Hans Erich Nossack
Hans Erich Nossack ( born January 30, 1901 in Hamburg, † November 2, 1977 ) was a German writer, who initially joined as a poet and playwright, but later mainly as a prose writer in appearance.
Life
Hans Erich Nossack came from a wealthy family in Hamburg; his father Eugene Nossack ran a trading company (coffee and cocoa beans ). In 1919 he graduated from high school at the grammar school Johanneum in Hamburg. In the winter semester 1919/20, he enrolled at the University of Hamburg was founded in 1919 for the subjects of art history and literature. In 1920 he joined the University of Jena, where he began studying law as well as the Heads of State and Economics customer, which he broke in 1922. In the same year Nossack declared his withdrawal from the beating fraternity Corps Thuringia Jena, which he had heard from the summer of 1920 until the winter of 1922. He renounced at the same time to support his family, trying to get by as a laborer. Temporarily he became a member of the KPD.
1923 Nossack returned back to Hamburg and married in 1925 Gabriele Knierer ( 1896-1987 ), with whom he remained married throughout his life despite great difficulties. He was a bank clerk and completed in the following years training as a bank clerk. In addition to the day job, he wrote poems and wrote dramas.
In 1930 he was again member of the KPD. In 1933 he retired to his father's company. It came to house searches by the SA and the police, but he was not arrested. He soon took on the management of the import company.
1943, his diaries and manuscripts were destroyed by the violent bombing raid on Hamburg. Apart from some in the Neue Rundschau in 1942 and 1944 published poems published his first publications in 1947, initially by the Wolfgang -Krueger -Verlag, Hamburg. The following year, published first books in translation in France.
In his prose text The Fall (1948 ) he thematized as one of the first writers of the postwar German literature, the horrors of the bombing campaign by means of the destruction of his home town of Hamburg.
Nossack in 1949, elected to the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz and 1950 next to Hans Henny Jahnn among others Founding member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg. In addition, he was a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature, Darmstadt since 1961.
Between 1949 and 1955 Nossack could not publish because his publisher Kruger verkäuflichere prose demanded in the form of a romance novel of his that he could not deliver because of the priority for him and wanted to work on other stories. This Nossack disappeared over several years almost completely from the literary scene. In this time of crisis, he became friends with Ernst Kreuder, with whom he maintained a lively and cordial exchange of letters. Finally Nossack moved to the Suhrkamp publishing house, in which his first in 1955 and to date most successful novel, the latest in November, appeared. Suhrkamp Verlag was then to his house and it remained until last to Nossack novel A happy man.
In 1956 he broke with the help of the Swiss industrialist Kurt Boesch on his father's company and moved to Aystetten at Augsburg. Since then he has worked as a freelance writer.
Along with Rudolf Hagelstange was Nossack 1961 as a representative of the German writers on the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in New Delhi.
In 1962 he moved to Darmstadt. From 1964 to 1968 Nossack Vice President of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature. In 1965 he moved to Frankfurt am Main, returned to please his wife in December 1969 returned to Hamburg, where he lived until his death in 1977 and wrote.
Nossack has been called " the largest German narrator of the Fantastic by Kafka ." His estate is located in the German Literature Archive in Marbach.
Work
Cristof Schmidt described the loneliness in the border situation, the search for the self and death in an early study on Nossack work as the major themes of the author. He focuses on the moment of departure, on the crossing of boundaries, but not on the what had to find beyond these limits. This is also due to the fact that Nossack itself was of the view that the essence of language can not be taught. An adequate appreciation of his works was mainly in the early postwar years often accused contrary, they are " existential " or " nihilistic ". It has however been pointed out several times that Nossack the concept of "nothing" as used not in the sense of repeal of being, but as a word for a room of new possibilities.
Works
- Poems (1947 )
- Nekyia. Report a Survivor (1947 )
- Interview with death (1948 ), second edition in 1950 under the title Dorothea - contains Downfall
- At the latest in November (1955), novel
- The Curious (1955), narrative
- The main sample. A tragedy -like burlesque with two breaks (1956 )
- Spiral. Novel a sleepless night (1956 ) - contains among others Impossible evidence
- Encounter in the hall (1958 ), two stories
- The younger brother (1958), novel
- After the last uprising. A report (1961 )
- A special case (1963 ), drama
- The Testament of Lucius Eurinus (1963 )
- It's nothing new (1964 ), narrative
- Six Etudes (1964 ), stories
- The weak position of the Literature (1966 ), speeches and articles
- The case d' Arthez's (1968), novel
- To the unknown winner (1969 ), novel
- Pseudo- autobiographical glosses (1971 )
- The Stolen Melody (1972 ), novel
- Call service. Report on the epidemic (1973 )
- To make it short. Miniatures (1975 )
- A happy man (1975 ), novel
- The Diaries 1943-1977 (ed. Gabriele Söhling ) (1997 )
- Enter soon a sign of life. Correspondence 1943-1956 (ed. Gabriele Söhling ) (2001 )