Marko Martin

Marko Martin (born September 17, 1970 in Burgstädt ) is a German writer and publicist .

Life

Marko Martin moved from the GDR to the Federal Republic in May 1989 because of a university ban for political reasons and as a conscientious objector , where he studied German, political science and history at the TU and FU Berlin with a master's degree . After a long stay in Paris, Marko Martin lives in Berlin.

In the nineties, as a regular contributor to the magazine KOMMUNE , which was discontinued in December 2012 , he was particularly concerned with French intellectuals and the exile and anti- totalitarian issues. In the meantime, also as a result of extensive travels in almost all parts of the world, his journalistic focus is on Israel, Latin America and Southeast Asia as well as on questions of human rights in the age of globalization. Martin's numerous essays , travel reports and literary reviews appear primarily in Die Welt , the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the magazine “ mare ”, but also in the “ Jüdische Allgemeine ” and the two-month periodical “ Internationale Politik ”. He can be heard regularly in the literature programs of "Deutschlandfunk Kultur".

In September 2007, Martin was a pseudonym special correspondent for “ Welt ” to report on the bloody suppression of the peaceful monk protests in Burma , which was then ruled by dictatorship .

Marko Martin is a member of the “ PEN Center for German-Speaking Authors Abroad ” and has been working in its “ Writers in Prison ” section for years . He is a member of the jury for the Karl Wilhelm Fricke Prize , which the “Federal Foundation for the Crisis of the SED Dictatorship” awards annually to people who have made a name for themselves in the critical reappraisal of dictatorships. From 2015 to 2017 he was also a member of the jury for the International Literature Prize - House of World Cultures .

From 15 April to 15 September 2016 the writer as reported town clerk in a bilingual blog from the Polish European Capital of Culture 2016, Breslau / Wroclaw and wrote about the heterogeneous character of the Oder-metropolis, particularly in relation to their German-Jewish past. Since December 2016 he has been a member of the anti-totalitarian -liberal author blog " Salon Columnists ", which is composed primarily of former members of the blog " The Axis of the Good ". In the “ Center for Liberal Modernity ” founded by the former Green politicians Marieluise Beck and Ralf Fücks at the end of 2017 , Martin writes the monthly column “on the road”.

Literary work

In his literary works, Martin deals primarily with experiences of the world and foreignness that have positive connotations: In his novel "The Prince of Berlin" (2000), the metropolis is ironically described from the perspective of a young Lebanese immigrant, what the " taz " came to the conclusion that the author had "remained a dissident at heart". The literary diary summer 1990 (2004) traces the own East German influences, while the essay volume Kosmos Tel Aviv (2012) is a hymn to the author's declared second home, a “declaration of love in tender Hebrew” published by the Israeli daily “ Haaretz ” compared to Bruce Chatwin's writing style .

The prose volume, Sleeping Dogs , published in 2009 in the Other Library, tells of individual fates and erotic adventures against the background of social crises in Mexico, Israel, Rwanda and Iran. The " FAZ " described the stories as "masterpieces of intensity". Martin's follow-up volume in the Other Library, The Night of San Salvador (2013) again leads to different places in the world, whereby the exoticism is broken by a multitude of narrative styles, although here too it is mainly about the tension between love, eros, sex and social Breaks. For the “ NZZ ” the book was “an ars amatoria of travel ... full of world and sensuality”.

His essay book Treffpunkt '89 was published on the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc . About the presence of an epochal caesura that combines memories of intellectuals such as Albert Camus , Manès Sperber , Czesław Miłosz , Václav Havel and Jürgen Fuchs with an analysis of the political tensions of 2014. " Die Welt " described the book as the "perfect antidote to the national navel gazing", the author regards the " SZ " as a "splendid specimen of a committed intellectual, regardless of all isms". Early on, Martin harshly criticized the milieu of the AfD and “ Pegida ” demonstrators. In the following year he published his literary diary Madiba Days. A South African journey that reflects the failure of homogeneous societies against the backdrop of the 25th anniversary of the apartheid implosion and the end of the GDR, reminds of previously unknown influences of Nelson Mandela and at the same time explores the upheavals of the South African present. “ Der Freitag ” sums up “Madiba Days”: “Among contemporary writers, hardly anyone feeds their writing so much from their own sensual experiences ... A company that constantly complains about its homogeneity should read someone like Marko Martin more often.” .

2016 appeared with the band Tel Aviv. Treasure chest and nutshell, in which the whole world once again pays homage to the city on the Mediterranean, which presents the author with human encounters and memories. Also in 2016 stories from the years 2007 to 2011 were published under the title Transfer in Babylon .

In May 2018, in a column in the NZZ, he described the undifferentiated nature of the German reception of Israel, which has been in a highly reflective, ongoing dispute with itself for 70 years. In recourse to the inner-Israeli democracy of debate, Martin takes a hard hit with "Israel criticism".

At the beginning of 2019, on the 60th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, Martin's literary diary was published, Das Haus in Habana. A report , a critical examination of the island reality. The work was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the non-fiction / essay category in 2019 . The extensive volume of essays Dissidentical Thinking was published in autumn 2019 . Travel to the witnesses of an age in which the history of the 20th century is told as a history of linking the biographies of dissidents, camp survivors and anti-totalitarian oppositionists. On the basis of personal encounters or readings, Martin portrays (exiled) writers and intellectuals such as Pavel Kohout , Gustaw Herling , Hans Sahl , André Glucksmann , Raissa Orlowa-Kopelewa , Roberto Schopflocher , Ilse Losa , Arthur Koestler , Horst Bienek , Anne Ranasinghe , Edgar Hilsenrath or Aharon Appelfeld .

Awards

• 1994 Arthur F. Burns Fellowship for San Francisco
• 2003 Working grant from the Cultural Fund Foundation of the New Federal States
• 2004 Working grant from the Else Heiliger Artists Fund
• 2001, 2002 and 2005 Amsterdam residency grant from the German-Dutch Cultural Foundation
• 2016 Stadtschreiber grant European Capital of Culture Breslau / Wrocław of the German Cultural Forum Eastern Europe

Works

• By taxi to Carthage. Prose and poems, with a foreword by Hans Christoph Buch . Schwartz Verlag, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-927800-02-3 .
• Orwell, Koestler and all the others. Melvin J. Lasky and 'The Month'. Essay. Mut Verlag, Asendorf 1999, ISBN 3-89182-073-9 .
• as editor: A window to the world. The month. Contributions from four decades. Beltz Athenaeum, Weinheim 2000, ISBN 3-89547-720-6 .
• The Prince of Berlin. Novel. Quadriga Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-88679-346-X .
• A magazine against oblivion. Federal Republican traditions and upheavals in the mirror of the cultural magazine “The Month”. Political science study, with a foreword by Michael Rohrwasser . Peter Lang Verlag , Frankfurt / New York 2003, ISBN 3-631-51105-1 .
• Summer 1990. Lit. Diary. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA), Munich 2004, ISBN 3-421-05843-1 .
• Special zone: close-ups between Tehran and Saigon. Reports. To Klampen Verlag , Springe 2008, ISBN 978-3-86674-033-4 .
• Sleeping dogs. Stories. The Other Library , Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-8218-6225-5 .
• Tel Aviv cosmos: Forays through Israeli literature and living environment. Portraits and reports, with a foreword by Ralph Giordano . Wehrhahn Verlag , Hannover 2012, ISBN 978-3-86525-293-7 .
• The night of San Salvador. A logbook. Stories. The Other Library, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-8477-0345-7 .
• Meeting point '89. About the presence of an epochal caesura. Portraits and essays. Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2014, ISBN 978-3-86525-416-0 .
• Madiba Days. A South African trip. (Literary diary), Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2015, ISBN 978-3-86525-463-4 .
• Tel Aviv. Treasure chest and nutshell with the whole world in it. autobiographically primed city portrait. Corso Verlag, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-7374-0723-6 .
• Change in Babylon. Stories 2007–2011. Männerschwarm Verlag, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-86300-218-3 .
• Nelson Mandela. (Monograph). Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-15-020457-3 .
• The house in Habana. A report. (Literary diary), Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2019, ISBN 3-86525-640-6
• Dissident thinking. The Other Library, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-8477-0415-7

Web links

• Literature by and about Marko Martin in the catalog of the German National Library
• http://www.die-andere-bibliothek.de/Original Ausgabe/Schlafende-Hunde::378.html
• Marko Martin's own bio-bibliographical information and audio sample on the Literaturport portal
• City clerk blog Wroclaw | Wrocław 2016

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jury member 2018 , accessed on July 12, 2018.
2. ↑ Marko Martin becomes town clerk in Breslau / Wrocław 2016. accessed September 6, 2016.
3. ↑ Jan Brandt: The last dissident. In: taz. December 4, 2000.
4. ↑ Thorsten Schmitz: Declaration of love in tender Hebrew. In: Süddeutsche. February 26, 2013.
5. ↑ מה שמלהיב במחשבה על תל אביב. In: Haaretz. June 26, 2013.
6. ↑ Oliver Junge: Just don't make the wrong move. In: FAZ. May 7, 2010.
7. ↑ Martina Läubli: A logbook by Marko Martin - Erotic discovery of the world. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. May 9, 2014.
8. ↑ Freedom starts in the head. In: The world . 22nd November 2014.
9. ↑ Michael Kleeberg: Freedom is not a carte blanche. Marko Martins “Treffpunkt '89 - the best book on the fall of the wall”. In: SZ . November 7, 2014.
10. ↑ Jan Feddersen interviews Marko Martin: The pack from which I fled. In: taz . 5th January 2015.
11. ↑ Lukas Latz: Actions of a Traveler. In: Friday . 15th October 2015.
12. ↑ Marko Martin: "Tel Aviv" stories from the life of a "magical city" , on deutschlandfunkkultur.de
13. ↑ Stefan Fischer: “No city for insider shit” . In: SZ . , May 10, 2016
14. ↑ Dirck Linck: “The way of my eyes” . In: SZ , November 15, 2016
15. ↑ Kitsch, resentment, projection - most of our Israel images are pretty crooked , NZZ, May 7, 2018
16. ↑ Nora Voit: Island on you and you . In: Die Zeit , April 6, 2019
17. ↑ Christian Lütjens: The observed observer . In: sissy , March 25, 2019