Thomas Lehr

The writer Thomas Lehr at the Erlanger Poetenfest 2017

Thomas Lehr (born November 22, 1957 in Speyer ) is a German writer .

Life

Lehr studied biochemistry in West Berlin from 1979 to 1983 and then worked as a programmer at the university library of the Free University of Berlin before he became a freelance writer. He lives in Berlin and held the Heiner Müller visiting professorship for German-language poetics at the Free University of Berlin in the 2011 summer semester .

His main work to date, Nabokovs Katzen (1999), has clear autobiographical traits and tells, over a period of 25 years, the erotic - obsessive relationship between the hero Georg and his muse Camille.

Lehr has been a member of the PEN Center Germany since 2002 . In May 2012 he was appointed as a new member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin and in autumn 2018 he was accepted into the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

Works

Autograph by Thomas Lehr

Zweiwasser or The Library of Grace . Roman, Rütten and Loening, Berlin 1993, new edition Hanser, Munich 2014 ISBN 978-3-446-24710-9
The hearing . Roman, construction, Berlin 1995, new edition Hanser, Munich 2011 ISBN 978-3-446-24046-9
Nabokov's cat . Roman, construction, Berlin 1999, new edition Hanser, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-446-25389-6
Spring . Novelle, structure, Berlin 2001, new edition Hanser, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-446-26173-0
42 . Roman, construction, Berlin 2005, new edition Hanser, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-446-24336-1
Tixi Tiger Shark and the secret of Easter Island . Structure, Berlin 2008, (no new edition) ISBN 978-3-351-04084-0
September. Mirage . Roman, Hanser, Munich 2010, (first edition) ISBN 978-3-446-23557-1
Megalomania fits into the tiniest of works , short processes, Hanser Munich 2012, (first edition) ISBN 978-3-446-23983-8
Sleeping sun . Hanser, Munich 2017, (first edition) ISBN 978-3-446-25647-7

Awards and honors

1993, 1999, 2001: " Book of the Year " award from the Rhineland-Palatinate Writers' Association
1994: Rauris Literature Prize
1994: Mara Cassens Prize from the Hamburger Literaturhaus for the first novel
1995: Berlin Literature Prize
1996: Literature Prize of the Palatinate District Association
1999: Martha-Saalfeld-Förderpreis of the federal state Rhineland-Palatinate
1999: Rheingau Literature Prize
In 2000, Lehr was awarded the Wolfgang Koeppen Prize of the Hanseatic City of Greifswald by the former first prize winner Richard Anders . Anders' reasoning stated:

“From his novel Zweiwasser or Die Bibliothek der Gnade (1992) onwards, Thomas Lehr continued to write in a linguistically powerful manner in the succession of that modernism, which, despite being related to time, never excluded waking dreams, hallucinations and thought games. In his last prose work, 'Nabokov's Cat', Thomas Lehr tells the l'amour fou of his hero in sharply illuminated images, with his literary means referring to the film's cutting and cross-fading techniques. Not without reason: The driven hero switches from mathematics to directing. One of his role models is Luis Buñuel . "

2002: Georg K. Glaser Prize of the Federal State of Rhineland-Palatinate
2005: Nomination of the novel 42 for the German Book Prize (shortlist)
2006: Rhineland-Palatinate Art Prize
2010: Nomination of the novel September. Fata Morgana for the German Book Prize (shortlist)
2011: Berlin Literature Prize from the Prussian Sea Trade Foundation
2011/2012: City Clerk of Bergen
2012: Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize
2015: Joseph Breitbach Prize
2016: Member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature
2017: Nomination for the German Book Prize with Sleeping Sun (shortlist)
2018: Literature Prize of the City of Bremen for Sleeping Sun.
2018: Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize
2018: Kranichstein Literature Prize

literature

Timo Rouget: Lehr, Thomas . In: Lexicon of Science Fiction Literature since 1900. With a View of Eastern Europe , edited by Christoph F. Lorenz and Peter Lang, Frankfurt / Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-63167-236-5 , pp. 429-434.
Leonhard Herrmann: Literary criticism of reason in the novel of the present . Stuttgart 2017. pp. 167–178.
Thomas Lehr In: Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz. Yearbook. 69, 2018, pp. 30-32.