Thomas von Vegesack

Thomas von Vegesack (born August 18, 1928 in Munkfors , Sweden ; † May 9, 2012 in Stockholm - Södermalm ) was a Swedish writer and publisher.

Life

Thomas von Vegesack was a member of the von Vegesack noble family , a descendant of the Riga mayor Gotthard von Vegesack and a son of the married couple Inga and Arved von Vegesack. He had two sisters named Barbro and Bitti. The von Vegesack family came from Westphalia , but since the four Vegesack brothers moved from Westphalia to the Baltic States around 1460 , the family had lived there and always cultivated the German language. Thomas von Vegesack's father and his uncle Siegfried von Vegesack married Swedish women. While Siegfried von Vegesack moved to Germany, Thomas von Vegesack's father settled in Sweden.

Thomas von Vegesack graduated from high school in Uppsala in 1948 . He studied French and literature at the University of Gothenburg . In 1958 he married the librarian Anna Ulla Britta Nilsson; The marriage resulted in two children, born in 1960 and 1965. Thomas von Vegesack passed his licentiate examination in 1960, after which he moved with his family to Stockholm, where he became the features editor at Stockholms Tidningen . In 1962 he published a collection of German post-war literature under the title gallows under Valley , 1970 followed Inte bara Grass , 1978 Makten och fantasin and later refueling Aristokrater och Pennan betjänter and 1989 Smak för frihet . Another book by Vegesacks is entitled Stockholm 1851 and the last one is called Utan hem i tiden . It is about Arved von Vegesack and the German-Baltic minority in Livonia .

Thomas von Vegesack worked for Bonnier- Verlag for several years , then at PA Norstedt. He died of complications from cancer in Södersjukhuset Hospital in Stockholm and was buried in the Skogskyrkogården cemetery.

Activity in the PEN

In 1956 Thomas von Vegesack was commissioned to do an interview with Heinrich Böll , who was visiting the city at the time. It was on this occasion that Thomas von Vegesack heard about Group 47 for the first time . There was a comparable group of writers in Sweden; it was called Svensk tyska sällskapet and at that time it was mainly coined by Gustav Korlén . Svensk tyska sällskapet repeatedly invited German writers to Sweden in the following years; in September 1964 a meeting of Group 47 took place in Sigtuna . Thomas von Vegesack was of the opinion that the German literature of this time had fertilized the Swedish and that authors like Per Olov Enquist and Lars Gustafsson had found new ways of critically describing reality. According to Thomas von Vegesack, Böll, who became president of the international PEN in 1971 , had special weight as a moral authority in the group. Among other things, he advocated supporting imprisoned authors and their families financially, for which he used part of his Nobel Prize money . Thomas von Vegesack was a member of the body that distributed this money for several years.

Von Vegesack was secretary of the Swedish PEN Club in the 1970s, from 1987 to 1992 he headed the international committee for imprisoned writers and from 1993 he was a vice-president of the international PEN

Awards

In 1999 Thomas von Vegesack received the Friedrich Gundolf Prize from the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

In 2012 he received an honorary doctorate from the Uppsala University Law School.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Thomas von Vegesacks speech of thanks on the occasion of the award of the Friedrich Gundolf Prize 1999 on www.deutscheakademie.de
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Obituary for Thomas von Vegesack (from family members)
3. ^ Obituary by Laura McVeigh at www.pen-international.org