Peter Simon Altmann

Peter Simon Altmann (born March 29, 1968 in Salzburg ) is an Austrian writer .

Peter Simon Altmann 2017

Life

Peter Simon Altmann studied theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Institute of the University of Salzburg and graduated cum laude on June 21, 1995 with a thesis on nihilism in Friedrich Nietzsche's late work. After a stay of several months in Milan, he moved to Vienna in autumn 1997 and worked there as an actor and guest in various theater productions, including as a guest at the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Volksoper and at the Wiener Festwochen for the director Peter Stein in the production by The likes of Botho Strauss . Altmann has devoted himself exclusively to writing since 1999 and published his first book in 2004.
In January 2006 Peter Simon Altmann returned to Salzburg, but has been traveling to East Asia for several months every year since then. More than half of his previous work has been shaped by his stays in Japan, Korea and China. In the Far East, Altmann, in cooperation with the Austrian embassies in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Bangkok, also presented his books to the German language and literature departments of the universities there and to the Austrian cultural forums.
At the beginning of 2017, Altmann spent three months at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai at the invitation of the Swiss company Swatch. The jury that made the selection at the time included François Pinault and the American actor George Clooney .
From 19 to 21 January 2018, Peter Simon Altmann was invited to the Pyeongchang Humanities Forum together with 19 other authors from all over the world on the occasion of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in South Korea. And in April 2019 he was writer in residence at the Lu Xun Academy in Beijing for a month .

In 2017 and 2019, Altmann stood as a candidate in the national elections in Austria on Sebastian Kurz's federal list , but without actually aiming for a career as a politician or having signed a party book.

classification

Peter Simon Altmann's previous work can be interpreted as an overall literary project. His stories are set between Europe and East Asia, his characters often stand between cultures, are restless and feel that they are nowhere to be taken care of, which is particularly evident in his Asia trilogy The Character Catcher , The Returned One and The Second Look . In addition to dealing with the art and culture of East Asia, the question of meaning runs like a red thread through his work, as one reviewer thinks. All of his books are also about the relationship between men and women. The critics certify Altmann's first-class style and see him standing in the epistemological tradition of Hugo von Hofmannsthal . Atypical for his generation, Altmann also likes to refer to Austrian literature himself, despite his intercultural development and subject matter. In his story The Writer from the volume Sommerneige he dared to try to present his idea of ​​poetics, which refers to the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and George Steiner , among others .

Works

• The cold shoulder of the labyrinth , short stories, Resistenz Verlag 2004, ISBN 3-85285-122-X and Brotlos Verlag 2017, ISBN 9783852851228 .
• The character catcher , narrative, Otto Müller Verlag 2006, ISBN 3-7013-1121-8 .
• The Returned One , Novel, Edition Laurin 2012, ISBN 978-3-902866-03-5 .
• Sommerneige , Stories, Edition Laurin 2013, ISBN 978-3-902866-10-3 .
• Dichterliebe , Gedichte, Edition Tandem 2015, ISBN 978-3-902932-35-8 .
• Salzburg Places of World Literature , essays, Edition Tandem 2016, ISBN 978-3-902932-47-1 .
• The Second Look , Roman, Edition Laurin 2017, ISBN 978-3-902866-54-7 .
• Excerpts from a pillow book , prose poems, Edition Tandem 2017, ISBN 978-3-902932-73-0 .
• The Other , Novel, Edition Laurin 2020, ISBN 978-3-902866-86-8 .

literature

• W. Günther Rohr: "Globalization from a historical perspective - Johann and Peter Simon look to the Far East" (lecture), Dogilmunhak, Korean Journal for German Studies, Volume 128, Volume 54, Issue 4, December 2013, pp. 309-325.
• Sofia Tugnoli: L'io smarrito nei meandri delle culture: analisi del romanzo 'The Returned One' by Peter Simon Altmann (Bachelor thesis ), Libera Università di Lingue e Communicazione IULM, Milan 2014, 55 pages.
• Andrea Edl: "Epic Search in Between" , literature and criticism, 485/486, July 2014, pp. 90–92.
• Lutz Hillingmeier: Ekz Library Service 2013 and 2017 .
• Helmut Schönauer: Reading in Tyrol , October 27, 2017.
• Roland Ruess: "An author between two worlds" , Kronen Zeitung, Salzburg Krone, March 11, 2018, pp. 38–39.

Web links

Commons : Peter Simon Altmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Video of a reading by Peter Simon Altmann from his novel The Returned One , recorded by UniTV Salzburg [1]
• Video a reading by Peter Simon Altmann from his short story collection Summer tilt recorded by unitV Salzburg [2]
• Video of a reading by Peter Simon Altmann from The Second Look , recorded by UniTV Salzburg [3]