Wulf Kirsten

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"Graviers" 2009

Wulf Kirsten (born June 21, 1934 in Klipphausen near Meißen ) is a German poet , prose writer and editor .

Life

After an apprenticeship as a commercial clerk , the son of a stonemason worked as an accountant, clerk and construction worker and graduated from the Leipzig Workers and Farmers Faculty in 1960 . From 1960 to 1964 he completed a teaching degree for German and Russian in Leipzig . The student days were mainly characterized by an intensive occupation with literature - Kirsten worked systematically through the Deutsche Bücherei - as well as by working as a freelancer for the dictionary of Upper Saxon dialects ( Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig), for which Kirsten more than a thousand Collected evidence from his homeland. The first serious attempts at writing were made during his studies, which resulted in publications in literary magazines and anthologies.

After completing his studies, Kirsten worked for a short time as a teacher before starting his work as a lecturer for the Aufbau Verlag in Weimar in 1965 , for which he worked until 1987. Alone or with colleagues, he researched and commented on a large number of volumes.

Between 1969 and 1970 he studied at the literature institute "Johannes R. Becher" . During the nine-month special course he got to know the poet Heinz Czechowski , also from Saxony , with whom he had a productive friendship for several years. The encounter with Georg Maurer from this period should also be emphasized, who as a poetry teacher shaped an entire generation of GDR authors. Studying in Leipzig is one of the main reasons that Kirsten is included in the so-called Saxon Poet School.

Kirsten devotes his writing work primarily to poetry , but also to prose . Several volumes of poetry were published between 1968 and 1977, and in 1984 a volume with two prose texts. The narrow Reclam ribbon die erde bei Meißen (1986) gathers in chronological order the majority of the poems composed between 1961 and 1982. For this publication Kirsten was awarded the renowned Peter Huchel Prize in 1987. For the first time, Kirsten was perceived as a poet by a wider audience in western Germany. In the same year Kirsten decided to work as a freelance writer, but continued to work as a freelance editor and editor.

In the period of upheaval of 1989/90, Kirsten was involved in the Weimar New Forum . On October 3, 1991, Wulf Kirsten gave the laudation for Erich Kranz , who was awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Weimar for his services and on behalf of the citizens of the Peaceful Revolution in Weimar who were involved in the civil movement . The award took place at a celebratory event on the occasion of the first day of German unity on October 3, 1991 in the German National Theater in Weimar . In the laudatory speech, Kirsten said: “Erich Kranz has offered more and more determined and consistent resistance since the early 1980s. His church was open to everyone. He did not retreat into a theologically delimited and isolated snail shell in which the interests of the people were not an object. (...) He had an open ear for everyone who was looking for his advice and assistance. (...) I, who proudly confess to the citizens' movement, are particularly pleased that the city of Weimar, on the occasion of the Unity Day, has committed itself to these women and men from autumn 1989 and has chosen the most worthy from among them. (...) Anyone who witnessed the first meeting in the city church on October 4th will remember a unique feeling of irreversible liberation and elevation. He knows that that evening in the city church in Weimar the breath of history breathed him. ”However, he soon withdrew from politics sobered.

From 1992 to 2010 Kirsten's books were published by the renowned Ammann Verlag in Zurich ; with S. Fischer since its closure . Since the beginning of the 1990s, Kirsten has been recognized and appreciated more and more as an important contemporary German author, which is expressed not least in a large number of awards and memberships.

In 2019 his place of birth, Klipphausen, honored him with the Wulf-Kirsten hiking trail .

Wulf Kirsten lives and works in Weimar .

plant

In the afterword to his first larger collection of poems satzanfang (1970), the young lyric poet Wulf Kirsten outlines his poetic program on almost four pages. His poetry is about "a deeper penetration into nature, an objectivity aimed at sensually perfect speech, a multilayeredness with which social and historical references come into nature" - in short: about "social observation of nature". A look at tradition is just as important for this as the reference to the present, emotional closeness is just as important as critical distance. The “manageable world segment” of one's own landscape of origin offers itself as a model for this. - “I would like to poetize (not romanticize!) The working day of a localized agricultural landscape, which may stand for any other, in a rough, 'grainy' language that I find appropriate to the topic. An untouched area is to be presented in poetic speech, that is, praising it. "

Over the decades, Kirsten has developed, differentiated and relativized his "topic" considerably. Nevertheless, in this earliest autopoetological text, the potential of the slowly growing body of work is already laid out; it names the most important development directions and central motives. Right from the start the reference to the landscape, which is understood as nature worked on and changed by humans, has a prominent position. Together with Kito Lorenc and Heinz Czechowski , Wulf Kirsten was understood by the GDR literary criticism as a “landscaper” ( Adolf Endler ) - a classification that was adopted by West German criticism. While the view of the landscape in Kirsten's earliest poems sometimes still manifests itself as a belief in progress, trust in mechanization and admiration for human achievements, in the late 1970s it gives way to a critical perspective. The brutality, imbalance and irreversibility of human interventions in nature are increasingly being discussed. Still, Kirsten does not write environmental poetry. Rather, the focus on what has been lost is becoming a central theme in his work. The destruction of nature is only a consequence of the human way of civilization, which is based on loss and forgetting. Kirsten prefers to turn to those landscapes, areas, themes, people or events that have been marginalized, repressed or forgotten by the selection mechanisms of cultural memory . To do this, he uses a harsh and unruly language that is interspersed with unwieldy and unusual dialect or technical terms. The tendency towards the nominal style helps to manifest the impression of resistance on the linguistic level.

In addition to poetry, Kirsten devotes herself to prose. Numerous essays and specialist texts were created as part of his work as a lecturer and editor, others as laudations , acceptance speeches or poetological texts. The essayistic prose - the most important texts are collected in the volume Textur (1998) - highlights Kirsten's broad educational background in literary history and deals, among other things, with literary sources and models from which he benefited as an author. In addition to the essay writing, there is a series of prose texts that could be described as "semifictional". They evade a clear genre and are subtitled by the author himself with a picture of a small town , a report or a village childhood. The Battle of Kesselsdorf (1984) deals with the final battle that decided the Second Silesian War in favor of the Prussians on December 15, 1745 . Kleewunsch (1984) paints , half ironically, half lovingly, the picture of a provincial town in Saxony during the period of restoration and revolution (early to mid-19th century). Kirsten evaluated numerous historical sources for both texts. The book Die Prinzessinnen im Krautgarten , published in 2000, is itself a piece of experienced war and post-war history. It contains eleven autobiographical texts that take up episodes from Kirsten's childhood years in loose chronology.

As an editor, Kirsten makes a name for himself at the latest with the three - volume German - language stories (1981, together with Konrad Paul). In 1997 the “Thuringia Library” (later “Edition Muschelkalk”) was brought into being, a series in which established Thuringian authors published alongside young up-and-coming Thuringian authors. In 2002, Kirsten and his son Holm gave the meticulously researched Buchenwald reading book with texts by former prisoners of the concentration camp (including Eugen Kogon , Ernst Wiechert , Bruno Heilig , Bruno Bettelheim , Robert Antelme , Jorge Semprún , H. G. Adler , Elie Wiesel , Imre Kertész , Ivan Ivanji and Fred Wander ). In 2010, after 23 years in advance, Ammann Verlag published the anthology of poetry, originally planned and prepared as a counterpart to the German-language stories, Constant is the Easily Vulnerable. Poems in German from Nietzsche to Celan .

Works (selection)

  • Poetry album 4 , Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1968
  • beginning of sentence. poems . Berlin / Weimar 1970.
  • Brick burner language. Poems . Darmstadt 1974.
  • the stranger. Poems . Düsseldorf / Krefeld 1976, ISBN 3-922690-12-2 .
  • The Battle of Kesselsdorf - A Report. Kleewunsch - A small town picture . Berlin / Weimar 1984.
  • the lead tree. poems . Berlin / Weimar 1977.
  • the earth near Meissen. Poems . Frankfurt / M. 1987, ISBN 3-518-04424-9 .
  • Winter joys. Two prose texts . Warmbronn 1987, ISBN 3-924316-19-8 .
  • Sudden weather. Poems . Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-250-10402-7 .
  • The princesses in the herb garden. A village childhood . Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-492-23652-9 .
  • Between location and field of vision. Poems and Paraphrases . Warmbronn 2001, ISBN 3-932843-24-X .
  • The mountain above the city. Between Goethe and Buchenwald . Zurich 2003 (with Harald Wenzel-Orf), ISBN 3-250-10431-0 .
  • Earth life pictures. Poems from fifty years. 1954--2004 , Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-250-10464-7 .
  • Stonemason garden. The watchmaker's house. Two stories . Warmbronn 2004, ISBN 3-932843-70-3 .
  • Bridge passage. Speeches and essays . Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-250-30025-0 .
  • Engraving (choix de poèmes) . Collection "L'Extrême Contemporain", ed. Stéphane Michaud, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-7011-5168-7 .
  • receding view. Poems . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-092125-3 .
  • what I wanted to say. New poems . Quartus-Miniatures, Vol. 3, Quartus-Verlag, Bucha 2014, ISBN 978-3-943768-25-1 .
  • images filantes (poèmes) . Traduction de Stéphane Michaud & texte allemand. Préface de Michel Deguy. Postface de Stéphane Michaud, La Dogana, Genève 2014, ISBN 978-2-940055-81-4 .
  • Wulf Kirsten - the poetry of the landscape. Poems, conversations, readings. ed. Jan Volker Röhnert , Lyrik Kabinett, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-938776-41-4

Editorial activities (selection)

  • Don Juan over the sound. Love poems . Berlin / Weimar 1975 (with TRAMPE, Wolfgang).
  • Before my eyes, behind seven mountains. Poems from traveling. An anthology . Berlin / Weimar 1977 (with BERKES, Ulrich).
  • German-language stories 1900-1945 . 3 volumes, Berlin / Weimar 1981 (with PAUL, Konrad).
  • HARINGER, Jakob: Sung into the twilight. Selected poems . Berlin / Weimar 1982.
  • The rendezvous at the zoo. Love stories . Berlin / Weimar 1984 (with PAUL, Konrad).
  • Your own voice. Poetry of the GDR . Berlin / Weimar 1988 (with HEUKENKAMP, Ursula and KAHLAU, Heinz).
  • CZECHOWSKI, Heinz: To a city sunk in fire. Poems and prose 1958-1988 . Halle / Leipzig 1990.
  • Entry in the land register. Thuringia in a poem; a selection . Hain-Verlag, Rudolstadt / Jena 1996, ISBN 3-930215-38-1 .
  • GERLACH, Harald: Continued land grabbing. Footnotes on the zeitgeist . Rudolstadt 1997 (= Thuringia Library 1), ISBN 3-930215-31-4 .
  • SPANIEL, Thomas: German picture puzzles . Poems . Rudolstadt 1997 (= Thuringia Library 2), ISBN 3-930215-32-2 .
  • LUCKE, Hans: Jud Goethe. Novel . Rudolstadt 1997 (= Thuringia Library 3), ISBN 3-930215-49-7 .
  • KLÄSSNER, Bärbel: Close to the tropic. Poems and other texts . Rudolstadt 1997 (= Thuringia Library 4), ISBN 3-930215-50-0 .
  • MONK, Radjo: King in the desert land. Wahnfried Joker's chronicle 1959-1995 . Rudolstadt 1998 (= Thuringia Library 5), ISBN 3-930215-71-3 .
  • MÜLLER, Armin: Tonewood. Calendar stories . Rudolstadt 1998 (= Thuringia Library 6), ISBN 3-930215-72-1 .
  • LÜDDE, Johanna: Strange counterparts . Poems . Rudolstadt 1998 (= Thuringia Library 7), ISBN 3-930215-73-X .
  • Leper May. The expressionist A. Rudolf Leinert (1898-1969). A portrait . Eggingen 1999 (with Salomon, Peter), ISBN 3-86142-118-6 .
  • BISKUPEK, Matthias: The native home. Mocking eulogies . Rudolstadt 1999 (= Thuringia Library 8), ISBN 3-930215-86-1 .
  • SCHIRNECK, Hubert: The day Gregor Samsa visited me and other unbelievable incidents . Rudolstadt 1999 (= Thuringia Library 9), ISBN 3-930215-87-X .
  • TRITSCHEL, Tom: angel and meier. Poems 1984-1998 . Rudolstadt 1999 (= Thuringia Library 10), ISBN 3-930215-88-8 .
  • (Ed.) Walking over the abyss. Jakob van Hoddis followed up. A homage , Bucha bei Jena 1999, ISBN 3-931505-32-4 .
  • EISENHUTH, Christoph: The weights of the sundial. Poems . Weimar 2001 (= Edition Muschelkalk 4), ISBN 3-86160-304-7 .
  • HAAK, Wolfgang: Life detours . Prose pieces in short version . Weimar 2001 (= Edition Muschelkalk 5), ISBN 3-86160-305-5 .
  • KRAFT, Gisela: Round song on New Year's morning. A family chronicle . Weimar 2001 (= Edition Muschelkalk 6), ISBN 3-86160-306-3 .
  • Voices from Buchenwald. A reader (together with KIRSTEN, Holm). Wallstein, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-89244-574-5 .
  • SCHLOSS, Karl: The flowers will go up in smoke. Selected poems and letters . Frankfurt / M. 2003 (together with SCHLÖSSER, Annelore), ISBN 3-86099-498-0 .
  • Surrounded by green hills ... Thuringia in poetry . Jena 2004, ISBN 3-931743-72-1 .
  • The easily vulnerable is constant . Poems in German from Nietzsche to Celan. Ammann Verlag, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-250-10535-0 .
  • The bound forest. Poems from Buchenwald (based on the original by André VERDET together with Annette SEEMANN), Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1220-3 .

Awards

Memberships

Literature (selection)

  • Reinhard Kiefer: Wulf Kirsten. Text landscape as a poetological paradigm . In: Landscape Text and Text Landscape. Stations of the German landscape poem 1945-1980 with Wilhelm Lehmann , Peter Huchel and Wulf Kirsten. Habil. Unpublished, Aachen, 1996, pp. 349-450
  • Anke Degenkolb: “To write down against the shabby forgetting.” Remembrance and memory in Wulf Kirsten's poetry . Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-8325-0509-1
  • Gerhard R. Kaiser (Ed.): Landscape as a literary text. The poet Wulf Kirsten . Jena 2004, ISBN 3-931743-70-5
  • York-Gothart Mix: Against the megalomaniac princes among us. Wulf Kirsten's criticism of modernity . In: Holger Helbig (Ed.) With the assistance of Kristin Felsner, Sebastian Horn u. Therese Manz: Keep writing. On GDR literature after the end of the GDR . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-05-004305-0 , pp. 109–121.
  • Stéphane Michaud (Ed.): Quatre poètes dans l'Europe monde. Yves Bonnefoy , Michel Deguy, Márton Kalász , Wulf Kirsten , Klincksieck, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-252-03722-5
  • Wulf Kirsten 75 years. Signum. Sheets for literature and criticism . 10th year special issue 12, summer 2009
  • Gerhard Pötzsch : Poetry of the 20th Century: My 24 Saxon Poets , 2 CDs, Militzke Verlag Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-86189-935-8
  • Roland Bärwinkel, Helge Pfannenschmidt (Hrsg.): Fest in the landscape. Poems for Wulf Kirsten , edition azur Dresden 2014, ISBN 978-3-942375-15-3

feature

  • Elisabeth Weyer: In Saxony and Thuringia. The writer Wulf Kirsten . Production BR 2001, broadcast in Bayr. Television March 24, 2001

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P. 89 + 91 in: Christoph Victor (Ed.): The courage to walk upright - memories of the Weimar pastor and honorary citizen Erich Kranz. Weimar 2013. ISBN 978-3-86160-264-4
  2. ↑ Tomas Gärtner: Klipphausen honors the poet Wulf Kirsten - with a hiking trail. Dresden Latest News , online portal, August 10, 2019. Retrieved September 11, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Tomas Gärtner: Klipphausen honors the poet Wulf Kirsten - with a hiking trail. Dresden Latest News , online portal, August 10, 2019. Retrieved September 11, 2019 .
  4. ↑ member entry by Wulf Kirsten at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz , accessed on 11.10.17
personal data
SURNAME Kirsten, Wulf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lyric poet, prose writer and editor
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Clip houses