ISBN 3-85218-432-0 .
  • The animals are leaving! A journey of discovery in the river floodplains. Picture book (with Petra Rappo). Atlantis, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-7152-0474-5 .
  • Lions lions. Venetian reflections. Haymon, Innsbruck 2004, ISBN 3-85218-449-5 .
  • Los . A story. Haymon, Innsbruck 2005, ISBN 3-85218-466-5 .
  • Kuno's big ride. Picture book (with Hannes Binder ). NordSüd, Gossau 2005, ISBN 3-314-01433-3 .
  • Priska's miniatures. Twenty Stories 1978–1988. Afterword by Werner Morlang. Haymon, Innsbruck 2005, ISBN 3-85218-484-3 .
  • The calm look. Visual pieces. Haymon, Innsbruck 2007, ISBN 978-3-85218-539-2 .
  • The Argentine. Novella. Brush drawings by Heinz Egger . Haymon, Innsbruck 2009, ISBN 978-3-85218-580-4 .
  • View with room. Texts for photos by Stephan Schenk . Steidl, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86521-958-9 .
  • From the dust. Poems. Haymon, Innsbruck 2010, ISBN 978-3-85218-568-2 .
  • Unexpected course. Poems. Haymon, Innsbruck 2013, ISBN 978-3-7099-7093-5 .
  • Helios transport. Poems. Haymon, Innsbruck 2016, ISBN 978-3-7099-7272-4
  • Whispering light. A chain poem. Together with Nora Gomringer , Marco Grosse, Annette Hagemann and Ulrich Koch. Haymon, Innsbruck 2017, ISBN 978-3-7099-7291-5 .
  • company. Prose poems. With eight brush drawings by Heinz Egger. Haymon, Innsbruck-Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-7099-3449-4 .

Work edition

literature

Virtual reality

  • In 2020 the virtual reality film LOS by Sandro Zollinger & Roman Vital based on the book of the same name by Klaus Merz was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. With Niramy Pathmanathan, Regula Stüssi, Robert Vital and Klaus Merz. Production Montezuma Film, 2020.

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) 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.solothurnerfilmtage.ch
  2. ↑ ORF best list: The best 10 in July 2013. Accessed on May 27, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Klaus Merz receives Basler Poetry Prize 2012, SF DRS October 7, 2011. Accessed October 10, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Klaus Merz receives the Hölderlin Prize , NZZ online from March 5, 2012
  5. ↑ Don't get too detailed. In: FAZ of November 3, 2011, page 32.
  6. ↑ Master of the quiet poetry. In: Deutschlandfunk from December 13, 2010.
  7. ↑ Book review in the show 52 best books on Swiss radio (March 31, 2019)
personal data
SURNAME Merz, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Aarau