Michael Zeller

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Michael Zeller (born October 29, 1944 in Breslau ) is a German writer . He writes novels, short stories, poems and essays.

Life

Zeller studied literature , philosophy and classical archeology in Marburg and Bonn from 1965 to 1974 , where he received his doctorate in 1974 with a thesis on Thomas Mann . From 1975 to 1982 he was a lecturer in literature at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg . In 1981 he completed his habilitation on contemporary German poetry. From 1974 to 1982 he also worked as a literary critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

Zeller has been a freelance writer since 1982. In 1986 his novel Follens Erbe was published , which tells the story of the university lecturer Hellmut Buchwald, who, against the background of the RAF actions of 1977 and the terrorism hysteria as a reaction to them, is suspected of being anti-constitutional . The Vormärz rebel Karl Follen appears as a historical reference figure , whose story is linked to the experience of the lecturer Buchwald. In the short novel The Sun! Fruit. The portrait of the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker as a woman who, torn between the demands of the traditional female role and an artistic vocation, finally has to give up after an intoxicating creative phase, emerges one death . The novel has been published five times and was also published in 1989 as a stage version at the theater (in Nuremberg).

1990 came out as the third novel The Revenant . In view of the worldwide AIDS epidemic, it reconstructs the history of the plague in medieval Europe from the perspective of a doctor today .

In the same year 1990, immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain through Europe, Zeller traveled to Poland, to the country of his native city of Wroclaw, and stayed for a few weeks in the old Polish royal city of Krakow. This is also where his novel Café Europa begins , published for the first time in 1994 (several editions, 1999 in Polish). For this novel, Zeller was awarded the "International Writers' Grant" of the Robert Bosch Foundation and was able to live in Krakow for a whole year. From the experiences there arose the short story volume Noch ein Glas mit Pan Tadeusz, Krakauer Stories (2000) and later another Polish novel, The Journey to Samosch (2003).

In 1999, Zeller occupied the “author's residence” in Schwerte for one year . This resulted in the band My beautiful place, songs from everyday German life (2001), all in a four-legged rhythm (with CD).

On behalf of the city of Soest , Zeller wrote the play The Soest Feud in 2009, which premiered in August 2009 in the open air in front of the medieval architecture of Sankt Patrokli and was performed again in 2011.

Since 2007 Zeller has been working regularly with school classes at secondary schools and high schools in several cities in North Rhine-Westphalia. As part of the German lessons, “school novels” were created in three-month units under his direction. The texts created in the class were all then printed and brought to the bookstore. In this way, eight school novels were published in Duisburg , Schwerte and Wuppertal by 2017 , most recently our life in Schwerte is colorful .

In 2010, Zeller published the war diaries of the writer Gerhard Nebel , which were written on the front between 1942 and 1945. After they appeared for the first time and once from 1948 to 1950, they could be considered forgotten. Zeller published a selection in a volume under the title Between the Fronts with a detailed afterword. In 2013, however, the remaining circulation was destroyed in a major fire in a book store near Leipzig.

Since 2011 Zeller has been a literary assistant in the school competition "Encounter with Eastern Europe". It is organized every year by the Münster district government . Zeller writes the beginnings of stories that the students (in North Rhine-Westphalia and Eastern Europe) tell to the end.

Beginning in 2012, his picture-text column Seh-Reise appeared in the Internet magazine “CulturMag” over a period of three years : 104 episodes, each based on an art postcard. A selection of the Seh-Reise can be seen throughout 2018 in the Internet magazine “Musenblätter”.

The story Brudertod (2014), in which Zeller dealt with his brother's early suicide, met with widespread criticism . The post-war novel Cardsharps appeared in a new edition in 2015 (for the first time in 2008). It goes back to the authentic case of a falsification of literature in Germany in the 1950s. In 2018 the book The Turkish Girlfriend came out, with stories and poems about encounters between Germans and Turks, from today going back to the 1990s.

In 1997 Zeller was honored with the special prize of the Lower Saxony Culture Prize, and in 2008 with the Von der Heydt Prize, the city ​​of Wuppertal's culture prize . In 2011 he received the international Andreas Gryphius Prize , awarded by the KünstlerGilde der Stadt Esslingen. He is a member of the PEN Center Germany and lives in Wuppertal .

The Ukrainian PEN, Kiev, has founded a “literary residence” in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine . Michael Zeller was invited as the first guest from abroad. Zeller spent the month of September 2019 in Kharkiv and was intensely involved in the literary and cultural life of the city during that time. In addition to his novel Kropp , many of his poems have been translated into Ukrainian since the 1990s.

Works

  • Fathers and sons at Thomas Mann - the generation step as a historical process. (= Bonn work on German literature. 27). Dissertation. Bouvier, Bonn 1974, ISBN 3-416-01036-1 .
  • Citizen or Bourgeois? A study of the sociology of literature on Thomas Mann's “Buddenbrooks” and Heinrich Mann's “Im Schlaraffenland”. Klett, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-12-392900-0 .
  • False start training. Novel. Sauerländer, Aarau 1978, ISBN 3-7941-1735-2 .
  • From my provinces. Poems. Poster publishing house, Nuremberg 1981, ISBN 3-88469-023-X .
  • Poems have time. Outline of a contemporary poetics. Habilitation thesis. Klett, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-12-397200-3 .
  • Do you love dallas? Dispute-lust writing against the arrogance of culture. Gruber and Raabe, Nuremberg. Revised and expanded version: Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-548-36513-2 .
  • Follen's legacy. A German story. Novel. Oberon, Bad Homburg 1986. (New edition: dtv, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-423-11242-5 ).
  • The sun! Fruit. A death. Novel. Oberon, Frankfurt 1987. (4th edition. Ars vivendi, Cadolzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89716-657-8 ).
  • Fancy blue and legs. Poems. Dagyeli, Frankfurt 1988, ISBN 3-89329-104-0 .
  • Rochus - the plague and its patron. (= Nuremberg writings. 2). Böckel, Nuremberg 1989, ISBN 3-87191-131-3 .
  • The revenant. Novel. Benziger, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-545-36485-2 .
  • My dream of tolerating - a different kind of German-Jewish encounter. Essay. Isele, Eggingen 1991, ISBN 3-925016-79-1 .
  • Weimar. German muse location. Essay. Verlagsgemeinschaft Berg, Berg am See 1991, ISBN 3-921655-72-2 .
  • Mikado. Stories. Benziger, Zurich 1991. (New edition: Ars vivendi, Cadolzburg, ISBN 3-931043-19-3 ).
  • Cafe Europa. Novel. ars vivendi Verlag, Cadolzburg 1994, ISBN 3-927482-80-3 . (First edition in Polish translation by Maria Podlasek-Ziegler: Polish-German publishing house, Warsaw 1999, ISBN 83-86653-07-8 ).
  • Is not to be said. Poems. Edition Künstlerhaus, Lauenburg / Elbe 1996.
  • Kropp. A settlement. Novel. Oberon, Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-925844-11-2 .
    • Translated into Ukrainian by Oleksandra Kowajowa, Kharkiv 2016.
  • And next year in Jerusalem. Stories along the way. Stories. Ars vivendi, Cadolzburg 1999, ISBN 3-89716-089-7 .
  • Another glass of Pan Tadeusz. Krakow stories. Ars vivendi, Cadolzburg 2000, ISBN 3-89716-210-5 .
  • My beautiful place. Songs from everyday German life. Ars vivendi, Cadolzburg 2001, ISBN 3-89716-221-0 . (A CD with ten songs read by the author is included with the book . Musical accompaniment: Hans-Günter Brodmann )
  • Invent Erfurt. Published by Michael Zeller, Artist in Residence, Erfurt. RhinoVerlag Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-932081-63-3 .
  • The trip to Samosh. Novel. Ars vivendi, Cadolzburg 2003, ISBN 3-89716-374-8 .
  • Grenades and ballads. Bosnian mosaic. Neues Literaturkontor, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-920591-81-X .
  • The black box. Schoolhouse novel. Nacke, Wuppertal 2008, ISBN 978-3-9810918-6-1 .
  • Cardsharps, Roman (under the pseudonym Jutta Roth). ars vivendi Verlag, Cadolzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-89716-306-5 . (New edition (under the name of the author): Brockmeyer Verlag, Bochum 2015, ISBN 978-3-8196-1000-4 ).
  • The Soest feud. Play. Verlag HP Nacke, Wuppertal 2009, ISBN 978-3-9812319-3-9 .
  • Saskia lights up. Schoolhouse novel. Verlag HP Nacke, Wuppertal 2009, ISBN 978-3-9812319-8-4 .
  • The student Struwe. A story. Narrative. NordPark, Wuppertal 2009, ISBN 978-3-935421-33-1 .
  • The black box. School novel. Verlag HP Nacke, Wuppertal 2008, ISBN 978-3-9810918-6-1 .
  • We're filling the pot. In: The Ruhr flows differently than the Bosporus. Klartext, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0274-9 .
  • Gerhard Nebel : Between the fronts. War Diaries 1942–1945. Rediscovered, selected and given a word of the night by Michael Zeller. wjs verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-937989-69-3 .
  • A shot of childhood love. School novel Wuppertal. Verlag HP Nacke, Wuppertal 2011, ISBN 978-3-942043-75-5 .
  • The treasure on the roof. School novel Wuppertal. Verlag HP Nacke, Wuppertal 2012, ISBN 978-3-942043-86-1 .
  • The self-criticism of La Habana in 1968. Narrative. NordPark Verlag, Wuppertal 2012, ISBN 978-3-935421-94-2 .
  • How it begins, how it ends. Poems and chants. Brockmeyer, Bochum 2013, ISBN 978-3-8196-0918-3 .
  • Run away! Protocol of an escape. Narrative. CulturBooks (E-Verlag) 2013, ISBN 978-3-944818-14-6 .
  • Brother death. A child's life. Brockmeyer Verlag, Bochum 2014, ISBN 978-3-8196-0971-8 .
  • The secret of Omar. School novel Wuppertal. Verlag HP Nacke, Wuppertal 2014, ISBN 978-3-942043-44-1 .
  • Flames over the city. School novel Wuppertal. Publisher HP Nacke, Wuppertal 2016.
  • Our life is colorful. School novel Schwerte. Publisher HP Nacke, Wuppertal 2017.
  • The Turkish friend. Stories and poems. Asso, Oberhausen 2018, ISBN 978-3-938834-89-3 .

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of members of the PEN Center Germany.
personal data
SURNAME Zeller, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw