Walter Schenker

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Walter Schenker (born July 16, 1943 in Solothurn ; † August 7, 2018 in Trier ) was a Swiss writer .

Live and act

Life

Walter Schenker spent his youth in Solothurn, Switzerland, and studied German in Zurich from 1962 to 1968. He did his doctorate on the language of Max Frisch and from 1968 worked as a research assistant at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg i. Br. And at the University of Zurich . From 1974 to 1984 he was a (temporary) professor for “German Linguistics ” at the University of Trier . In 1975 he completed his habilitation on the language of Huldrych Zwingli . In 1983 Schenker received the prize from the Swiss Schiller Foundation , which in 1991 also named his novel Manesse “Book of the Year”. His novel Eifel , published in 1982, was filmed in 1988 by the then Südwestfunk as a "literature adaptation". In 1991 he began training as a deacon ; In 1995 he was ordained deacon. In 2005, after a 15-year break from writing, his novel Zum Roten Stiefel was published .

Schenker was married, had lived as a writer in Trier since 1984 and was a volunteer deacon .

Literary work

An important work by Schenker is the award-winning novel Manesse (1991), the chapter of which is structured according to the seven deadly sins . It interweaves the history of the most famous medieval song manuscript , the Codex Manesse , with the sobering life record of a Swiss country pastor and the founding of the old confederation in 1291. The author connects the transformation of the old estates society with mockery about the state of today's Switzerland. The author tells the story in a contemporary language mixed with zeitgeist terms, which is sometimes in an interesting contrast to the cited medieval texts. Critics and his fellow writer Ludwig Harig criticized the fact that he was too “thick” and formulated very casually .

Schenker became known through his novel Eifel, which was reissued as a KBV pocket book in 1988 . There the life of an unemployed teacher who is married to a primary school teacher is told in monologue-like recordings in connection with a landscape of depression, for which "Eifel" also stands as a metaphor. Mentally ill, he immerses himself in his past from the early authoritarian upbringing to the forgotten ideals of the student revolt up to the present, which - increasingly unrealistic - ultimately drives him to self-destruction (suicide or suicide or suicide):

“Many critics rightly found this novel appealing: Schenker's intimate knowledge of his second home in Germany; the haunting comprehension of the inner process with ever new associative "jumps" and "loops"; the sensitivity of his role prose; the reflection of the disparate experience of reality in a confidently handled collage technique. "

Walter Schenker has dealt with the language of his Swiss homeland and the Eifel in numerous linguistic studies , especially how it is changed by a superficially ´modernizing´ society. For example, as his last academic book, he published a study on “Media Consumption and Language Behavior” that was developed jointly with students and continues to this day, after he had previously published on Switzerland with its many languages ​​as well as on “Dialect and Literature”.

Schenkers too, a few years after the Eifel. Roman published "feminist" book Gudrun. Roman moves in literary landscapes of depression and paints the critical-realistic picture of a progressively committed woman who failed due to the "turnaround" of the 1970s.

Walter Schenker, who was not able to assert himself as a well-known author on the book market, seems to have "disappeared" as a realistic-critical writer at the moment - and yet, through his haunted, pictorial and morally admonishing memories of the demands and upheavals of '68 milieus and you socio-economic and socio-politically mediated failure since the mid-1970s for "those born later" ( Bertolt Brecht ) become an important literary witness of the time - even if Schenker, as a writer, probably dealt critically with the oppressive policy of the German professional ban practice, but the " German Autumn ”1977 and its protagonists inside and outside the German state apparatus get away literarily unscathed.

Quote

  • “And then it happens, Iphigenia says something almost poetic about the sunset, the whole company begins to be silent, a look at the sunset over Athens, my grandchildren, when they speak out, are silently reprimanded, oh, and then I could say to my children like that I am weak, give slaps in the face at sunset and dusk on the terrace of the "Elysium", slap for slap so that it just pops, which would not make sense, by the way, I'll leave it to the remark: No comparison with a sunset on Cape Sounion . What you think is the remark of a senile man, although it is true. "

Publications

Books

  • Art Nouveau and the book Bichsel . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2016. ISBN 978-3-7392-8120-9
  • To the red boot. Novel. BoD, Norderstedt 2005. ISBN 978-3-8334-3107-4
  • Manesse. Novel. Ammann, Zurich 1991. ISBN 3-250-10150-8
  • At the other end of the world. Novel. Ammann, Zurich 1988. ISBN 3-250-10115-X
  • Angel dust or Paris at the opposite pole of melancholy. A protocol. Ammann, Zurich 1986. ISBN 3-250-01014-6
    • Angel dust. A protocol with an appendix. The text has been checked for this edition. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2010. ISBN 978-3-8391-5454-0
  • Gudrun. Novel. Ammann. Zurich 1985. ISBN 3-250-10030-7
  • Eifel. Novel. Ammann, Zurich 1982. ISBN 3-250-10006-4 ; Unabridged new edition, reviewed by the author, Elsdorf: KBV-Krimi 37, 1998, 347 p. ISBN 3-89711-003-2
  • Media consumption and language behavior. A survey in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland […]. Ffm.-Bern: Peter Lang, 1982, 150 p. (= European university publications, RI / Dt. Language and Literature Vol. 436). ISBN 3-8204-6227-9
  • Soleil. A story between day and dream. Edition Phi, Echternach 1981. ISBN 3-88865-004-6
  • Anaxagoras or the North-South Conflict. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981. ISBN 3-498-06147-X
  • The Solothurn warehouse. In: "TransAtlantik". 3/1981. Munich. ISSN  0720-0811
  • Professor Gifter. Novel. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1979. ISBN 3-498-06132-1
  • Linguistic manners. A linguistic-sociological survey in the Trier and Eifel area. Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1978. ISBN 3-261-02410-0
  • The language of Huldrych Zwingli in contrast to the language of Luther. de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1977. ISBN 3-11-006605-X
  • The language of Max Frisch in the tension between dialect and written language. de Gruyter, Berlin 1969
  • Unfortunately. Stories from Solothurn. Candelabra, Bern 1969

Radio plays

  • Nudism. Swiss radio DRS. September 1985
  • Hangover life. A philosophical game by Swiss Radio DRS , September 4, 1982
  • Leningrad. Südwestfunk, January 16, 1981

literature

  • Frank Busch: Walter Schenker: Engelsstaub or Paris at the opposite pole of melancholy. In: Die Zeit of February 6, 1987.
  • Jürgen Egyptien: Confusion and departure in the Eifel village of Hontheim. In: Aachener Volkszeitung from February 19, 1983.
  • Helmut Koopmann : Safe sex in the Middle Ages. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 3, 1991.
  • Ludwig Harig : Minnesang with rock accompaniment. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 21, 1991.
  • Bernhard Kytzler: Modern satire antique. In: Die Zeit of April 10, 1981.
  • Elsbeth Pulver: "New Sound" in Minnesang? In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of May 30, 1991.
  • Josef Zierden : Walter Schenker In: Critical lexicon for contemporary German literature - KLG. ISBN 978-3-88377-927-0 .
  • Richard Albrecht : Literature is not everything - but without literature everything is nothing. For the 75th of Dr. Walter Schenker In: trend [1] and sociology today online [2]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Writer Walter Schenker is dead , Trierischer Volksfreund, August 9, 2018
  2. ↑ For example in DIE ZEIT of November 15, 1991 and in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 3, 1991
  3. ^ In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 21, 1991
  4. ^ Josef Zierden in: Critical Lexicon for Contemporary German Literature - KLG
  5. ↑ The latter in: Journal for German Philology . Special issue 1977. ISSN  0044-2496
  6. ↑ Quoted from: Anaxagoras or The North-South Conflict. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981
personal data
SURNAME Schenker, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Solothurn , Canton of Solothurn , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH 7th August 2018
Place of death trier