Reiner Kunze

Reiner Kunze ( born August 16, 1933 Oelsnitz / Erzgeb. ) Is a German writer, literary translator and GDR dissident.

Life

Reiner Kunze is the son of a miner and a Kettlerin. From 1947 he attended a class structure that allowed workers children a higher education. Two years later he was nominated by the rector of his school as a candidate of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( SED). In 1951 he passed his Abitur in Stollberg.

In Stollberg he learned in 1950 Ingeborg Weinhold, whom he married in 1954. The divorce took place in 1960.

Kunze then studied philosophy and journalism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. After graduating in 1955 he worked as a research assistant at the Faculty of Journalism of Karl Marx University ( also referred to as " Red Monastery " ) in Leipzig. After severe political disputes Kunze announced in 1959 his position at the university without completing his doctorate.

His first poems he published in 1953 in the journal New German literature. First, Kunze -oriented socialist realism, later he began increasingly to distance themselves from the ideas of the SED. His first volume of poetry was published under the title of birds above the dew.

After leaving the university, he worked for a time as an assistant mechanic in heavy machinery.

In 1961 he learned the native of a German -Czech parents family doctor Elisabeth Littnerová know, after a long time of letter writing and personally. They married in 1962 and moved Elisabeth Kunze from Czechoslovakia in the GDR, where she began working as an orthodontist in Greiz / Thuringia. Reiner Kunze worked at this time as a freelance writer in Greiz and in a 15 km from the farmhouse in Leiningen. About his wife and for long stays in Czechoslovakia, he came into contact with Czech artists, won friends among them and later translated works of far more than sixty Czech and Slovak poets. 1968 Kunze came out in protest against the invasion of the Warsaw Pact in Czechoslovakia from the SED. As a result, the State Security put on a record under the alias " poetry " about him, which grew to many thousands of pages until the end of the GDR and documented the " decomposition measures" against him in the East and in the West.

The publication of the book of poems Sensible ways - Forty-eight poems and a cycle came in 1969 with resistance in the Politburo of the SED and the Writers' Union of the GDR. For Kunze it became increasingly difficult to publish his works. His friend Heinz Knobloch was him - not without personal risk - provide up to 1974 small orders for reviews of the week post. There appeared from 1969 to 1974 reviews under the pseudonyms " January Kunz " and " Alexander Ludwig". In 1970, in West Germany, the children's book The Lion Leopold: Fast fairy tales, stories appeared almost, Kunze was how even after the book Sensible Ways imposed an administrative criminal proceedings, and the author's copies were confiscated.

1976 with a volume of prose The wonderful years was published in the Federal Republic. In it, he criticized the DDR system sharp. The manuscript had been secretly brought into the Federal Republic. Because of his dissident stance Kunze was expelled from the GDR Writers' Association, which was tantamount to a prohibition. A GDR edition of the book The Lion Leopold, which should appear in the same year, was not delivered, ready for sale 15,000 copies were pulped.

On April 7, 1977 Kunze presented because of a threat of long prison sentence for himself and his wife a request for expatriation from the GDR. The application was approved within three days and Kunze moved on April 13 with his family over to the Federal Republic.

In 1978 he wrote the screenplay for the film The wonderful years. In 1981 he published his first book of poetry after moving to western Germany, on its own hope.

In 1990, Kunze as one of the first to be affected insight into his Stasi files. Excerpts from the documents, which included twelve files with a total of approximately 3,500 sheets, he published in the documentation " code name poetry ". The documents showed that a family friend, Ibrahim Böhme, later chairman of the DDR SPD, a longtime informer of the Ministry of State Security. The documentation fueled the debate on the question whether the Stasi documents should be visible.

Reiner Kunze is a critic of the spelling reform of 1996. He signed the Frankfurt call for spelling reform on the basis of the Frankfurt Declaration to the spelling reform of 1996 in 2004. So he turned in many individual contributions ( ref: FAZ among others ) and in his memoir The aura of the words to the spelling reform.

He is a freelance writer in Eger (municipality upper cell ) near Passau.

Memberships

Reiner Kunze is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, the German Academy for Language and Literature, the Free Academy of the Arts Rhein-Neckar and the Saxon Academy of Arts, the PEN Centre of German-speaking authors abroad. From 1975 to 1992 he was a member of the Akademie der Künste (Berlin), which he left in common with many colleagues in protest against the en bloc transfer of the members of the East Berlin Academy of Arts. Kunze is an honorary member of the Collegium europaeum Jenense the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, the Saxon Literature Council, the Free German Author Association of Hungarian Writers' Association, of the Czech PEN Centre and the New Fruchtbringende society Köthen / Anhalt - Association for the Care of the German language.

Awards and honors

In his honor, donated Kunze's hometown Oelsnitz a Reiner Kunze Prize, which was first awarded in 2007.

Works (selection)

• The future is sitting at the table. Poems. Along with Egon Günther, Central German publisher, Halle ( Saale) in 1955.
• Birds above the dew. Love poems and songs. Means German publisher, Halle ( Saale) in 1959.
• Questions of the lyrical work. VEB Verlag Language and Literature, Halle an der Saale in 1960. ( Contributions to contemporary literature, Issue 18 )
• Dedications. Poems. Hohwacht Verlag, Bad Godesberg in 1963.
• The morality. Feature articles. Together with Heinz Knobloch. Means German publisher, Halle ( Saale) in 1964.
• Sensible ways. Poems. In 1969.
• The Lion Leopold. Almost fairytale, almost stories. In 1970.
• Low volume. Poems. In 1972.
• Letter with blue seal. Poems. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1973.
• The wonderful years. Prose. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-10-042003-9. Fischer Taschenbuch 1978, ISBN 3-596-22074-2.
• On their own hope. Poems. In 1981.
• Wundklee. Translations of poems by Jan Skácel. In 1982.
• From: einundzwanzg variations on the theme of " post ". With woodcuts by Alfred Pohl. Hauzenberg 1983.
• Conversation with the blackbird. Anthology: early poems, sensitive routes, room sound volume. In 1984.
• Of every single life. Poems. 1986 is also the poem Bittgedanke, at your feet.
• The white poem. Essays. In 1989.
• Alias ​​" poetry ". A documentation. Fischer -Taschenbuch -Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990.
• Where the sleep goes to sleep. Poems for children. In 1991.
• On a sunny slope. Diary of a year. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-10-042014-4. ( autobiographical prose )
• Where Freedom is ... talks from 1977 to 1993. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-10-042015-2.
• Stones and songs. Namibian notes and photos. In 1996.
• A day on this earth. Poems. In 1998.
• The intellectuals as a threat to humanity or the power and powerlessness of the literature. Conversation between Günter Kunert and Reiner Kunze. Art Foundation of Landesbank SH, Kiel 1999. (No ISBN )
• The Kiss of Koi. Prose and photos., 2002.
• The aura of the words. Memorandum to the spelling reform. Radius, Stuttgart 2004. ( Reissue with interim results. 1st edition 2002. ) ISBN 3-87173-303-2
• Where we at home have the salt. Adaptations. , 2003.
• The highways of the poet. Conversation about Peter Huchel and poetry with Mireille Gansel. , 2004.
• If only the own forehead. Selected speeches. Radius, Stuttgart 2005.
• Linde night. Poems. - 2007.
• Man in the word. Three Poems for children and thirty answers to questions by Jürgen P. Wallmann. Edition Toni Pongratz 100, Hauzenberg 2008.
• The language that speaks the language. Speech. Edition Toni Pongratz 103 Hauzenberg 2009.
• What does the bee on the sea? Poems for children with pictures of Horst Sauerbruch. Fischer Treasure Island, S. Fischer, 2011
• If comes back a turn. Be a writer in Germany. Lecture. Edition Toni Pongratz 110 Hauzenberg 2011.
• Poets do not tolerate dictators next to him. Reiner Kunze. The wonderful years. From Germany to Germany. A reading book at Reiner Kunze's 80th birthday. Edited by Matthias Buth and Günter Kunert. Publisher Ralf love Weilerswist, 2013, ISBN 978-3-944566-05-4.

Photo solo exhibitions among others in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt aM, Gotha, Jews Castle, Landshut, upper cell, Offenburg, Passau and Würzburg.

By Reiner Kunze's poetry and prose published in the European and non-European countries (including Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Korea and the USA) translations in 30 languages ​​in over 60 single issues.