Matthias Hermann (writer)

Matthias Hermann (born December 30, 1958 in Bitterfeld ) is a German writer .

Life

Matthias Hermann comes from a Jewish family that - in the sense of 'there are no Jews among comrades' - was assimilated. He grew up in East Berlin and trained as a typesetter. He later became a proofreader. In 1978 his attempt to escape to the west failed. He was sentenced to two years and four months in prison for so-called 'political offenses' . Despite the writing ban, thirty to forty poems were composed during his detention. In poems like The Prison Shower Room (in 72 letters) he combines what he experienced as a politically imprisoned person with experiences of German Jews during the Nazi era. After a year Matthias Hermann was granted amnesty and in 1980, on the initiative of Herbert Wehner, the Federal Republic of Germany bought him free. As a result, he moved to West Germany.

Hermann enters into dialogue with the great German writers of all times. If he z. B. alludes to Brecht or Celan , he radicalizes and revises them. Even if Hermann takes up themes and characters from the Old Testament - as is so often the case - he follows a similar pattern: he falls back on what has been given, takes it further critically and creates the completely new and unexpected. Especially Hermann's preoccupation with the Old Testament is a novelty in literary history in the recent history of German-language poetry.

In 2005 he was honored with the Aachen Peter Klein Literature Prize. By 2018 he had published seven volumes of poetry and one volume of short stories.

Works

• 72 letters. Poems. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-40150-5 .
• The bent sound. Poems. Klöpfer & Meyer, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-421-05745-1 .
• Ahasver poems , Edition Noack & Block 2013, ISBN 978-3-86813-014-0
• The foreigner of God. Stories. Edition Noack & Block Berlin 2014, ISBN 3-86813-015-2 .
• The psalms. First book. Retouched by Matthias Hermann. Edition Noack & Block, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86813-031-7 .
• The psalms. Second book. Retouched by Matthias Hermann. Edition Noack & Block, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86813-036-2 .
• The psalms. Third book. Retouched by Matthias Hermann. Edition Noack & Block, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86813-037-9 .
• The psalms. Fourth book. Retouched by Matthias Hermann. Edition Noack & Block, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86813-052-2 .
• The psalms. Fifth book. Retouched by Matthias Hermann. Edition Noack & Block Berlin, 2019, ISBN 978-3-86813-083-6 .

literature

• Christoph Grubitz: Hermann, Matthias. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , pp. 203f.
• Thomas Nolden: Contradiction in Dialogue: Spaces of Play and Movement in Contemporary Jewish Poetry using Matthias Hermann as an example. In: Literature for Readers 97.4; 20th year Peter Lang Frankfurt a. M. 1997 pp. 169-181.
• Judith Hélène Stadler: Matthias Hermann's life and work until 2017 / Matthias Hermann's identity as a Jew and a poet. In: Dies .: Michal: Schaul's daughter, Dawid's wife - lovers. Sufferers. Resistant. The reception of the figure Michal as a protagonist in German-Jewish literature of the 20th / 21st centuries Century against the background of their ancient originals. Dissertation. Bern: University publication 2017: 329–331. online: http://biblio.unibe.ch/download/eldiss/18stadler_jh.pdf

Web links

• Literature by and about Matthias Hermann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Matthias Hermann on the website of Klöpfer & Meyer
• Biography and review of Matthias Hermann on lyriks-helmut-zwanger.de