Michael Kumpfmüller

Michael Kumpfmüller, 2008

Michael Kumpfmüller (born July 21, 1961 in Munich ) is a German writer .

Life

Michael Kumpfmüller spent his childhood and youth in the community of Unterschleißheim in the north of Munich. After graduating from Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium Garching, he studied German literature and history in Tübingen , Vienna and Berlin and completed his studies in 1994 with a dissertation on the myth of the Battle of Stalingrad , for which he received the Werner Hahlweg Prize in 1996 .

In the nineties he wrote reports and portraits for various daily and weekly newspapers. He was nominated twice for the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize and received the Catholic Journalist Prize in 1997 and the MPW Journalist Prize the following year; Together with Thomas Hallet, he was awarded the Hartmannbund's film and television prize in 2000 for a report on patients in the Heart Center Berlin . He has been a freelance writer since 1999.

In the 2005 election campaign for the Bundestag election in Germany, he joined the election initiative initiated by Günter Grass in favor of the then red-green government. From April to November 2006 he commented on current affairs in politics and society for six Lower Saxony literary offices at www.netznotizen.de.

Kumpfmüller was married to Eva Menasse , has three sons and lives in Berlin .

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His first novel, Hampels Fluchten , was preprinted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and discussed very controversially in the German media. Translations have appeared in the Netherlands, France, Finland, Great Britain and the USA.

In 2003 his novel Durst followed , which was set up for the stage at several German-speaking theaters, for example at the Hannoversche Kammerspiele 2007 by Harald Schandry in Vienna at the Theater an der Gumpendorfer Straße 2007 by Margit Mezgolich and at the Theater Magdeburg 2011 by Jan Jochymski; a radio play version directed by Ulrich Lampen and participation u. a. by Jule Böwe was broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur in 2006 .

One year after the publication of his third novel, Message to All , a two-part radio play version directed by Leonhard Koppelmann was broadcast on Deutschlandradio .

The novel The Glory of Life about the last year of life by Franz Kafka and his partner Dora Diamant is Kumpfmüller's greatest success to date; it has been translated into 24 languages.

His fifth novel The Upbringing of Man was on the longlist of the German Book Prize in autumn 2016 .

In 2018, his sixth novel Tage mit Ora was published , which tells of an indecisive pair of lovers who go on a road trip through the United States to get to know each other better. The novel was also on the long list of the German Book Prize.

In 2020, his seventh novel, Oh, Virginia , was published, which is about the last days of Virginia Woolf's life .

Awards

In 1993, Kumpfmüller received the Walter Serner Prize for the short story The Confident . In 2007 he was awarded the Alfred Döblin Prize for the manuscript of the novel by Message to Alle . With the novel The Glory of Life he was shortlisted for the Wilhelm Raabe Prize in 2011; the Chinese translation received the 2012 Weishanhu Prize for the best foreign language novel of the 21st century. In 2013 he was awarded the Prix Jean-Monnet for La Splendeur de la vie at the Salon de la Littérature Européenne de Cognac . Kumpfmüller criticized the award event in cognac in an article in the FAZ , whereupon Martina Wachendorff , who works as a publisher's editor in France , tried in an open letter to Kumpfmüller to interpret his experiences in cognac as misunderstandings.

Kumpfmüller has received several work grants from the German Literature Fund e. V. Darmstadt: 1998/99 for Hampels Fluchten , 2005/06 for message to all and 2014/15 for the education of the man.

In 2017 he was awarded the Landgang grant , a travel grant through the Oldenburger Land .

Works

The battle of Stalingrad . Metamorphoses of a German Myth . Diss. Phil. Free University of Berlin 1995 Diss. 95.6128 . Wilhelm Fink 1995
Hampel's escapes . Novel. Kiepenheuer & Witsch , Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2000, ISBN 978-3-462-02927-7 .
Thirst . Novel. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2003, ISBN 978-3-462-03316-8 .
Message to everyone . Novel. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03967-2 .
The glory of life . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2011 ISBN 978-3-462-04326-6 .
The education of the man , Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2016 ISBN 978-3-462-04481-2 .
Days with Ora , Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2018 ISBN 978-3-462-05104-9 .
Ach, Virginia , Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2020 ISBN 978-3-462-04921-3 .