Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize

The Austrian Marlene Streeruwitz received the Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize of the City of Aachen on September 29, 2002.

Marlene Streeruwitz was born on June 28, 1950 in Baden near Vienna. After graduating from high school, she first studied law, then switched to Slavic studies and art history. From 1989, she worked as an editor in theater and radio, and her first radio plays were published at the same time. Her breakthrough as a playwright came in 1992 with the play "Waikiki Beach", which premiered in Cologne on April 24, 1992. Seven more plays followed until 1995. Her first major prose work was published in 1996 ("Verführungen 3. Folge", Suhrkamp-Verlag), in the same year she gave poetry lectures at the University of Tübingen, followed by a guest lectureship in Frankfurt (her Tübingen lectures are published under the title "Sein und Schein und Erscheinen"; Suhrkamp-Verlag 1997). Her novel "Nachwelt" (Fischer-Verlag) was published in 1999.

Marlene Streeruwitz is the mother of two children and lives in Vienna and the USA. She is currently a guest lecturer in Berlin.

Since her literary debut, according to Dr. Bert Kasties, Marlene Streeruwitz has emerged as an equally accomplished playwright, author of radio plays and stage poet. Strictly rejecting literary fashions and common audience expectations, she has succeeded in creating an extremely independent body of work, which is carried by an unpretentious, extremely precise and yet poetic language.

Her works to date have been dedicated to dealing with elementary questions of the human condition, not to the treatment of current political issues or the propagation of political utopias. The author finds her subjects in the seemingly unchanging characteristics of human nature across all epochs, into whose abysses she sends her protagonists. It is not a cautious descent into semi-darkness to which they are condemned, but an almost free fall in which the author unreservedly illuminates every corner of the inner space that opens up in order to make the typical nature of individual humanity and interpersonal behavior tangible and comprehensible to the audience. This intention links Marlene Streeruwitz with Walter Hasenclever, whose literary works also did not primarily serve to depict superficial plots, but rather to reveal human nature and its dormant tendency towards evil.

Like Hasenclever, the prizewinner does not believe in the possibility of changing this human characteristic. In the tradition of the expressionist Hasenclever, she also shares the skepticism about the idea that the complex reality of human life can be adequately described through the limited medium of language. It is therefore more typical of her poems that the reality of life is not superficially simulated in them, but is virtually dissected in its many facets and presented to the audience by means of expressive individual images and pointed dialogues or monologues.

On March 10, 2004, the Board of Trustees of the Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize in Aachen announced the author Friedrich Christian Delius (*1943) as the winner of the prize.

In the justification for the award, Delius is honored as an author who, thanks to his poems and stories, has long been one of the most renowned representatives of the German literary scene. The board of trustees, consisting of members of the Walter Hasenclever Society, the Einhard Gymnasium - Hasenclever's former school -, the Aachen book trade and the city of Aachen, describes Delius as a "technically flawless and linguistically brilliant writer whose work is borne by a deeply felt sense of socio-political responsibility". The explanatory statement continues:
"His diverse oeuvre shows Delius to be an artist with an unusually highly developed ethical standard, for whom self-righteousness or intolerance enjoy no leeway. In works such as the collection of poems 'Selbstporträt mit Luftbrücke' (1993) or the story 'Die Flatterzunge' (1999), the author emerges as a poet who is able to penetrate to the essential, the actually revealing facets of an explosive topic precisely by describing details that are in themselves unspectacular. In this way, he also succeeds in opening up often uncomfortable inner views of this country - and at the same time satisfying literary demands."
His persistent struggle against philistinism and some all-too-German sensitivities make Delius a contemporary related in spirit to Walter Hasenclever.

The award ceremony took place on September 11, 2004 as part of the Aachener Literaturtage in the Altes Kurhaus Aachen.

The writer Herta Müller is the winner of the 2006 Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize, which was awarded in Aachen in September.

Herta Müller, one of Germany's best-known and most renowned authors, receives the prize for her outstanding literary oeuvre, which is presented in an aesthetically advanced form. She saves her extraordinary wealth of experience, namely life under totalitarianism and censorship, growing up as a member of a linguistic minority and the juxtaposition and superimposition of two languages that could hardly be more different, from disappearing. She fulfills all the genres she uses with great precision, even in her surreal and playful collages she follows the poem line "Pay attention to how you do it".

Herta Müller was born in 1953 in the German-speaking village of Nitzkydorf in Banat. After studying German and Romanian philology in Timisoara, she worked as a translator in a machine factory and as a teacher. She was dismissed because she refused to work for the Romanian secret service Securitate. Her first book "Niederungen" was published in 1982, but was censored. A complete version was published in Germany in 1984. After persistent repression, interrogations and house searches, she was able to move to Berlin in 1987. From 1989 to 2004, she held guest professorships in Germany, Switzerland, England and the USA. Her work has been awarded many literary prizes. Herta Müller is a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry. She lives and works in Berlin.

Publications by Herta Müller (selection): Niederungen (1984/1993). Oppressive Tango (1984). Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt (1986/1995). Barefoot February (1987). Traveler on one leg (1989/1995). The devil sits in the mirror (1991/1994). The fox was already a hunter back then (1992). A warm potato is a warm bed (1992). The watchman takes his comb (1993). Heart animal (1994). Hunger and Silk, essay (1995). Today I would rather not have met myself (1997). Der Fremde Blick oder das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne (1999, Wallstein - ed. by Heinz Ludwig Arnold). Im Haarknoten wohnt eine Dame, Gedichte+Collagen (2000, Rowohlt). Der König verneigt sich und tötet, autobiography (2003, Hanser). Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen, text-image collages (2005, Hanser).

The Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize of the City of Aachen was awarded to the writer Christoph Hein, born in Silesia in 1944, on February 7, 2008.

Prof. Dr. Egyptien, Chairman of the Walter Hasenclever Society and also Chairman of the jury, justified the awarding of the prize to Christoph Hein with "the versatility of his work, the contemporary nature of his dramatic and narrative work and the social commitment of his writing". He thus embodies "the type of author who has numerous points of contact with the award's namesake." The presentation of private life experiences in a cool and sober tone and the ability to constantly take on new perspectives in his books are - according to the explanatory statement - "trademarks" of Christoph Hein's writing. "Both in his drama and in his narrative works, Hein's confident use of traditional and advanced literary techniques is documented." As an essayist, Hein has taken a perceptive stance on current literary and cultural trends and written penetrating portraits of other authors that clearly show his embedding in the literary context.

Hein is one of the most renowned contemporary German-language authors and has made a name for himself primarily as a storyteller, playwright and essayist. From 1998 to 2000, he was the first president of the all-German PEN Club. He co-founded the weekly newspaper "Freitag" and was one of its editors until 2006.

Christoph Hein grew up in the GDR, but attended a West Berlin grammar school until the Wall was built. After graduating from high school and studying philosophy, he became a dramaturge at the East Berlin Volksbühne in 1971. He has lived as a freelance writer in Berlin since 1979.

Hein's literary oeuvre comprises more than 25 books. His breakthrough came in 1983 with the novella "Drachenblut" (Dragon's Blood), which is now considered one of the most important achievements of GDR literature due to its painfully accurate diagnosis of East German living conditions. His 1989 drama "The Knights of the Round Table" depicted the agony of a society that had lost its ideological values. It was soon seen as a clear-sighted anticipation of the collapse of the GDR state. His novel "Willenbrock", published in 2000, which traces the effects of reunification on people's lives and was made into a film in 2005, also attracted a great deal of attention. Most recently, in 2007, Christoph Hein published "Frau Paula Trousseau", an extensive novel that tells the biography of a painter in a sophisticated temporal interweaving and provides an insight into a problematic emotional landscape that gives a glimpse of the distortions of recent German history. Hein's work has been published by prestigious publishing houses from the outset, first by Aufbau in East Berlin and Luchterhand, and since 2000 by Suhrkamp.

Hein has received numerous awards, including the Heinrich Mann Prize of the GDR Academy of Arts (1982), the Erich Fried Prize (1990), the Berlin Literature Prize (1992) and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2002). In February 2004, he was awarded the Schiller Memorial Prize of the state of Baden-Württemberg for his literary oeuvre, and in the same year he also received the Verdi Literature Prize for his novel "Landnahme".

More information and the accompanying program "Aachen reads... Willenbrock by Christoph Hein":

The Berlin-based writer Ralf Rothmann has been awarded the 2010 Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize of the City of Aachen. The prize was awarded on October 31 at the Ludwig Forum for International Art. The day before, a reading with Ralf Rothmann was held in Aachen.

Rothmann is one of the most renowned contemporary German-language authors and has emerged primarily as a storyteller. His work also includes poetry and texts for the theater. Rothmann was born in Schleswig in 1953 and grew up in the Ruhr area near Oberhausen. After leaving elementary school and briefly attending commercial college, he first completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer. He then did various odd jobs and worked as a nurse, cook, printer and driver. He has lived in Berlin since 1976, where his literary debut, the poetry collection "Kratzer", was published in 1984. With the story "Auf Messers Schneide", published in 1986, the focus of his writing shifted to prose. In 1991, he attracted a great deal of attention with his first Ruhrpott novel Stier. Since then, Rothmann has published half a dozen novels and two further volumes of short stories.

In terms of their settings, Rothmann's works focus on the Ruhr region and Berlin. In the Kohlenpott novels ("Wäldernacht" 1994, "Milch und Kohle" 2000, "Junges Licht" 2004), the focus is mostly on young heroes who suffer from broken families, dull work and cultural wasteland. They revolt against the lack of prospects in their proletarian, petit-bourgeois milieu by escaping into rock music and discovering the continent of love. In his Berlin novels ("Flieh, mein Freund!" 1998, "Hitze" 2003) and the play "Berlin Blues" (1997), Rothmann shows himself to be a mercilessly accurate diagnostician of the social costs of reunification at the interface between East and West. He paints a picture of Berlin from below, sheds light on the working and living conditions of a new precariat and notes in a sober tone the disappearance of alternative neighborhood sociotopes in the neoliberal post-reunification era. His depiction of the 'life of the poorest' is full of sympathy, but without any sentimentality.

Rothmann has the gift of allowing insights into structural changes in our globalized living and working world to flash through the spontaneous statements of his marginalized characters. His view, which penetrates social processes, is saturated with experience and empathy and sees more than any theoretical analysis. Rothmann's narrative approach is rooted in the human, and from this origin springs his ability to write lively, quirky and absurd dialogs that are part of our everyday lives. This may be Rothmann's greatest strength: With just a few strokes, he is able to vividly place a character before us, an authentic individual whose fate immediately arouses our interest because, for all its peculiarity, it also embodies something symptomatic of our time and society.

In numerous short stories and more recent novels, Rothmann has also convincingly sketched out internal views of other social milieus and even distant times. His latest work "Feuer brennt nicht" adds the quality of an artist's novel to the social and love discourse, allowing a new insight into the development of the writer Ralf Rothmann. What he has delivered so far is nothing less than an archive of German cultural and social history from the early 1960s to the present day, laid out from the specific angle of a sensitive and independent existence.

Ralf Rothmann's work has been published by Suhrkamp-Verlag for almost 25 years and has been awarded several major literary prizes since the turn of the millennium, including the Hermann Lenz Prize in 2001, the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize in 2004, the Heinrich Böll Prize in 2005 and the Max Frisch Prize in 2006.

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The Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize was presented to Marica Bodrožić exclusively digitally in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Her digital greetings on the occasion of the announcement of the award ceremony can be found here:

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