Matthias Politycki

Matthias Politycki (before 2007)

Matthias Politycki, 2008

Matthias Politycki (born May 20, 1955 in Karlsruhe ) is a German writer . He has published novels, short stories, poems, essays and audio books and is considered a world traveler among German authors. He was best known for his novel for women and his cruise satire Around the World in 180 Days . His books have been translated into English, French, Italian and Japanese. Some of his articles, with which he intervened in debates in the feature section or stimulated them, also received a lot of attention.

Life

Matthias Politycki grew up in Munich and attended Maria-Theresia-Gymnasium there . After graduating from high school in 1974, he did basic military service with Jägerbataillon 541 in Neuburg / Donau, but after his first military exercise he decided to refuse military service and was recognized as a conscientious objector on December 21, 1977. From 1975 to 1987 he studied modern German literature, philosophy, theater and communication studies at the universities of Munich and Vienna. In 1981 he obtained his master's degree, in 1987 he did his doctorate with Walter Müller-Seidel in Munich with a thesis on the revaluation of all values? German literature in Nietzsche's judgment as a doctor of philosophy. After teaching for three semesters as an academic advisor at the Munich Institute for German Philology, he switched to the profession of freelance writer in 1990, where he also worked as a permanent freelance lecturer for the CH Beck publishing house in Munich until 1999 . From 2000 to 2005 Politycki - he was always looking for the aesthetic and poetological discussion - organized the "Untitled" conferences of authors, editors and critics at Elmau Castle . In 2011 he was a curator at the Munich Literature Festival. Matthias Politycki is a member of the PEN Center Germany and the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg . He lives in Hamburg and Munich.

Literary work

Novels and short stories

With his highly acclaimed debut novel, Ausfalls / Zerendung des Regenbogenes , published in 1987 . An evolutionary novel , Politycki was critically acclaimed for a highly reflective prose piece as the successor to Arno Schmidt and James Joyce . As early as the early 1990s, the “form-fixated avant-gardist ” vehemently resisted this ascription, he demanded “literature must be like rock music”, advocated a “new readability” in German literature and thus triggered a broad feuilleton debate.

The women's novel , published in 1997 , finally became a bestseller and “ cult novel ” and is considered to be the central text of literary postmodernism in Germany. With the novel, Politycki also established his reputation as an “eminent humorist” and “acrobat of memory”. At the same time, with the woman's novel , he triggered a debate about the so-called " 78 generation ", which he identified as the successor and in strict differentiation from the mind-boggling 68 generation . In 1999, ZDF's attempt to establish "Marietta" as a digital update of the women's novel on the Internet with the author Politycki , with an actress named Maike Schiller, who is now responsible for the cultural section of the regional newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt , met with little response .

With his Cuba novel Herr der Hörner , published in 2005 , Politycki then presented a "Dionysian exuberant mammoth novel" that tells of the struggle for survival of an enlightened European in a culture characterized by archaic rituals. However , he was only able to build on the popular success of his women's novel with his picaresque novel Around the World In 180 Days , in which he had a “contemporary Simplicissimus describe the rituals of the rich and the super-rich” on a luxury cruise ship.

In 2013 Samarkand Samarkand appeared , according to his own statement, a work that Matthias Politycki had been concerned with for half a lifetime. The novel leads to the year 2026 and to the legendary Samarkand. Alexander Kaufner, mountain hunter and cross-border commuter, goes in search of a mysterious place of worship. " Samarkand, Samarkand is an eloquent, colorful oriental travel and adventure story that penetrates to the heart of darkness." The novel outlines a gloomy dystopia of the "Free West" between the aggression of Great Russia and the fundamentalist associations of the "Caliph." of Baghdad ”threatens to go under. In order to defend the basic democratic values, hope rests only on a symbolic victory “for the just cause”.

Politycki has named Laurence Sterne , Diderot , Gottfried Benn and Vladimir Nabokov as his literary role models , and for several years also Ernest Hemingway .

Poetry

Politycki has presented an extensive poetry work with which he has repeatedly performed stage programs: in 1996/1997 he went on tour with Robert Gernhardt and the joint lyric program Wein, Weib und Gesang , in 2004/2005 with Hellmuth Opitz and Steffen Jacobs and the joint Program women. Well Difficult . Uwe Wittstock has described him as the "greatest living linguist among German poets". In the spring of 2018, Complete Poems 2017-1987 was published, a collection of all previously published individual publications as well as the scattered poems, supplemented by a cycle of new poems, with an afterword by Wolfgang Frühwald . "A poetic journey of discovery," it said in Books Journal of the NDR at the award ceremony for NDR Book of the Month in June 2018th

Essay writing

In addition to two volumes of essays from 1998 and 2007, in which scattered newspaper articles are compiled, Politycki published two volumes in 2015 and 2017 which, as "non-fictional literature", are located on the border between literature and essay writing: 42,195 , an autobiographical volume about the marathon, and terribly beautiful and far and wild , a “mixture of philosophical essay and autobiographical report” about “the past, present and future of travel”. Politycki has repeatedly expressed himself in essays and newspaper articles on the development of contemporary German-language literature. Great attention was paid to his essays Relevant Realism , published under the title What the Roman and White man - now what . Most recently, Matthias Politycki presented his current aesthetic position in a plenary lecture at the 2016 German Language Conference. It was published under the title Reduction & Tempo in the Göttinger Sudelbl Blätter (2017). Politycki's recent interview essay Finding Stance, which he wrote together with the philosopher Andreas Urs Sommer , helped Politycki to understand itself politically . Why we need it and still never will have it (2019).

Awards

Matthias Politycki was chosen for his first novel From cases / decomposition of the rainbow. A development novel was awarded the Civitas Literature Prize in 1987 and the Bavarian State Prize for Literature in 1988 . He has received numerous scholarships in Germany and abroad, including in Denmark, Austria and the USA. In 2006, the shipping company Hapag-Lloyd gave Matthias Politycki the first job of a ship's clerk on its cruise ship Europe , giving him the opportunity to take part in a six-month trip around the world as a “writer-in-non-residence”. In 2009 he received the Ernst Hoferichter Prize and was Writer in Residence at Queen Mary College, University of London . In 2010 he was awarded the LiteraTour Nord prize. For working on his novels Herr der Hörner and Samarkand Samarkand , he received a grant from the German Literature Fund in 2004 and 2012/2013 . On the occasion of the 25-year city partnership between Hamburg and Osaka , he was Writer in Residence in Osaka in 2014; also in 2014 he was artist in residence in St. Moritz. In 2015 he received the “Literarischer Landgang” travel grant from the Oldenburg Literature Office. In 2017 he was a scholarship holder of the German Literature Fund and the Sylt Foundation in Cambodia on the trail of the Khmer Rouge . In 2018, Terrible Beautiful and Far and Wild was awarded the ITB Book Award from the International Tourism Exchange (ITB) Berlin. At the invitation of the Shanghai Writers'Association, he went to Shanghai as Writer in Residence in September 2018 .

Works

Autograph

Novels and short stories

Nobody can take this from us. Roman, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2020, ISBN 978-3-455-009248 .
Samarkand Samarkand. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-455-40443-2 .
Free swimmers. Three stories. Svato Verlag, Hamburg 2011. With 11 colored linocuts by Svato Zapletal.
Beyond novella. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-455-40194-3 .
Around the world in 180 days. The log book of Mr. Johann Gottlieb Fichtl. marebuchverlag, Hamburg 2008.
Lord of the Horns. Roman, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2005.
The silence at the other end of the trunk. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2001.
A man of forty. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2000.
Women's novel. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 1997.
The evil influence of the Bifi sausage. An ending and an aftermath. Verlag Ulrich Keicher (= Roter Faden , 44), Warmbronn 1996.
Typhoon over Kyoto. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Hamburg 1993.
Sunbathing in Siberia. Three-sided stories. Verlag Ulrich Keicher (= Roter Faden , 30), Warmbronn 1991.
From cases / decomposition of the rainbow. An evolutionary novel. Weismann Verlag, Munich 1987.

Poetry

All poems 2017-1987. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-455-81419-4 .
That crazy glitter in your eyes. 111 poems. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-455-40506-4 .
Egyptian plagues. Mountains and desert of Sinai. 13 poems. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-455-40510-1 .
That sultry afternoon back then. Four kinds of pain. Thirteen poems with thirteen Knipsels ("Schokokussen") by Felix Droese , limited private print Carl-Walter Kottnik, Hamburg 2015.
London for heroes. The Ale Trail - Expedition into the beer kingdom. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-455-40323-7 .
The seconds after that. 88 poems. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-455-40145-5 .
Advice on eating the silkworm. 66 poems. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2003.
The two ways to order the caipirinha. A poem. Ulrich Keicher (limited special edition), Warmbronn 2000.
Beyond sausage and cheese. 44 poems. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Hamburg 1995.
The truth about coffee drinkers. A poem. Ulrich Keicher publishing house (limited special edition), Warmbronn 1993.
In the shadow of the writing here. 22 poems. Weismann Verlag, Munich 1988.

Essays

together with Andreas Urs Sommer : Finding attitude. Why we need it and still never will have it . Stuttgart: JB Metzler, 2019. ISBN 978-3-476-04981-0 .
Terribly beautiful and wide and wild. Why we travel and what we think about it. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2017.
Reduction & speed. As a narrator on the move in the 21st century. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2017.
42.195. Why we run marathons and what we think about it. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2015.
About the disappearance of things in the future. Certain Articles 2006–1998. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2007.
Marietta - the idea, the record and the straw hat. Writing and letting people write on the Internet. Franz Steiner Verlag (= Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, Treatise No. 1/2000 of the Class of Literature), Stuttgart 2000.
The color of the vowels. From literature, the 78s and the croaking of fat frogs. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 1998.

Editing and miscellaneous

The poem, No. 20. The best of 20 years - and for the next 20 years. Anniversary edition, with A. Leitner. Weßling 2012, ISBN 978-3-92943-372-2 .
London, signals from the world machine. Host: Matthias Politycki. Corso Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86260-015-1 .
Marietta / A man of forty. Documentation of the ZDF project "Novel in Progress" on the homepage of aspects . CD-ROM. ZDF.Online / Luchterhand literature publisher. Munich [et al.] 1999.
A hundred necessary poems. And an unnecessary one. Luchterhand literary publisher, Hamburg / Zurich [u. a.] 1992.

Reference books

Revaluation of all values? German literature in the judgment of Nietzsche. De Gruyter, Berlin [et al.] 1989.
The early Nietzsche and the German Classic. Studies on Problems of Literary Valuation. Münchner Hochschulschriften, Straubing [et al.] 1981.

Audio books

42.195. Why we run marathons and what we think about it. (Audio book, read by Matthias Politycki). erlesen.TV GmbH (publisher), 2015.
Samarkand Samarkand. (Speaker: Matthias Politycki). Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2013.
London for heroes. The Ale Trail. (With Peter Lohmeyer and Colin Soleman). Publisher Antje Kunstmann, Munich 2011.
Beyond novella. (With Nina Petri). Radioropa / Technisat, Daun 2009.
The ship. Experiences of a world tour with Matthias Politycki. Audiobook by Wolfgang Stockmann, logbook texts and narrator: Matthias Politycki. Publisher Antje Kunstmann, Munich 2008.
The devil's amulet. MünchnerFrühlingVerlag (in the one-time- poised series ), Munich 2007.
Women. Well Difficult. (With Hellmuth Opitz and Steffen Jacobs). Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2005.
The silence at the other end of the trunk. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2001.
A man of forty. Audiobook Hamburg / Deutschlandradio, Hamburg 2000.