Peter Zingler

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2010 in Frankfurt am Main
Autograph

Peter Zingler (born January 5, 1944 in Chemnitz ) is a German writer , screenwriter and former professional burglar .

Life

Zingler came to the children's home immediately after he was born and his mother gave him up for adoption . He was conceived during a one-night stand during an air raid alarm . The mother did not tell the family about his birth. Because of his then Jewish surname and statelessness, no adoptive parents were found. When his grandmother found out about Zingler's birth a year and a half later, she brought him from the children's home to Cologne. While the grandmother pretended to be his mother, the real mother did not care about him. At the age of ten, he learned that his supposed sister was his real mother. In 1948, when he was four years old, his grandmother took him to hamster the country. He started stealing as a child and helped smuggle across the Belgian border. In 1959 - at the age of 15 - he was sentenced to two years in prison and was sent to prison for the first time. With numerous break-ins over the next 25 years, he mainly stole luxury goods. He never felt remorse. “I liked being a gangster in the milieu,” he said according to Der Spiegel in 2015. The story of his family after the Second World War was shown by ARD in February 2015 in the film Die Himmelsleiter .

Zingler spent a total of twelve years as a professional burglar in prisons in several countries. During his last term of imprisonment in the open prison in Dieburg, he began to write, initially erotic stories typical of prison literature; however, he was able to sell them to Penthouse and Playboy . In 1985 he founded the Romanfabrik with cartoonist Doris Lerche and brothel owner Dieter Engel , Frankfurt's first literary initiative that brought him right into the life of a writer; In 1989 he was awarded the Ingeborg Drewitz Literature Prize for Prisoners and appeared in the first anthology Risse im Purgatory .

From 1985 he worked as a journalist for various magazines. He is now one of the most successful screenwriters for television thrillers. In 1993 he received (together with Oliver Hirschbiegel ) the Adolf Grimme Prize with bronze for the script for the ORF crime sceneKinderspiel ”. In 1996, he also directed the very strong film Alles nur Camouflage . His ZDF film Tödliche Wende was awarded the Golden Lion and the screenplay was awarded the Golden Gong .

He lives in Frankfurt am Main and has six children from four different women.

Filmography (selection)

Bibliography (selection)

  • 1983: Notes from the garbage can. Thoughts, poems, stories about the prison system and the before and after , foreword by Klaus Kordon
  • 1984: Death in Kingston novel
  • 1985: Return to the Rain , Tales
  • 1987: The Puff Poet. Stories from a noble brothel
  • 1988: Millions of Dr. Erlemann or the art of making money. An unbelievable career with Gabi Erlemann
  • 1989: The Plague , novel
  • 1994: The court reporter . The novel for the TV series of the ARD
  • 2005: Unreported numbers , novel
  • 2011: men who are looking for love. Erotic stories
  • 2011: The Puff Poet
  • 2011: The vitamin boost, short stories
  • 2011: Red light in the head, about the most famous brothel in Germany, the Sudfass
  • 2015: The death of the pubic hair, short stories
  • 2015: IN THE TUNNEL, biographical novel

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Katja Thimm: "I liked being a gangster" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , February 21, 2015, p. 86–88 ( spiegel.de [accessed on February 22, 2018]).
  2. a b c Sascha Chaimowicz: Crimes . In: Zeit-Magazin Mann . 1 (autumn / winter), September 6, 2016, p. 168 f .