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Critic ] described visiting Müller at her home in Berlin and seeing that in her working desk had a whole drawer full of single letters cut from a newspaper she had entirely destroyed. Realising that she used the letters "to recombine her own literary texts", he felt he had "entered the workshop of a true poet".<ref>], '']'', Interview with Denis Scheck about Herta Müller, Thursday 8 October 2009</ref> Critic ] described visiting Müller at her home in Berlin and seeing that in her working desk had a whole drawer full of single letters cut from a newspaper she had entirely destroyed. Realising that she used the letters "to recombine her own literary texts", he felt he had "entered the workshop of a true poet".<ref>], '']'', Interview with Denis Scheck about Herta Müller, Thursday 8 October 2009</ref>


The ] awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature to Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."<ref name="nobelweb">{{citeweb|url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2009/|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009|accessdate=2009-10-08|publisher=Nobelprize.org}}</ref>. The Nobel award coincided with the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism. Michael Krüger, head of Müller's publisher, stated: "By giving the award to Herta Müller, who grew up in a German-speaking minority in Romania, the committee has recognized an author who refuses to let the inhumane side of life under communism be forgotten"<ref>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_en_ot/eu_nobel_literature</ref> However, the award has met with some criticism. Prior to the award, Mueller was little-known outside Germany and even there was known only among a minority of intellectuals and literary critics.<ref> Washington Post. Friday, October 9, 2009. </ref> The ] awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature to Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."<ref name="nobelweb">{{citeweb|url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2009/|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009|accessdate=2009-10-08|publisher=Nobelprize.org}}</ref>. The Nobel award coincided with the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism. Michael Krüger, head of Müller's publisher, stated: "By giving the award to Herta Müller, who grew up in a German-speaking minority in Romania, the committee has recognized an author who refuses to let the inhumane side of life under communism be forgotten"<ref>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_en_ot/eu_nobel_literature</ref>


==Works== ==Works==

Revision as of 14:16, 11 October 2009

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Herta Müller
Herta Müller in 2007Herta Müller in 2007
OccupationWriter
NationalityGerman, Romanian
Periodlate 20th–early 21st century
Notable awardsNobel Prize in Literature
2009
SpouseRichard Wagner

Herta Müller (born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the harsh conditions of life in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime, the history of the Germans in the Banat (and more broadly, Transylvania), and the persecution of Romanian ethnic Germans by Stalinist Soviet occupying forces in Romania. Her works have been translated into more than 20 languages. On 8 October 2009 it was announced she would be awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Life and career

Müller was born in Niţchidorf (Template:Lang-de), a historically German-speaking town in the Romanian Banat in western Romania. The daughter of Banat Swabian farmers, her family was part of Romania's German minority; her father had served in the Waffen SS and her mother survived five years in a Gulag slave labour camp in Ukraine in the Soviet Union after World War II. Her grandfather had been a wealthy farmer and merchant. She studied German studies and Romanian literature at the Timişoara University.

In 1976, Müller began working as a translator for an engineering factory, but was dismissed in 1979 for her refusal to cooperate with the Securitate, the Communist regime's secret police. After her dismissal she initially earned a living by teaching kindergarten and giving private German lessons. Her first book was published in Romania (in German) in 1982, in a state censored version, as with most publications in communist Romania. The book was about a child's view of the German-cultural Banat. Literary censorship at that time was less harsh than under other communist regimes. However, Müller was a member of Aktionsgruppe Banat, a group of German-speaking writers who supported freedom of speech over the censorship they faced under Ceauşescu's government, and her works, including The Land of the Green Plums, deal with the issues faced by the writers and their relationship with the government censorship of their works.

Müller left for West Berlin with her husband, novelist Richard Wagner, in 1987, under pressure from the Romanian government. Over the following years she accepted lectureships at universities in Germany and abroad. She still lives in Berlin. Müller received membership of the German Academy for Writing and Poetry in 1995, and other positions followed. In 1997 she withdrew from the PEN centre of Germany in protest of its merger with the former German Democratic Republic branch. In July 2008, Müller sent a critical open letter to Horia-Roman Patapievici, president of the Romanian Cultural Institute in reaction to the moral and financial support given by the institute to two former informants of the Securitate participating at the Romanian-German Summer School.

In 2009, her novel Everything I Possess I Carry With Me (Template:Lang-de) was nominated for the German Book Prize (Deutscher Buchpreis) and is now among the six finalists. In this book Müller describes the journey of a young man to a Gulag concentration camp in the Soviet Union as an example for the fate of the German population in Transylvania after World War II. It was inspired by the experience of poet Oskar Pastior, whose oral memories she had made notes of, but also by what happened to her own mother.

Critic Denis Scheck described visiting Müller at her home in Berlin and seeing that in her working desk had a whole drawer full of single letters cut from a newspaper she had entirely destroyed. Realising that she used the letters "to recombine her own literary texts", he felt he had "entered the workshop of a true poet".

The Swedish Academy awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature to Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.". The Nobel award coincided with the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism. Michael Krüger, head of Müller's publisher, stated: "By giving the award to Herta Müller, who grew up in a German-speaking minority in Romania, the committee has recognized an author who refuses to let the inhumane side of life under communism be forgotten"

Works

Müller signing one of her books in September 2009
  • Niederungen, short stories, censored version published in Bucharest, 1982. Uncensored version published in Germany 1984. Published in English as Nadirs in 1999 by the University of Nebraska Press.
  • Drückender Tango ("Oppressive Tango"), stories, Bucharest, 1984
  • Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt, Berlin, 1986. Published in English as The Passport, Serpent's Tail, 1989 ISBN 9781852421397
  • Barfüßiger Februar ("Barefoot February"), Berlin, 1987
  • The Absolute Wasteman novella, Berlin, 1987
  • Reisende auf einem Bein, Berlin, 1989. Published in English as Traveling on One Leg, Hydra Books/Northwestern University Press, 1992.
  • Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet ("How Perception Invents Itself"), Paderborn, 1990
  • Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel ("The Devil is Sitting in the Mirror"), Berlin, 1991
  • Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger ("Even Back Then, the Fox Was the Hunter"), Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1992
  • Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett ("A Warm Potato Is a Warm Bed"), Hamburg, 1992
  • Der Wächter nimmt seinen Kamm ("The Guard Takes His Comb"), Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1993
  • Angekommen wie nicht da ("Arrived As If Not There"), Lichtenfels, 1994
  • Herztier, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1994. Published in an English translation by Michael Hofmann as The Land of Green Plums, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1996
  • Hunger und Seide ("Hunger and Silk"), essays, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1995
  • In der Falle ("In a Trap"), Göttingen 1996
  • Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1997. Published in English as The Appointment, Metropolitan Books/Picador, New York/London, 2001
  • Der fremde Blick oder das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne ("The Foreign View, or Life Is a Fart in a Lantern"), Göttingen, 1999
  • Im Haarknoten wohnt eine Dame ("A Lady Lives in the Hair Knot"), poetry, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2000
  • Heimat ist das, was gesprochen wird ("Home Is What Is Spoken There"), Blieskastel, 2001
  • A good person is worth as much as a piece of bread, foreword published in Kent Klich's Children of Ceausescu by Journal, 2001 and Umbrage Editions, 2001. Published in Swedish as En god människa är lika mycket värd som ett stycke bröd in Kent Klich's Ceausescu's barn by Journal, 2001
  • Der König verneigt sich und tötet ("The King Bows and Kills"), essays, Munich (and elsewhere), 2003
  • Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen ("The Pale Gentlemen with their Espresso Cups"), Munich (and elsewhere), 2005
  • Este sau nu este Ion ("Is He or Isn't He Ion"), collage-poetry written and published in Romanian, Iaşi, Polirom, 2005
  • Atemschaukel, Munich, 2009. Published in English as Everything I Possess I Carry With Me, Granta/ Metropolitan Books, 2009.

Editor

  • Theodor Kramer: Die Wahrheit ist, man hat mir nichts getan ("The Truth Is No One Did Anything to Me"), Vienna 1999
  • Die Handtasche ("The Purse"), Künzelsau 2001
  • Wenn die Katze ein Pferd wäre, könnte man durch die Bäume reiten ("If the Cat Were a Horse, You Could Ride Through the Trees"), Künzelsau 2001

Filmography

Awards

Further reading

  • Norbert Otto Eke (Ed.): Die erfundene Wahrnehmung ("The Invented Perception"), Paderborn 1991
  • Herta Müller, Berlin 1992
  • Maria S. Grewe: "Imagining the East: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Minority Literature in Germany and Exoticist Discourse in Literary Criticism." In Germany and the Imagined East, edited by Lee Roberts. Cambridge 2005 http://www.mariagrewe.com/
  • Maria S. Grewe: Estranging Poetic: On the Poetic of the Foreign in Select Works by Herta Müller and Yoko Tawada, Columbia University, New York 2009 http://www.mariagrewe.com/
  • Herta Haupt-Cucuiu: Eine Poesie der Sinne ("A Poetry of the Senses"), Paderborn 1996
  • Ralph Köhnen (Ed.): Der Druck der Erfahrung treibt die Sprache in die Dichtung ("The Pressure of Experience Forces Language Into Poetry"), Frankfurt am Main 1997
  • Brigid Haines,'"The Unforgettable Forgotten": The Traces of Trauma in Herta Müller's Reisende auf einem Bein', German Life and Letters, 55/3 (July 2002), 266-81
  • Brigid Haines and Margaret Littler, Contemporary German Women's Writing: Changing the Subject, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004
  • Brigid Haines (ed.): Herta Müller, Cardiff 1998
  • Martin A. Hainz: Den eigenen Augen blind vertrauen? Über Rumänien. ("Do You Trust Your Eyes Blindly? On Romania") From: Der Hammer – Die Zeitung der Alten Schmiede, Nr. 2, Nov. 2004, S.5-6
  • Grazziella Predoiu: Faszination und Provokation bei Herta Müller ("Fascination and Provocation in Herta Müller's Work"), Frankfurt am Main (and elsewhere) 2000
  • Nina Brodbeck: Schreckensbilder ("Terrifying Images"), Marburg 2000
  • Lyn Marven, Body and Narrative in German Literature, Oxford 2005
  • Herta Müller, Munich 2002
  • Carmen Wagner: Sprache und Identität ("Language and Identity"), Oldenburg 2002
  • Martin A. Hainz: Den eigenen Augen blind vertrauen? Über Rumänien. ("Do You Trust Your Eyes Blindly? On Romania") From: Der Hammer – Die Zeitung der Alten Schmiede, Nr. 2, Nov. 2004, S.5-6
  • Thomas Daum (Ed.): Herta Müller, Frankfurt am Main 2003
  • Diana Schuster: Die Banater Autorengruppe: Selbstdarstellung und Rezeption in Rumänien und Deutschland, Hartung-Gorre-Verlag Konstanz 2004
  • Carmen Wagner: Sprache und Identität ("Language and Identity"), Oldenburg 2002

See also

References

  1. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4774078,00.html
  2. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  3. Mueller wins Nobel literary prize. BBC News. 8 October 2009.
  4. "Interview With Herta Mueller". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  5. Nagorski, Andrew (2001), "Nightmare or Reality?(Review)", Newsweek International
  6. "The Land of the Green Plums."", Quadrant, 43 (6): 83, 1999 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  7. EVZ.ro - Scandal românesc cu securişti, svastică şi sex, la Berlin şi New York
  8. BBC World Service, The Strand, Interview with Denis Scheck about Herta Müller, Thursday 8 October 2009
  9. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_en_ot/eu_nobel_literature
  10. Google Books Retrieved on 7 October 2009
  11. On Google Books Retrieved on 7 October 2009
  12. Review Retrieved on 7 October 2009
  13. Everything I Possess I Carry With Me, (New books in German).

Template:German

External links

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