Otto Emersleben (writer)

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Otto Emersleben, 2014

Otto Emersleben (born April 19, 1940 in Berlin-Zehlendorf ) is a German writer.

Live and act

After graduating from West Berlin in 1958, Emersleben moved to the GDR and studied physics in Rostock , Greifswald and Sofia , where he graduated with a diploma in 1964. He was a customer service technician at the Wolfen film factory (ORWO) and a member of Werner Steinberg's Dessau literary circle . After many business trips through Europe and Asia, he spent four years in Moscow . In 1976 he became a freelance writer in Greifswald and attended a scenario course at the Babelsberg Film Academy in 1977/78 . Since 1992 he has lived in Brunswick (Maine) , where he worked at Bowdoin College .

The first publications were historical stories in the booklet series Das neue Abenteuer, published by Neues Leben . The stories were published in 1985 as Exciting Told Volume The Tower of Death . In 1980 the first novel Strom ohne Brücke appeared , a story about the Gonzalo Pizarro expedition (including the discovery of the Amazon by the Spaniards) around 1540. Author of the historical novel Strandrecht (Excitingly told vol. 213) published in 1988 under the pseudonym Dirck van Belden he together with Hartmut Mechtel . In the novel The Wind Has Many Names , Emersleben describes the revolutionary situation in Bulgaria under Ottoman rule with Wassil Levski as the main character. In his novel NovemberMärchen , published in 2000 . No continuing city , which in the fictional Vorpommern plays Törnstedt small town, but many similarities to Greifswald has, he says in light of the turning point in the GDR, the love story between the married librarian Irmelin Horn, whose husband Edmund later turns out to be Stasi , and the much younger photographer Herbert. The romance does not last, and neither is the euphoria of social upheaval. Nevertheless, new life perspectives for everyone involved arise from the events.

Parallel to novels and short stories, Otto Emersleben wrote non-fiction books and biographies. His biography of the North Pole explorer Robert Peary became famous . In 1998 his biography of James Cook appeared in the series of rororo monographs and in February 2002 Marco Polo followed in the same series . In 2003, In den Schründen der Arktik , a biographical novel about Karl May , Robert Peary and the discovery of the North Pole, was published . The sequel, The dispute over the North Pole , was published as an e-book in 2012.

Works

Novels and short stories

Non-fiction

  • Lands of gold. The end of the great age of discovery . Urania Verlag , Leipzig, Jena, Berlin 1980.
  • To distant shores. Discoveries in the 17th and 18th centuries . Urania Verlag, Leipzig, Jena, Berlin 1984.
  • Unveiled earth. The last adventures in the history of discovery . Urania Verlag, Leipzig, Jena, Berlin 1988.

Biographies

  • James Cook. Sailor, explorer, naturalist . New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1989.
  • Robert Edwin Peary. An American dream of the pole . New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1991.
  • Marco Polo . Rowohlt Verlag , Reinbek 2002. ISBN 3-499-50473-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon 20. Jahrhundert , vol. 7, column 423
  2. ↑ See Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon 20. Jahrhundert , vol. 7, column 423
personal data
SURNAME Emersleben, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Belden, Dirck van (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin