Pure sting

Reiner Stach 2011

Reiner Stach (* 1951 in Rochlitz , Saxony ) is a German literary scholar , author of a biography about Franz Kafka and a publicist.

Life

Stach comes from a small family, his parents fled the GDR in 1954. He attended elementary school and high school in Pforzheim . At the age of 17 he left home because of family conflicts. From 1971 to 1979 he studied philosophy, mathematics and literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . There he passed state exams in mathematics and literary studies in 1978. After reading Kafka's letters and diaries, Stach did not continue his planned study of mathematics. In 1985 Stach received his doctorate in literature from the University of Frankfurt am Main with a dissertation on Kafka. The work was published in 1987 under the title Kafka's erotic myth. An aesthetic construction of the feminine.

From 1985 to 1986 Stach took on teaching positions at the German Department of the University of Frankfurt. From 1986 to 1990 he worked as a science lecturer at S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt am Main. From 1991 to 1996 Stach worked as a freelance editor, including a. for the publishers Rowohlt, Metzler and S. Fischer. Here he participated in the critical edition of the works of Franz Kafka . In 1996 Stach began working on the Kafka biography.

Stach has lived in Berlin since 2009 .

plant

Stach worked as an author for a total of eighteen years on the three-volume, 2,037-page biography of Kafka. The S. Fischer Foundation and - in the final phase - Jan Philipp Reemtsma also contributed to the financial support of the project .

The first volume, published in 2002 under the title Kafka. The years of decisions appeared, covers Kafka's years of life from 1910 to 1915. The second volume Kafka. The Years of Knowledge with the year of publication 2008 deals with the last eight years of Kafka's life. The third volume Kafka. The early years appeared in September 2014. With this book he was on the shortlist for the 2015 Leipzig Book Fair prize in the category “ Non-fiction / essay writing ”; so far there have been translations into English, Spanish, Turkish and Chinese. Stach has received several awards for his biographical work; Among other things, he received the Joseph Breitbach Prize in 2016 .

Awards

• 1991: Co-winner of a writing competition for Hans Henny Jahnn's river without a bank for the essay Die Eating Creation, which was organized by Botho Strauss in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit
• 2003: Culture Prize of the Landscape Association Osnabrücker Land
• 2008: Special award for Heimito von Doderer literature award for his biography Kafka. The years of knowledge.
• 2015: Kafka. The early years is voted "Historical Book of the Year" by DAMALS magazine .
• 2015: Bavarian Book Prize 2015 , category non-fiction, for Kafka. The early years
• 2016: Joseph Breitbach Prize "for his outstanding complete works in the field of literary biography"

Exhibition and meetings

• 1998/1999: Kafka's bride , presentation of the estate of Felice Bauer in Frankfurt am Main, Vienna and Prague
• 2013: Curator of the conference Weltautor Kafka in the German Literature Archive Marbach
• 2014: Curator of the Kafka Week in the Literature Forum of the Brecht House in Berlin

Publications (selection)

Stach's autograph.

Monographs

• Kafka's erotic myth. An aesthetic construction of the feminine. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-596-27370-6 . (At the same time dissertation at the University of Frankfurt am Main 1985).
• 100 years of S. Fischer Verlag 1886–1986. Small publishing history. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 978-3-10-075106-5 .
• Kafka. The years of decisions . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 978-3-10-075114-0 .
• Kafka. The years of knowledge . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-10-075119-5 .
• Kafka's games. A small, narrated cruise through Kafka's estate. ( Audio book , CD, 73 minutes, speakers: Reiner Stach and Axel Grube), Onomato, Düsseldorf 2011, ISBN 978-3-942864-19-0 .
• Is that Kafka? 99 finds. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-075135-5 .
• Kafka. The early years. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-075130-0 .

editor

• Gottfried Bermann Fischer and Brigitte Bermann Fischer : Correspondence with authors. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 978-3-10-021602-1 .

Essays

• The devouring creation. About Hans Henny Jahnn's novel trilogy "River without a bank." In: Forum Homosexuality and Literature 15/1992, pp. 41–50.
• Style, motive and fixed idea. About some shallows of the Jahnn reading. In: Rowohlt Literaturmagazin 35/1995, pp. 79-92.
• The annoyance of Hans Henny Jahnn. In: Literaturen 5/2003, pp. 52-57.

literature

• Volker Hage : The poet of our future. In: Der Spiegel, No. 40/2014, pp. 117–124.
• Harald Freiberger, Verena Mayer to have something of Kafka ... . Interview, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 11, 2018, p. 22

Individual evidence

1. ↑ SZ-Magazin No. 11, March 13, 2015, p. 62.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Peter von Becker: The poet's shadow. In: Tagesspiegel of September 21, 2014.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Volker Hage: The poet of our future. In: Der Spiegel, No. 40/2014, pp. 119–120.
4. ^ Andreas Platthaus : Kafka? What is Kafka? Today a milestone in German literary history is completed: Reiner Stach's three-volume Kafka biography . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 25, 2014, p. 9
5. ↑ - ( Memento from April 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Reiner Stach receives Joseph Breitbach Prize 2016 , boersenblatt.net, May 13, 2016, accessed on May 13, 2016
7. ↑ Why Kafka turns children into rebels in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from October 5, 2014, page 50

Web links

• Literature by and about Reiner Stach in the catalog of the German National Library
• Interview - In the FAZ on June 29, 2008
• Sabine Küchler in conversation with Reiner Stach in nuances. Deutschlandfunk April 6, 2014, 1.30pm - 3pm (audio file)
• Homepage of Reiner Stach
• Critical study of Reiner Stach's research contribution to the work of Hans Henny Jahnn
• Reiner Stach: The devouring creation. In: Die Zeit of October 4, 1991, No. 41.