Helga Königsdorf

Königsdorf in 1987

Helga Königsdorf (July 13, 1938 – May 4, 2014) was an East German author and physicist.^[1][2][3]

Life

She was born as Helga Bunke in Gera, a farmer's daughter.^[1] She went into academia and was appointed to the East Berlin Academy of Sciences of the GDR from 1961 to 1990.^[2] Since 1974, she headed the Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics. At age 40, she published her first short-story collection Meine ungehörigen Träume ("My Indecent Dreams").^[1]

Her writing peers included Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann and Maxie Wander, who worked on woman's rights issues in the GDR in the 70s and 80s.^[1] In 1990 she left academia to devote herself to writing full-time. Helga suffered from Parkinson's disease for more than 30 years.^[1]

Awards

• 1985 Heinrich Mann Prize
• 1992 Roswitha Prize

Works

Fiction

• Meine ungehörigen Träume (short stories, 1978), Aufbau-Verlag
• Der Lauf der Dinge (short stories, 1982), Aufbau-Verlag
• Respektloser Umgang (short stories, 1986), Aufbau-Verlag
• Lichtverhältnisse (short stories, 1988), Aufbau-Verlag
• Ungelegener Befund (short stories, 1990), Aufbau-Verlag
• Adieu DDR (memoir, 1990)
• Gleich neben Afrika (short stories, 1992), Rowohlt Berlin Verlag
• Im Schatten des Regenbogens (novel, 1993), Aufbau-Verlag
• Über die unverzügliche Rettung der Welt (essays, 1994), Aufbau-Verlag
• Die Entsorgung der Großmutter (novel, 1997), Aufbau-Verlag
• Landschaft in wechselndem Licht (memoir, 2002), Aufbau-Verlag

Math

• Helga Bunke: Gewöhnliche Differentialgleichungen mit zufälligen Parametern. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1972.
• Olaf Bunke, Helga Bunke (Hrsg.): Statistical methods of model building. Berlin 1986.
• Olaf Bunke, Helga Bunke (Hrsg.): Nonlinear regression, functional relations and robust methods. 2 Bände, New York 1989.

English translations

Few of her fiction works have been translated into English. Fission was published by Northwestern University Press.

References