Tadeus Pfeifer

Grave in the Wolfgottesacker cemetery , Basel. (Family grave: Stähelin-Clemens-Stockmayer-Kracht-Kober-Pfeifer-Schwabe-Jucker)

Tadeus Pfeifer (born April 5, 1949 in Freiburg im Breisgau , † September 11, 2010 in Basel ) was a Swiss writer.

biography

Pfeifer was a son of the German businessman and news agent Heinrich Pfeifer and Elsbeth Pfeifer, nee. Kober, a daughter of the journalist Alfred Kober . After the early death of his father, his mother moved with him and his older brother Michael (* 1947) to Switzerland, where, although he was born in Germany, he received Swiss citizenship due to his mother's Swiss descent.

Pfeifer grew up in his grandparents' household in Basel. Since 1965, he has worked in various professions without training, including as a proofreader, private teacher, local reporter, office worker, sales representative and copywriter. In addition, he tried his hand at working as a freelance writer and journalist, as an art and literary critic and as a lecturer at the Basel Adult Education Center. In a self-characterization from 1971 he declared: "As a job I write stories and poems, I adore Hölderlin and Rainer Brambach ."

From 1972 to 1985 Pfeifer published the Basel magazine Poesie - magazine for literature together with Frank Geerk . As a playwright, he created a stage version of Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks , which was staged in its first performance by Hans Hollmann in 1976 in the foyer of the large stage of the Basler Theater on several stages; First performance in 1976 with Norbert Schwientek and Klaus Henner Russius in the leading roles.

In the 1980s, Pfeifer published the two novels The Beautiful Pages of Life (1984) and The Seven Colors of Light (1986). In addition, there was the short prose work Trauer (1974), the story Das Feuer des Steins (1981) as well as five volumes of poetry and numerous contributions to anthologies and exhibition catalogs.

A specialty of Pfeifer were travel reports in lyrical form that evoke foreign places from a European perspective (such as the Indian Agra with the Taj Mahal or China) and on this basis to reflect on alternative forms of life and thought as well as questions of perception and the representation of reality. Accordingly, the poetological poem, in which the poetry thematizes itself, is strongly represented in his lyrical work. The key here is a pronounced media-theoretical awareness, which is fed by Pfeifer's intimate relationship with the visual arts. Numerous articles in exhibition catalogs, especially those of the Basel gallery Carzaniga & Ueker, as well as publications that confront his poems with works of the visual arts are evidence of this. In terms of content, frequent changes and contoured contrasts between concrete events and the reflection that arises from them, between the everyday and the fantastic, determine Pfeifer's poetry.

In his novels, Pfeifer figures as a first-person narrator and protagonist. Stylistically, he alternates between self-ironic distance and the physical-sensual visualization of inner processes, between playing with fantastic images and the tendency to aphoristic punch line. In terms of content, he tells adventures with "puzzle women, doctors, drinking buddies, with Greek islanders and townspeople from the Frankfurt train station district". Happiness and horror visions, beauty and violence alternate.

As editor, Pfeifer arranged for an anthology of Indian poetry (1986).
For Swiss television, Pfeifer shot several television cultural films with Ludy Kessler from 1981 to 1984 and three videos with the artist Enrique Fontanilles from 1992 to 1996 .
Pfeifer was a member of the Olten group .

Works

Novels

• The beautiful sides of life , by Loeper Literaturverlag, Karlsruhe 1984, ISBN 978-3-88652-065-7
• The seven colors of light , by Loeper Literaturverlag, Karlsruhe 1986, ISBN 978-3-88652-045-9

Poetry

• Sadness. Lyric prose , Pharos-Verlag Basel 1974.
• I guess what I know from Loeper Literaturverlag, Karlsruhe 1982, ISBN 978-3-88652-070-1
• Das Echo von Bois-Rateau , von Loeper Literaturverlag, Karlsruhe 1992. (with pictures by Elisabeth Masé ), ISBN 978-3-86059-109-3
• The monkey screeches friendly in the grass , by Loeper Literaturverlag, Karlsruhe 1989, ISBN 978-3-88652-108-1
• The architecture of love , with 8 pictures by Enrique Fontanilles, from Loeper Literaturverlag, Karlsruhe 1989, ISBN 978-3-88652-111-8
• In the dance in the dust. 50 new and selected poems , edited by Dankwart von Loeper, by Loeper Literaturverlag, Karlsruhe 2000, ISBN 978-3-86059-112-3

Lyrical travelogues

• Zig-zag over Lotosteich , Basel 1999. (with lithographs by Samuel Buri )

Dramatizations

• The Buddenbrooks , 1974 (after Thomas Mann)

As editor

• Indian poetry , by Loeper Literaturverlag, Karlsruhe 1986, ISBN 3-86059-451-6

Essays

• "The better people Frank Geerks (* 1946)", in: Joseph Bättig / Stefan Leimgruber (eds.): Grenzfall Literatur. The question of meaning in modern literature in multilingual Switzerland , Paulus Verlag, Freiburg / Schweiz 1993, pp. 550-560.

literature

• Dominik Müller: "Pfeifer, Tadeus", in: Killy Literaturlexikon , Vol. 9 (Os-Roq), Berlin / New York, 2010, p. 195.

Web links

• The writer Tadeus Pfeifer has died , obituary in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on September 14, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Frank Brunner (ed.): We children of Marx and Coca-Cola. Poems of the Later Born , 1971, p. 191.
2. ^ Müller: "Pfeifer", p. 195.
3. ^ Müller: "Pfeifer", p. 195.