Gert Hofmann

Gert Hofmann (29 January 1931 – 1 July 1993) was a German writer and professor of German literature. Hofmann was born in Limbach, Saxony (Germany) and died in Erding (near Munich).

He grew up in his native Limbach. In 1948, he moved with his family to Leipzig. There, he attended a school for translators, studying English and Russian. In 1950, he enrolled to the University of Leipzig, where he studied Romance languages and Slavic languages. In 1951, he fled from the German Democratic Republic and settled in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he continued his studies. In 1957, he graduated with a thesis on Henry James.

After one year as a research assistant at the University of Freiburg, he left Germany in 1961 to teach German literature in Europe and the United States: he taught at universities in Toulouse, Paris, Bristol, Edinburgh, New Haven, Berkeley and Austin. From 1971 to 1980 he lived in the southern Austrian town of Klagenfurt, while teaching at the University of Ljubljana (in former Yugoslavia, now in Slovenia). In 1980 he moved to Erding (near Munich), where he died in 1993.

Hofmann began his career as a writer of radio plays, becoming a novelist later in life after his return to Germany. He subsequently received several literary awards during his lifetime including the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis (1979), the Alfred-Döblin-Preis (1982), and the Müncher Literaturpreis (1993).

A number of his works have been translated by his son, poet Michael Hofmann.

Works

• Interpretationsprobleme bei Henry James, (1957)
• Der Bürgermeister, (1963)
• Der Sohn, (1966)
• Kündigungen, (1969)
• Advokat Patelin, (1976)
• Die Denunziation, (1979)
• Die Fistelstimme, (1980)
• Fuhlrotts Vergeßlichkeit. Portrait eines uns bekannten Kopfes, (1981)
• Gespräch über Balzacs Pferd, (Trans. Balzac's Horse and Other Stories) (1981, Trans. 1989)
• Die Überflutung (1981)
• Auf dem Turm (Trans. The Spectacle at the Tower) (1982, Trans. 1989)
• Die Rückkehr des verlorenen Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz nach Riga, (1984)
• Unsere Eroberung (Trans. Our Conquest), (1984, Trans. 1991)
• Der Blindensturz (Trans. The Parable of the Blind), (1985, Trans. 1989)
• Veilchenfeld (1986)
• Die Weltmaschine, (1986)
• Casanova und die Figurantin, (1987)
• Unsere Vergeßlichkeit (1987)
• Vor der Regenzeit, (Trans. Before the Rainy Season), (1988, Trans. 1992)
• Der Kinoerzähler (Trans. The Film Explainer), (1990, Trans. 1996)
• Tolstois Kopf, (1991)
• Das Glück (Trans. Luck), (1992, Trans. 2004)
• Das Thema kommt, verbeugt sich, sagt: Wie wär's?, (1992)
• Die kleine Stechardin (1994) (Trans. Lichtenberg and the Little Flower Girl, Michael Hofmann, 2004)

References