Hermann Lenz

Hermann Karl Lenz (26 February 1913 – 12 May 1998) was a German writer of poetry, stories, and novels.

A major part of his work is a series of nine semi-autobiographical novels centring on his alter ego "Eugen Rapp", a cycle that is also known as the Schwäbische Chronik ("Swabian Chronicle").

Lenz had been a German POW in U.S. custody during World War II.

He received over 15 literary awards.

Archives of his writings include some letters exchanged with his fellow writers Paul Celan and Peter Handke and others (see below: "Correspondence").

Lenz, son of art teacher Hermann Friedrich Lenz and his wife Elise, grew up until his eleventh year in Künzelsau and then in Stuttgart.

After graduation and failed theology studies in Tübingen, he began, in 1933, to study Art history, philosophy, Archaeology and Germanic studies in Heidelberg and to study from 1937 in Munich.

After early dramatic reading impressions (Mörike, Stifter, Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal and others), Lenz first wrote poems and prose pieces.

He first appeared in 1936, mediated by Georg von der Vring, with the poetry collection Gedichte, his first publication, which was followed before the war, with the repeatedly revised narrative Das stille Haus ("The Silent House").

Lenz published during 1936–1997 more than 30 books.

From 1940, Lenz was a soldier in France and Russia, and in 1946 prisoner of war in the United States.

Those experiences, that made the student and soldier, influenced his entire literary output.

From the start in opposition to Nazism, Lenz moved back into inner worlds – the Biedermeier or the Vienna Fin de siècle – the scene of many narrative texts and the object of reflections in countless character monologues.

After returning from captivity, Lenz was dedicated, except for secretary work in cultural institutions, just to write.

Almost without parallel in the German publications of 1945, this novel explores autobiographical events, and both cuts and captures the political history of Germany in the 20th century.

In 1946 he married the art historian Hanne Trautwein, whom he had met in 1937.

Lenz occasionally followed narrative traditions, especially with The Double Face (1949) or Spiegelhütte ("Mirror Cabins") (1962), building on forms of magic realism.

Lenz has been for many years little attention until then but stopped recognition and fame.

Hermann Lenz had a reading in October 1951 before the Gruppe 47, at the Laufenmühle, a place near Ulm, from an earlier version of the novel Nachmittag einer Dame ("Afternoon of a Lady"), the first part of Der innere Bezirk ("The Inner District").

His detached attitude to the group coincides with Paul Celan, who had read a year later in Niendorf.

The experience went into the novel Ein Fremdling ("A Stranger").

The combined under the collective title "Vergangene Gegenwart" are autobiographical novels:

Translations of titles, below, might need better poetic terms.

In the midpoint of his work is a nine-volume autobiographical novel cycle about the alter-ego figure "Eugen Rapp", which began with Verlassene Zimmer [The Abandoned Room] (1966) and concluded with Freunde [Friends] (1997).

Just as notable are the novels Andere Tage [Other Days] (1968) and Neue Zeit [New Age] (1975), of the daily confrontation with the Third Reich.

Lenz comes from an autobiographical concept ("Write as you are," is one of the central maxims).

It strives to accurately depict life in the details of a metaphysical background to indicate "flow into each other past and present".

In books like Lady and Executioner (1973) and Der Wanderer (1986) Lenz succeeded, again and again, with the autobiographical and merge of the transcendental component of his writing.

As the most prominent stylistic device he uses here the form of "internal dialogue", which makes the character perspective transparent and transferred to the reflections of the outside world directly into sensations.

In addition to his novels, and Rapp occasionally published poetry submitted by Lenz, a large number of novels and short stories.

Peter Handke helped him break through in 1973.

By 1975, both lived in Stuttgart, at Lenz' home, but inheritance disputes forced a move to Munich, home of his wife.

These delve, like Die Begegnung [The Encounter] (1979) and Memory of Edward (1981), into the 19th century world, or they design, as in the 1980 completed trilogy Der Innere Bezirk [The Inner District], conscious alternative plans for their own biography.

"Ich bin eben ein schwäbischer Dickschädel" ("I'm just a Swabian mule-head"), said Hermann Lenz on his 85th birthday, 26 February 1998, shortly before his death in May of that year.