Martin Walser facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Martin Walser
Walser in 2007
Born	(1927-03-24)24 March 1927 Wasserburg am Bodensee, Bavaria, Germany
Died	28 July 2023(2023-07-28) (aged 96) Überlingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Occupation	Novelist
Education	University of Regensburg University of Tübingen
Period	1955–2023
Notable works	Runaway Horse
Notable awards	Georg Büchner Prize 1981 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 1998
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Martin Walser ( 24 March 1927 – 28 July 2023) was a German writer.

Life

Walser was born in Wasserburg am Bodensee, on Lake Constance. His parents were coal merchants, and they also kept an inn next to the train station in Wasserburg. He described the environment in which he grew up in his novel Ein springender Brunnen (English: A Gushing Fountain). From 1938 to 1943 he was a pupil at the secondary school in Lindau and served in an anti-aircraft unit. According to documents released in June 2007, at the age of 17 he became a member of the Nazi Party on 20 April 1944, though Walser denied that he knowingly entered the party, a claim disputed by historian Juliane Wetzel. By the end of the Second World War, he was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. After the war he returned to his studies and completed his Abitur in 1946. He then studied literature, history, and philosophy at the University of Regensburg and the University of Tübingen. He received his doctorate in literature in 1951 for a thesis on Franz Kafka, written under the supervision of Friedrich Beißner.

While studying, Walser worked as a reporter for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk radio station, and wrote his first radio plays. In 1950, he married Katharina "Käthe" Neuner-Jehle. He has four daughters from this marriage: Franziska Walser is an actress, Alissa Walser is a writer-and-painter, and Johanna and Theresia Walser are professional writers. Johanna has occasionally published in collaboration with her father. German journalist Jakob Augstein is Walser's illegitimate son from a relationship with translator Maria Carlsson.

Walser in 2010

Beginning in 1953 Walser was regularly invited to conferences of the Gruppe 47 (Group 47), which awarded him a prize for his story Templones Ende (English: Templone's End) in 1955. His first novel Marriage in Philippsburg (German: Ehen in Philippsburg) was published in 1957 and was a huge success. After this Walser worked as a freelance author. His most famous work is the novella Runaway Horse (German: Ein fliehendes Pferd), published in 1978, which was both a commercial and critical success.

Walser received the Georg Büchner Prize in 1981.

In 2004, Walser left his long-time publisher Suhrkamp Verlag for Rowohlt Verlag, after the death of Suhrkamp director Siegfried Unseld. An unusual clause in his contract with Suhrkamp Verlag made it possible for Walser to take publishing rights over all of his works with him. According to Walser, a decisive factor in instigating the switch was the lack of active support by his publisher during the controversy over his novel Tod eines Kritikers (English: "Death of a Critic").

Walser was a member of Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) in Berlin, Sächsische Akademie der Künste (Saxon Academy of Arts), Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Poetry) in Darmstadt, and member of the German P.E.N.

In 2007 the German political magazine Cicero placed Walser second on its list of the 500 most important German intellectuals, just behind Pope Benedict XVI and ahead of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass.

Walser died on 28 July 2023, at the age of 96.

Political engagement

Martin Walser at a reading in Germany, 1992

From Left to Right

Walser was also known for his political activity. In 1964, he attended the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, which was considered an important moment in the development of West German political consciousness regarding the recent German past. He was involved in protests against the Vietnam War. During the late 1960s, Walser, like many leftist German intellectuals including Günter Grass, supported Willy Brandt for the election to the office of chancellor of West Germany. In the 1960s and 1970s Walser moved further to the left and was considered a sympathizer of the West German Communist Party. He was friends with leading German Marxists such as Robert Steigerwald and even visited Moscow during this time. By the 1980s, Walser began shifting back to the political right, though he denied any substantive change of attitude. In 1988 he gave a series of lectures entitled "Speeches About One's Own Country," in which he made clear that he considered German division to be a painful gap which he could not accept. This topic was also the topic of his story "Dorle und Wolf".

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade

In 1998 Walser was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. His acceptance speech, given in the former Church of St. Paul (Paulskirche) in Frankfurt, invoked issues of historical memory and political engagement in contemporary German politics and unleashed a controversy that roiled German intellectual circles.

Walser in 2012

Death of a Critic

In his 2002 roman-à-clef Death of a Critic, Martin Walser denounced the one of the most prominent literary critics in Germany, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, labeling him as a symbol of a corrupted cultural milieu as well as attacking his person. Its publication started a scandal, especially considering Reich-Ranicki's Jewish heritage and Walser's former membership in the Nazi Party. Even before the novel was fully released, the book was hotly debated. On 29 May, months before the book's August release date, Frank Schirrmacher, editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote an open letter to Walser to inform him that contrary to tradition, an excerpt from his book would not be published in the feuilleton of the FAZ: "This book is an execution, a settlement of accounts, a document of hate", he wrote. The FAZ continued to publish expressions of support for Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who was Schirrmacher's predecessor at the FAZ. Its arch-rival daily paper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung from Munich, supported Walser.

Walser in 2008

Works

In German – and in English, if translated

Selected filmography

• Der Abstecher, directed by Günter Gräwert [de] (1962, TV film, based on the play of the same name)
• Eiche und Angora, directed by Rainer Wolffhardt [de] (1964, TV film, based on the play of the same name)
• Eiche und Angora, directed by Helmut Schiemann [de] (East Germany, 1965, TV film, based on the play of the same name)
• Die Zimmerschlacht, directed by Franz Peter Wirth (1969, TV film, based on the play of the same name)
• Überlebensgroß Herr Krott, directed by Martin Batty and Karl Vibach (1971, TV film, based on the play of the same name)
• The Unicorn, directed by Peter Patzak (1978, based on the novel of the same name)
• The Fall [de], directed by Alf Brustellin (1979, based on the novel of the same name)
• Runaway Horse [de], directed by Peter Beauvais (1986, TV film, based on the novella of the same name)
• Alles aus Liebe, directed by Rainer Boldt [de] (1986, TV film, based on the story Säntis)
• Ohne einander, directed by Diethard Klante [de] (2007, TV film, based on the novel of the same name)
• Runaway Horse, directed by Rainer Kaufmann (2007, based on the novella of the same name)

Screenwriter

• Chiarevalle wird entdeckt, directed by Hannes Tannert (1963, TV film)
• Havoc, directed by Peter Fleischmann (1972)
• Weak Spot, directed by Peter Fleischmann (1975)
• Tatort: Armer Nanosh [de], directed by Stanislav Barabáš [de] (1989, episode of the TV series Tatort)
• Tassilo, directed by Hajo Gies [de] (1991, TV series, 6 episodes)

See also

In Spanish: Martin Walser para niños