Michael Schneider (writer)

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Michael Schneider (born April 4, 1943 in Königsberg ) is a German writer .

Life

Michael Schneider is a son of the composer and conductor Horst Schneider; his brother is the writer Peter Schneider . At the end of the war, the family fled to West Germany , and Michael Schneider grew up in Grainau / Upper Bavaria and in Freiburg im Breisgau .

Funded by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes , after graduating from high school, he began studying natural sciences at the universities in Freiburg im Breisgau and Paris , which he broke off after completing his intermediate diploma in order to move to the Free University of Berlin in 1968 . There he studied philosophy , sociology and religious studies .

At the same time he was involved in the student movement , part of which he saw himself as a mouthpiece and critic. Together with his sister Barbara and his brother Peter he founded the first socialist street theater in West Berlin. As a literary critic and political journalist , he wrote for the edition Voltaire , specifically , course book , literary magazine and various radio stations, later also for the Zürcher Weltwoche and the FAZ .

Between 1970 and 1971 Schneider belonged to the cadre tribe of the Maoist Proletarian Left / Party Initiative (PL / PI). He drew a critical balance of his experience as a company cadre in the highly regarded course book essay "Against left dogmatism, an 'old age' disease 'of communism" (reprinted in Les Temps modern , Paris 1971).

1971/72 Schneider worked as a lecturer at the Klaus Wagenbach publishing house . In 1974 he received his doctorate with a thesis on Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud under Prof. Klaus Heinrich from the Institute for Religious Studies at the Free University of Berlin. His doctoral thesis Neurosis and Class Struggle. Materialistic criticism and an attempt to re-establish psychoanalysis in an emancipatory manner became a scientific bestseller of the student movement and was translated into all world languages. Combining historical-political argumentation with depth-psychological explanatory patterns should henceforth become a characteristic of the essayist Michael Schneider.

From 1975 to 1978 Schneider worked as a dramaturge and in-house author at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden . His stage play Die Wiedergutmachung or how to win a lost war, premiered in 1977 , dealt with a taboo topic in German history, namely the role of German industry and high finance during the Third Reich and the resurgence of former " military economists " and industrialists - initially accused as "war criminals" in the Federal Republic of Germany. The play sparked a theatrical scandal and was not carried over to the next season despite sold out performances. It was not performed again until ten years later at the Hessian State Theater in Darmstadt .

In 1978 Schneider canceled his contract with the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden and has lived in Wiesbaden as a freelance writer ever since. Here he met the elementary school teacher Ingeborg geb. Dienstbach, who had three children from their first marriage. They married in 1981. As a spiritual stimulator and critical editor, she accompanied most of his books, essays, plays and projects. She died in 2004.

In 1980 Schneider made his literary debut Das Spiegelkabinett , a classically built novella about an abysmal fraternal relationship, set in the setting of magicians, and at the same time a parable of a society slipping into irrationalism. “This story is an event,” wrote Marcel Reich-Ranicki in the FAZ .

From 1981 Schneider was a permanent employee of the ZDF matinee , for which he wrote scripts - a. a. about Balzac , Büchner , Bettina von Arnim , Arnold Zweig and Kafka - wrote. In 1984 he also wrote guest columns for the Zurich World Week .

In 1986 Schneider was Writer in Residence at the German Department of the University of Warwick (Great Britain), 1988/89 Writer in Residence at the Deutsches Haus New York. In 1987 and 1988 he received a travel grant from Progress Verlag in Moscow.

In 1989, after two extensive study trips through the Soviet Union during the perestroika era, which brought him together with many representatives of the Soviet war generation, Schneider published the book Ivan the German together with his friend and travel companion, the Russian writer and orientalist Rady Fisch . A German-Soviet journey from the past to the present . This was followed in 1989 by Schneider's scientific essay “The Barbarossa Company ”, in which, based on his own research and the research work of the Military History Research Office in Freiburg, he describes in a very concise manner what the German attack and occupation meant for the Soviet peoples .

In 1992, Schneider balanced the failure of Soviet state socialism in the major academic study The End of a Century Myth .

Since 1991 Schneider has taught as a lecturer and since 1995 as a professor for text, dramaturgy and story development at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg in the scriptwriting department . His literary work and understanding of literature was significantly expanded and enriched through his professional involvement with film art and film history.

In the 1990s he discovered a new literary genre for himself: the historical novel . In 2001 Der Traum der Vernunft was published , a novel biography about the German Jacobin Eulogius Schneider , who from ardent supporter of the great ideals of freedom and equality finally became the man of the Terreurs and as a public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court haunted Alsace with the mobile guillotine - an exemplary story about the idealism of violence and the overturning of a great utopia.

In 2007 followed, as it were as a satirical, light-footed counterpart, The Secret of Cagliostro , a historical picaresque novel about the ingenious impostor, Freemason, magician, miracle healer and greatest event artist of the 18th century, Count Alessandro Cagliostro . Coming from the slums of Palermo, he became a celebrated idol of his era, and his "Egyptian Order", which wanted to reconcile the Orient and the Occident, became an attraction for the European nobility and Freemasonry. As in his novella Das Spiegelkabinett and in his novel The Dream of Reason , Schneider, who has been a passionate magician himself from his youth (and often garnishes his readings with magical interludes), once again put the "night side of reason" in this novel. , d. H. deals with the seducibility of people through (mass) suggestion, the cult of genius and irrationalism.

In 2016 his strongly autobiographically influenced novel A Second Life was published . The protagonist is a cultural scientist named Fabian Fohrbeck, who, after the sudden death of his wife, gets into a crisis of life and meaning and visits a psychosomatic clinic, where he slowly finds himself again. In the encounters and conversations with his fellow patients - many of them are exhausted and burned out - the paradoxical picture emerges of a society that saves more and more time with technical means and yet has none.

Michael Schneider is a member of the Association of German Writers and the PEN Center Germany . In addition to various literary grants, he received the aspekte literature prize for Das Spiegelkabinett in 1980 and the George Konell Prize for his life's work in 2010 . He is also a member of Attac's Scientific Advisory Board , a member of the Willy Brandt Circle and the Magical Circle Berlin eV He lives and works in Berlin.

Works

Scientific papers and essays

  • Malcolm X, Revolution of Language, Language of Revolution , edition Voltaire, Berlin 1968
  • Der Spiegel Oder: The message as a commodity , together with Eckard Siepmann, edition Voltaire, Berlin 1969
  • Neurosis and class struggle. Materialistic criticism and attempt at an emancipative re-foundation of psychoanalysis. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1973 ( The New Book , Volume 26).
  • The long rage to the long march. Reinbek near Hamburg 1975
  • Upside down head or Die melancholische Linke. Darmstadt u. a. 1981
  • The specter of the apocalypse and the living men of doom. Frankfurt am Main 1984
  • Only dead fish go with the flow. Essays, aphorisms and polemics , Cologne 1984
  • The reparation or How to win a lost war. Drama with documentation, Cologne 1985
  • The "Operation Barbarossa". The displaced hereditary burden of 1941 and the consequences for German-Soviet relations , Luchterhand Collection, Frankfurt am Main 1989
  • The aborted revolution. From the state company to the DM colony , Berlin 1990
  • The end of a myth of the century. A balance sheet of state socialism , Cologne 1992
  • The book comes before the shoot. The high school of cinematic storytelling , Gerlingen 2001, 2nd, completely revised edition 2007 (Praxis Film, Volume 12)

In addition: participation in over 70 anthologies, magazines, periodicals, encyclopedias, etc.

Short stories and novels

  • The mirror cabinet. A magic novella , Munich 1980
  • The dream trap. Artist novels , Cologne 1987
  • Ivan the German. A German-Soviet journey from the past to the present , Frankfurt am Main 1989 (together with Rady Fish)
  • The dream of reason. Roman by a German Jacobin , Cologne 2001
  • The secret of Cagliostro , Cologne 2007
  • A second life. Roman , Cologne 2016

Plays

  • Freedom dies inch by inch. Scenes, songs and texts on the "Radical Decree" , premiere: Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, 1976, director: Horst Siede
  • The reparation or how to win a lost war, premiere: Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, 1977, director: Hermann Kleinselbeck
  • A smooth million, song play based on Nathanael West, premiere: Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, 1978. Director: Karl Heinz Roland / Benjamin Korn / Jürgen Kloth
  • Luftschloss underground, play in four acts, world premiere: Landestheater Tübingen, 1982, director: Peter Kock
  • The ax from Wandsbek. Drama based on Arnold Zweig. Premiere: Hessisches Staatstheater Darmstadt 1986, director: Jens Pesel
  • Völker empties the shelves - a German-German fool's revue. Premiere: Städtische Bühnen Münster 1993, director: Dieter Neuenburg

Scripts and television features

  • Balzac's lament for the dead, ZDF matinee, August 8, 1982
  • Franz Kafka - a case of literary vigilante justice, ZDF matinee, July 3, 1983
  • The town clerks. For the 200th birthday of Bettine von Arnim - Kobold in Prussia, ZDF, April 8, 1985, director: Karl-Heinz Deickert
  • The town clerks. On the 150th anniversary of Georg Büchner's death. Life becomes an epigram, ZDF February 22, 1987, director: Wolfgang F. Henschel.
  • The town clerks. On the 100th birthday of Arnold Zweig, Teiresias in Exile, ZDF November 8, 1987, director: Wolfgang F. Henschel
  • German priests in the French Revolution, SDR, 1989, directed by Boris Penth
  • The town clerks. The poets and the Soviet republic. ZDF May 13, 1990. Director: Wolfgang F. Henschel

literature

  • Walther Killy : Literature Lexicon. Authors and works in German (15 volumes). Bertelsmann, Gütersloh / Munich 1988–1991 (CD-ROM: Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-932544-13-7 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kursbuch 25/1971, pp. 73–121.
  2. ↑ Members of the Attac Scientific Advisory Board ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (January 2016)
  3. ^ Members of the Willy Brandt Circle: Michael Schneider. Willy-Brandt-Kreis, accessed on October 5, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Schneider, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg