Language Courses - Learn Languages in our Schools:
Study Abroad | Educational Holidays | Examination Courses
Learn German in Germany |
Language Schools in Germany | German Courses in Germany | German Lessons in
Germany |
Study trips to Frankfurt and Düsseldorf | DHS Exam Preparation Courses
| German Literature | Hans Magnus Enzensberger
One of the most important
figures of post-war German literature, this writer, essayist
and poet was born in 1929 in Kaufbeuren, Bavaria. After studying
Germanistics, Literature and Philosophy at the universities
of Erlangen, Friburg and Hamburg, and at the Sorbonne in Paris,
he worked as a journalist, professor, writer, essayist and
editor.
From
1965 to 1975, he formed a part of Group 47,
an association of authors that sought to revitalize German
language and literature after the Nazi era. In 1965 he founded
the magazine Kursbuch, and directed a literary
collection from 1985 onwards. The places he has lived in,
besides Germany, include Norway, Italy, USA, Mexico and Cuba.
Enzensberger began his
literary career in 1957, with the publication of a book of
poems Defense of the Wolves, followed by another
poetry book, Speaking German (1960). In his essays
he profoundly criticized the political system and the media:
this is evident in Details (1962-1964), Politics
and Crime (1964) and Elements for the theory of the
media (1971).
The political movements of the 60's, and especially
the French uprising in May '68, compelled Enzensberger to
call upon all other intellectuals to take an active role in
the "German political literacy campaign", an idea
that he himself put into practice in his documentary The
Havana Questioning (1970) and in the novel The Short
Summer of Anarchy: the Life and Death of Durruti (1972).
Other works that compile
his collection include Mausoleum (1975), The
Sinking of the Titanic (1978), The Philanthropist
(1984), The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure
(1997) and Where are you, Robert? (1998). His most
recent publication is The elixirs of Science (2002),
a selection of essays and poems.
