Walter Neumann (writer)

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Walter Neumann in 2004

Walter Neumann (born June 23, 1926 in Riga ) is a German writer .

Life

Walter Neumann comes from a Baltic German family; his father was a bank clerk, his mother a secretary. He attended the German primary school in Riga . In 1939 the family had to move out of Latvia as a result of the German-Soviet border and friendship treaty and from 1940 lived in Thorn , West Prussia , where Walter Neumann attended grammar school. In the spring of 1944 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht . He took part in World War II as a soldier and was taken prisoner by the Americans in 1945, from which he was released to Bielefeld at the end of 1945.

In Bielefeld he initially worked as a civil engineering worker and then until 1947 as an interpreter for the British occupation authorities. From 1947 to 1949 he completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer and then worked in this profession. From 1951 to 1962 he was employed as a technical draftsman and technician at the Bielefelder Stadtwerke; from 1962 to 1989 Neumann worked as a librarian in the Bielefeld City Library . After successfully completing his training as a qualified librarian at the Librarian Training Institute of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in Cologne in 1969, he was responsible for literature and linguistics as a lecturer at the Bielefeld City Library until 1989. From 1961 Neumann published his own literary works. From 1964 to 1981 he headed the Bielefeld “readings for authors in the bunker Ulmenwall ” and in 1980 a three-month international working time for authors. From 1990 to 2004 he lived on Lake Constance, where he founded the Meersburg authors' group. He lives in the Aystetten district of Augsburg. Walter Neumann's work consists primarily of poetry, but he has also emerged as a writer of short stories, travelogues and radio plays, and as an editor of literary anthologies. He has published articles in 133 German and foreign anthologies as well as around 1,000 articles critical of culture and literature in newspapers, magazines and on the radio.

From 1965 to 2005 Walter Neumann was a member of the Association of German Writers and its predecessor organization, the West German Writers' Association. He has been a member of the PEN Center Germany since 1973 . He is also a member of the Ernst Meister and Georg Herwegh Society, the International Lake Constance Club and an honorary member of the Society for Contemporary Poetry .

Awards

  • 1968 travel grant from the Foreign Office.
  • 1975 travel grant from the Rheinisch-Westfälische Auslandsgesellschaft.
  • 1981 Award for the Andreas Gryphius Prize.
  • 1989 Eichendorff Literature Prize

Works

  • Modern prose .Essay. Bielefeld 1963
  • Shakespeare Bibliography. Bielefeld 1964
  • Pictorial biography, poems. Darmstadt 1969
  • Clear water . Poem. Bielefeld 1970
  • Interpretation of a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé , Peter-Presse , Darmstadt, 1971
  • Limits . Poems. Dortmund 1972
  • Mots-clés . Poems. Paris 1973
  • The German-Baltic literature .Essay. Dortmund 1974
  • City map . Stories. Wuppertal 1974
  • Beyond words, poems. Munich 1976
  • Didactic poem on history . Poems. Frankfurt am Main 1977
  • Editing work at large public libraries, illustrated using the example of the Bielefeld City Library .Essay. Bielefeld 1977
  • Concrete and experimental literature .Essay. Bielefeld 1978
  • Considerations for the conclusion of “International Working Time for Authors” . Review. Bielefeld 1981
  • Goethe's concept of world literature in its political meaning. Essay. Bielefeld 1982
  • In the middle of peace . Poems. Berlin 1984
  • One day in Riga . Poems. Riga 1994
  • The flight of the seagulls . Poems. Eisingen 1996
  • Winter talk, poems. Warsaw 1996
  • Bright days . Poems. Uhldingen 1997
  • A hand's breadth above the waves . Stories. Weissach iT 1999
  • The movement of the earth . Poems. Waldburg 2001
  • Messages of love . Poems Warszawa 2001
  • The arrival of spring . Poems. Munich 2004
  • In the memory subjects, poems. Munich 2006
  • Dig in words. Poems. Collection Montagnola No. 1 ARS LITTERA. Norderstedt 2013

In addition, articles in 125 German and 8 foreign anthologies.

Editing

  • Nobel Prize Winner for Literature from 1945 to 1962 . Bibliography. Bielefeld 1962
  • 10 years of reading by authors in the Ulmenwall bunker . Documentation. Bielefeld 1971
  • In the bunker . 1. 100 X literature underground . Recklinghausen 1974. 2. 50 x literature under the earth . Anthologies. Duisburg 1979
  • You write between Paderborn and Münster . Bibliography. Wuppertal 1977 (together with Hugo Ernst Buyer )
  • City Library - Citizens' Library . Documentation. Bielefeld 1980
  • We are punched out of your luck . Anthology. Bielefeld 1981
  • Crossing boundaries or literature and reality . Anthology. Bremerhaven 1982
  • Landmarks, navigation marks, anthology. Waldburg 2001 (together with Josef Hoben)

Translations

reception

"Records of a generation that has gone through war, history, temptation, death and who understand how to translate the private, which is personal experience, into a model"

- Karl Krolow, FAZ

"Walter Neumann expresses the necessary doubts about the communicative power of poetry, which becomes the starting point for versatile poetry that is noticeably characterized by a strong personality."

- Martin Kraft, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

"His Poems avoid dramatic gestures and are all the more convincing for that"

- Michael Hamburger, The Times Literary Supplement

"Neumann's poems are challenges to the reader in which the perceived present becomes permeable"

- Dagmar Nick : laudation for the Eichendorff Prize

"In the poems of Walter Neumann the philanthropy comes up, and the unfriendliness of the circumstances is not concealed"

- Peter Maiwald, Radio Bremen

literature

  • Walter Neumann. In: Carola L. Gottzmann, Petra Hörner: Lexicon of German-Language Literature of the Baltic States and St. Petersburg. Volume 3: N - Z. de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019338-1 , p. 963 ff.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga