Verena Stefan

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Verena Stefan (born October 3, 1947 in Bern ; † November 29, 2017 in Montreal , Canada ) was a Swiss writer who became internationally known with her autobiographical debut novel, Moulting from 1975.

life and work

Stefan was the daughter of a Sudeten German father and a German-Swiss mother. She grew up with her grandparents. Her grandfather, Julius Brunner, was a country doctor. After 1967 the school Kirchenfeld their Matura had taken, she went to Berlin . There she completed a physiotherapy training and practiced as a physiotherapist . In 1973 she began studying sociology and comparative religious studies at the Free University of Berlin , which she did not graduate.

In 1972 she was one of the co-founders of the feminist group “Bread and Roses”. In 1975 she published her first book, Skinning , with the Munich publishing house Frauenoffensive , which in the following years developed into a bestseller and cult book of the women's movement and was the trigger for the rise of feminist literature in the established publishers. The book has been translated into eight European languages.

In this autobiographical work, Stefan represents a radical feminism. Her goals were female self-discovery, a new female body awareness and a feminine aesthetic that expresses itself in an independent language.

In 1975 Stefan moved to the country, where she practiced her private philosophy, a mixture of feminism, ecology and esotericism , in the company of like-minded people , which was also the subject of further publications. The author has led creative writing courses in Germany and Switzerland. Since 2000 she lived mainly in Montreal and wrote mainly in English.

When her cancer was diagnosed, she began her experience with the disease in the autobiographical novel underlying foreign sleeper to process. The term “foreign sleeper” actually had a special meaning in Swiss asylum law, which she deliberately negated in her choice of title.

The Swiss Literary Archives of the Swiss National Library acquired Verena Stefan's archives in spring 2007. It includes notes and materials on the works, typescripts of the works, dream notes and diaries as well as letters, life documents, photographs, audio and video cassettes and a collection of reviews.

In 2014 she published her autobiographical novel The Survey of Time , in which Stefan tells the story of her grandfather, who was admitted to the Waldau psychiatric clinic in 1949 on charges of having carried out illegal abortions .

Verena Stefan died in November 2017 at the age of 70 in her adopted Canadian home Montreal of the complications of her cancer . She leaves behind her wife Lise Moisan.

Awards (selection)

  • 1976 Award of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
  • 1977 Prize for Literature from the City of Bern
  • 1988 and 1994 Book Prize of the City of Bern
  • 2001 Contribution to Pro Helvetia
  • 2008 Individual work award from the Swiss Schiller Foundation for non-sleepers

Works

  • Molting. Autobiographical records, poems, dreams, analyzes . Frauenoffensive, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-88104-000-5 ; Fischer E-Books, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-10-560553-0 .
  • With feet, with wings. Poems and drawings . Women's offensive, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88104-095-1 .
  • Literally I dream. Stories & History . Arche, Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-7160-2059-1 .
  • It's been rich. Report of the death of my mother . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-596-11678-3 ; Fischer E-Books, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-10-560484-7 .
  • Rough, wild & free. Figures of girls in literature . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13116-2 .
  • Foreign sleeper . Novel. Ammann (Meridiane 115), Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-250-60115-9 .
  • with Chaim Vogt-Moykopf (Ed.): As if I were from another planet . Jewish life in Montreal. Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-88423-356-6 (several detailed eyewitness accounts by Jewish survivors of the Shoah ).
  • Questioning the time. Nagel & Kimche, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-312-00606-9 .

Translations:

  • Adrienne Rich : The dream of a common language. Poems 1974–1977 (with Gabriele Meixner). Women's offensive, Munich 1980.
  • Monique Wittig : Lesbian Peoples. A dictionary (with Gabriele Meixner). Women's offensive, Munich 1983.
  • Maureen Murdock : The Hero's Way. A journey to inner unity (translation of the poems). Hugendubel, Munich 1994.

Web links

Wikiquote: Verena Stefan  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monika Mengel: On the death of the writer Verena Stefan . L-Mag , November 30, 2017, accessed on December 1, 2017.
    According to other information on November 30: Verena Stefan is dead . Börsenblatt , December 1, 2017, accessed on December 1, 2017.
  2. ↑ Luzia Stettler: Verena Stefan's monument for her grandfather - the abortion doctor . srf.ch , May 11, 2014, accessed on December 1, 2017.
  3. ↑ Stefan Verena . Entry in the Bibliomedia Foundation's authors' directory , accessed on December 1, 2017.
  4. ↑ Ingo Arend: An opaque size . Friday , May 9, 2008, accessed on December 1, 2017 (anecdote with a report from the Solothurn Literature Days ).
  5. ↑ Verena Stefan: The questioning of time. Novel . Review note on Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 24, 2014 on Perlentaucher.de , accessed on December 1, 2017.
  6. ↑ L-Mag.de:The Weddings, Engagements, Rainbow Babies and Farewells 2017
personal data
SURNAME Stefan, Verena
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern
DATE OF DEATH 29th November 2017
Place of death Montreal , Canada