Reinhard Lettau

Reinhard Lettau ( born September 10, 1929 in Erfurt, † June 17, 1996 in Karlsruhe ) was a German -American author.

Life

Mid-1950s, he emigrated to the U.S. and was a professor of German literature at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD ) since 1967. He was an active member of the group 47 He gave inflammatory speeches at the Free University of Berlin, where he denounced the Springer press. He was then expelled from the FRG, as he was a foreigner - he had an American passport.

He had studied German, philosophy and literature in Heidelberg and at Harvard University. His dissertation at Harvard in 1960, was entitled " Utopia and romance; Studies on the form of the German utopian novel in the twentieth century. "

In 1954 he married Gene Carter, they had three daughters, Karin (1957 ), Kevyn (1959) and Katie (1965 ), who was born shortly after the separation from his wife - they were divorced in 1968. From 1965 on he lived in Berlin- Schöneberg, together with Véronique Springer, daughter of Rudolf Springer gallery. They married in 1969 after they had moved to San Diego in 1967. This marriage ended in divorce in 1972.

He was a member of the PEN center in Germany and the German Academy of Performing Arts. He was " Poet in Residence " at the University - University of Essen in the winter semester 1979/1980.

In 1979 he married Dawn Teborski. Since the mid- 70s he worked in the Lüchow -Dannenberg repeatedly with artists such as Uwe Bremer, together. From 1991 to 1993 he lived in the Wendland Grabow. During this time he wrote his last novel " fleeing guests". After reunification, he and his wife returned to Berlin after Lettau due to health problems had prematurely leave retirement.

In 1996, he traveled to his mother's 90th birthday to Karlsruhe. After a fall, he came to the hospital and died there of pneumonia. Lettau was buried in the cemetery III of Jerusalem and a new church next to the tomb of ETA Hoffmann in Berlin- Kreuzberg.

Prizes and awards

Works

• Difficulties in building a house (1962 )

• Appearance Manigs (1963 )

• The Group 47 - Report, criticism, polemic (1967 )

• Poems (1968), Literary Colloquium Berlin
• Enemies (1968 )

• Daily Fascism (1971 )

• The ever shorter stories. And poems and portraits. (1973)

• Breakfast talks in Miami ( 1977)

• Airborne addition Gaze - From writing about events in the immediate vicinity or in the removal of desks (1980 )

• The Maze - stories and conversations (1980 )

• Mr. stroke below the limit. Stories (1982 )

• On the question of the compass (1988 )

• Fleeing guests (1994 )

• Forest in rush

• All stories, Carl Hanser 1998, ISBN 3-446-19286-7, posthumously, edited by Dawn Lettau and Hans Peter Kruger

• Red Storm over Thuringia - Germany's heart is red, Wartburg Publishing House, Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-86160-336-8, posthumously, edited and with a postscript by Christina Onnasch.