Wilhelm Genazino

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Wilhelm Genazino at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2016

Wilhelm Genazino [ genaˈtsiːno ] (born January 22, 1943 in Mannheim ; † December 12, 2018 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German writer . In 2004 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize .

Life

Wilhelm Genazino grew up in simple circumstances in Mannheim. Until 1971 he was an editor at the Frankfurt satire magazine Pardon and from 1980 to 1986 he was co-editor of the magazine Bookmarks . From the beginning of the 1970s he was able to live on his income as a freelance writer . After graduating from high school , which he did not take until the age of almost 40, and after completing an internship at the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung , Genazino studied German, philosophy and sociology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . After graduating, he worked as a freelance journalist and editor .

From 1970 to 1998 he lived in Frankfurt am Main. From August 30, 1996 to August 29, 1997 he was the town clerk of Bergen . In 1997/98 Genazino was visiting professor for writers at the University of Paderborn . From 1998 he lived in Heidelberg before returning to Frankfurt in 2004. In 2004 he received the most important German literary prize, the Georg Büchner Prize of the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt , at the time endowed with 40,000 euros , of which he was a member from 1990. In the winter semester 2005/06 he gave the Frankfurt Poetics Lectures at Frankfurt University under the title The Revitalization of the Blind Spot . In the summer semester of 2009 he held a small series of lectures called “ Poetics Professorship ” at the Otto Friedrich University in Bamberg . In 2011 he was elected to the Berlin Academy of the Arts . His novel If we were animals was nominated for the German Book Prize 2011.

Genazino was in the late 1970s known for his Abschaffel - trilogy about the inner workings of an isolated living small staff . This was selected in 2011 to be read together as part of the series of events Frankfurt reads a book .

In his novels and essays, Wilhelm Genazino picked out individual images from inconspicuous everyday life and described them meticulously. His descriptions result from a prolonged consideration of concrete details. The title of his essay The Stretched Look refers to this intense type of perception . In addition to his novels and essays, he has also written numerous radio plays . His works have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, Greek, Italian, Lithuanian, Dutch, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian.

In May 2012 it was announced that Genazino was transferring its archive to the German Literature Archive in Marbach .

He died in December 2018 at the age of 75 after a short illness in Frankfurt am Main. He lived in Frankfurt-Westend , had two children and three study rooms, but neither a car nor a television.

Work description

Autograph

Genazino's poetic work is resigned in terms of content , a basic feature that is, however, tempered by the open and sometimes cautiously optimistic ending of each work.

The focus of his prose is usually a middle-aged man (between 30 and 50 years old) in a medium-sized German city with a job that is to be found in the middle of the range in terms of social prestige and is rather indifferent, sometimes reluctant, but also without feelings of hatred or by the protagonist Acts of sabotage is carried out - rather, he concentrates on his environment and social developments. The protagonist almost always has at least one sexual relationship with women. While the outward appearances of the male person in the center are described only marginally or not at all, those of the women are given a little more detail. The women meet the societal requirements for attractiveness without particularly standing out. From the texts it becomes clear that this also applies to the male protagonists, who are therefore neither particularly beautiful nor ugly, tall nor small, thin nor fat.

The protagonist has generally lost faith in fulfilling partnerships, but basically has a positive attitude towards their respective partners. Characteristic are the detailed forays through the city, through which the protagonist tries to get himself in a better mood. He often meets old acquaintances, women or men who are always well-disposed towards him, so that women can also have casual affairs.

Typical of all of Genazino's novels is the highly differentiated power of observation of the people, which repeatedly leads to very detailed descriptions of seemingly banalities, which then lead to idiosyncratic, sometimes bizarre insights. These underline his implicit claim to see something special in general, the absurdity of everyday life as experienced by average residents of average cities in the here and now. Although the thought processes described in detail reveal a certain level of education and, above all, an interest in society, there are no explicit references to cultural, political or scientific backgrounds or influences.

These tendencies in terms of content in Genazino affect the structure of his prose. A storyline is not clearly recognizable, the description of the present is in the foreground; he was the best known flaneur in the literary scene of the early 21st century in Germany. The plot is replaced by portrayal, cultural criticism and self-reflection .

Awards

Works

Novels

more publishments

  • From the bank. Goettingen 1990.
  • From far. Texts and postcards. Reinbek near Hamburg 1993.
  • The author's image is the reader's novel. Munster 1994.
  • Messages to friends. For the price of the LiteraTour Nord. Frankfurt am Main 1996.
  • Caution road work. Essay Collection. Frankfurt am Main 1998.
  • About the comic: the outside humor. Paderborn University Speeches. Paderborn 1998.
  • The stretched look. Essay Collection. Frankfurt am Main 1999.
  • Feel alerted to . Graduation speeches. Munich 1999.
  • On the brink. Texts for postcards and photos. Reinbek near Hamburg 2000.
  • Rabbits and lilac bushes, purple. Kiel 2001.
  • From the diary of the past. In: text and criticism, 162. München 2004.
  • Dear God make me blind . (World premiere at Staatstheater Darmstadt, October 2005), Frankfurt 2003, Munich 2006 and Der Hausschrat. Munich 2006, Mülheim 2007. (plays)
  • The animation of the blind spots. Poetics lectures. Munich 2006.
  • Idylls in semi-nature. Essays and speeches. Munich 2012.
  • Tarzan on the Main. Walks in the middle of Germany. Munich 2013.
  • Claus-Ulrich Bielefeld, conversation with Wilhelm Genazino . In: Sinn und Form , 4/2010, pp. 518–523.

Editing

  • Profession: artist. Frankfurt am Main 1983.
  • Istanbul, “dying beauty” between Orient and Occident? Corso, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86260-021-2 .

literature

  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Wilhelm Genazino. Edition text + criticism, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88377-755-2 .
  • Andrea Bartl, Friedhelm Marx (ed.): Beginnings of understanding. The literary work of Wilhelm Genazino. Wallstein, Göttingen 2011 ( Poiesis. Viewpoints on Contemporary Literature 7), ISBN 978-3-8353-0845-9 .
  • Jonas Fansa: On the way in a monologue. Poetological conceptions in Wilhelm Genazino's prose. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2008, ISBN 3-8260-3744-8 .
  • Alexander Fischer: Against the system: The social dropout in Genazino's “An umbrella for this day” and literary relatives in Kleist and Kafka . UBP, Bamberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-86309086-9 .
  • Alexander Fischer: In the existential conflict. Wilhelm Genazinos "An umbrella for this day" against the background of existential philosophical concepts . In: Andrea Bartl, Annika Klinge (ed.): Transitkunst. Studies of the literature 1890–2010. UBP, Bamberg 2012 (= Bamberg Studies on Literature, Culture and Media, Vol. 5), pp. 411–429.
  • Winfried Giesen (Ed.): Wilhelm Genazino - "The revitalization of the dead corner". Booklet accompanying the exhibition January 11th - February 25th 2006, University Library Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-88131-100-9 .
  • Updated directory of Wilhelm Genazino's dependent primary literature. From 1961 to 2014, compiled by Winfried Giesen.
  • Wilhelm Genazino - secondary literature. From 1963 to 2014, compiled by Winfried Giesen.
  • Anja Hirsch: Hovering luck of literature. The narrator Wilhelm Genazino. Synchron Wissenschaftsverlag der Authors, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-935025-88-2 .
  • Joachim Jacob: Beauty, Literature and the Art of Living. Reflections on Peter Handke's “An attempt on the successful day” and Wilhelm Genazino's “A woman, an apartment, a novel”. In: Susanne Krepold, Christian Krepold (ed.): Schön und gut? Studies on ethics and aesthetics in literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2008, pp. 185–199.
  • Ulrich Klappstein: A stroller for this day. A lexical approach to the writer Wilhelm Genazino. In: Hartmut Fischer (Ed.): Strolling - Walking - Hiking. Northeim 2011 (= companion volume to the exhibition of the same name at the Northeim Heimatmuseum).
  • Christian Krepold: "... as if the end of man was the only proper performance". Aging, melancholy and comedy with Wilhelm Genazino and Italo Svevo. In: Andrea Bartl (ed.): Transitträume. Contributions to contemporary German literature. Wißner, Augsburg 2009 (= German Studies and Contemporary Literature, 4), pp. 55–101.
  • Susanne Krepold, Christian Krepold: Literary self-reflection through reading. Wilhelm Genazino as a reader of Marguerite Duras. In: Steffen Buch, Álvaro Ceballos, Christian Gerth (eds.): Self-reflexivity. Contributions to the 23rd Forum for Young Romance Studies (Göttingen, May 30– June 2, 2007). Romanistischer Verlag, Bonn 2008 ( Forum Junge Romanistik, 14), pp. 107–124.
  • Nils Lehnert: Wilhelm Genazinos fictional characters. Narrative theory and (literary) psychological access to motivation for action and impression control. De Gruyter, Berlin 2018 ( German literature. Studies and sources, 30), ISBN 978-3-11-062535-6 .

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Genazino  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Wilhelm Genazino  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ZEIT.online: Wilhelm Genazino is dead . Article dated December 14, 2018, accessed December 14, 2018.
  2. ↑ Helmut Böttiger on the death of Wilhelm Genazino - "He was a great observer of everyday phenomena". In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Accessed December 15, 2018 (German).
  3. ↑ Büchner Prize Winner: Wilhelm Genazino is dead , spiegel.de, December 14, 2018
  4. ↑ PM 33/2012. Wilhelm Genazino's archive goes to Marbach . Press release. German literature archive. Marbach. May 31, 2012. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  5. ↑ https://www.ndr.de/ndrkultur/Aus-dem-Fenster-gucken-mit-Wilhelm-Genazino,audio291948.html
  6. ^ On the death of Wilhelm Genazino: "Stille Desperation" , obituary in the FAZ of December 14, 2018, accessed December 15, 2018
  7. ↑ Press release of the awarding foundation of August 15, 2012 (PDF; 129 kB)
  8. ↑ Page of the Univ. Heidelberg
  9. ↑ a b Contact: winfried.giesen (at) web.de
personal data
SURNAME Genazino, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 2018
Place of death Frankfurt am Main