Matthias Eckoldt

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Matthias Eckoldt (born December 24, 1964 in Berlin ) is a German writer , science author and radio maker.

Matthias Eckoldt

Life

Matthias Eckoldt has a son, lives in Berlin and has a second marriage.

Eckoldt studied philosophy , media studies and German studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin and received his doctorate in Systems Theory and Foucault's analysis of power with a treatise on the power dispositive of the mass media .

Create

In Matthias Eckoldt's literary work, two phases can be identified so far. The first can be understood in the context of postmodernism . In novels such as Moment of Excellence ( Eichborn Verlag 2000) the author ironizes, parodies and deconstructs writing styles, genres and figure psychologies. This phase comes to an end with the volume of short stories TopIdioten ( Kulturverlag Kadmos 2009), which was described in the taz with the words: "Eckoldt's protagonists are consumer idiots - prisoners in the realm of unlimited possibilities, in which information becomes commodity, the value of which nobody can say exactly how high it actually is. It is precisely this variety of options that fascinates them, this unpredictable value that seems to rise and fall like share prices, is their undoing. Eckoldt shows them in their failure. Your hipness becomes a ridiculous pose, life becomes a big twitch, triggered by the incessantly flowing stimulation current of the media society. "

The second phase begins with the boxing novel Last Days ( Dittrich Verlag , 2010), published in 2010, in which Eckoldt refrains from all refractions and parodies and subtly tells the very human story of a boxing coach who has lost himself. On Deutschlandfunk it was said about the book: "Matthias Eckoldt succeeds in drawing the reader into the body-fixated world of the pugilist over 200 pages."

Think

In his media-theoretical work, Matthias Eckoldt analyzes the real and realistic power of the media and dedicates himself to the media techniques of the modern exercise of power. He sees the mass media as a “task force” of disciplinary power. Fundamental to this view of the mass media is his book “Medien der Macht - Macht der Medien” (published by Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2007), about which the specialist journal MEDIENwissenschaft wrote: “Eckoldt can fall back on both internal systemic descriptions and extra-systemic references and contexts to formulate a modern, comprehensive and coherent theory of the mass media. "

Since 2013 Eckoldt has been focusing more and more on neuroscientific topics. For his book Can the Brain Understand the Brain? he visited nine renowned neuroscientists and asked them about their research approaches and the limits of their knowledge of the subject. This work resulted in a joint project with the neuroscientist Randolf Menzel on the intelligence of bees. This was followed by the monograph A Brief History of the Brain and Mind and another volume of conversations Can Consciousness Be Conscious?

In 2019 his book Leonardo's Legacy was published, in which he examined the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci . He came to the conclusion that none of the drafts were suitable for an invention and that the genius cult around Leonardo stems from the fascist propaganda of Benito Mussolini .

Eckoldt wrote over five hundred features , essays and radio plays for the public broadcasters . Together with Matthias Baxmann , he created the weekly series Mensch Müller, everyday life different and typically German? at Deutschlandradio Kultur .

In the "Aula" series of the SWR he regularly gives lectures on media-theoretical and neuroscientific topics.

Books

Radio plays, plays, features selection

  • Faust and Spirit - An exchange of blows between boxers and writers - Director: Nikolai von Koslowski ( Feature - RBB ) 2008.
  • I'm a bastard, it's unthinkable! - together with Tatjana Rese - Director: Christoph Dietrich , Krimi , 2011.
  • Death in the desert - The short life of GDR Kronpinzen Werner Lamberz - RBB , 2011.
  • As you wish! A comedy on freedom. Play, world premiere at the Landestheater Detmold, 2013.
  • Nothing new in the West. Radio play adaptation, Nordwestradio, 2014.
  • Mammon pulls naked! Comedy about money and other agitators. Play, world premiere at the Landestheater Detmold 2015.
  • When a shot was fired in the Politburo: Erich Apel - Director: Wolfgang Bauernfeind ( Feature - MDR ) 2015.
  • Out of deep need. Detective radio play about Martin Luther in Worms together with Tatjana Rese - Deutschlandfunk Kultur , 2017.
  • Can the brain understand the brain? Play, world premiere at Theater der Junge Welt , Leipzig 2018.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Short biography and reviews of works by Matthias Eckoldt at perlentaucher.de , accessed on June 9, 2020.
  2. Sigrid Brinkmann : Tormented soul situation of a boxing trainer. In: Deutschlandfunk . Book market series , October 18, 2010, accessed on December 11, 2019 (review of Last Days ).
  3. ^ Matthias Baxmann, Matthias Eckoldt: Everyday life different. Correspondents around the world on their own. (No longer available online.) In: Deutschlandradio Kultur . June 20, 2014, archived from the original on October 20, 2014 (presentation of the series).;