Lutz Seiler is Grimm Poetry Professor 2026

Lutz Seiler (born 1963) originally came to prominence as a poet. In addition to his five volumes of language-experimental poetry to date - "berührt/geführt" (1995), "pech & blende" (2000), "vierzig kilometer nacht" (2003), "im felderlatein" (2010) and "schrift für blinde riesen" (2021) - he has also published short stories, two novels and several essays. Lutz Seiler's lyrical texts are characterized by an experimental and at the same time intertextually allusive style, with which he explores landscapes of the soul and past times in both the private and the socio-political sphere.

As a novelist, he takes up GDR themes at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification period, which the author, who grew up in the Thuringian region of Gera, experienced himself as a witness to the reunification of Germany during his student days in Halle and Berlin. His debut novel Kruso (2014) has been read as a novel about turning points, which impressed readers with its "completely independent poetic language" as well as its "sensual intensity and worldliness" (jury statement for the German Book Prize).

His second novel, Stern 111 (2020), is set in the months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It focuses on an East German family trying to build a new life in West Germany. Themes of East German and reunified German remembrance culture emerge clearly in both novels. Seiler's texts, some of which are autobiographical, document the historical period of change on the one hand, while on the other they can be read as philosophical reflections on freedom and (living) community.

Internationally renowned

Seiler is internationally renowned as a contemporary author. His texts have been translated into over 25 languages. Kruso was adapted for film under the title of the same name and directed by Thomas Stuber (2018). Seiler has already received numerous prestigious literary awards, including the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2007 for the story Turksib (2008), the German Book Prize in 2014 for Kruso and the Leipzig Book Prize in 2020 for Stern 111. In 2023, he was honored with both the Berlin Literature Prize and the Georg Büchner Prize for his complete works. Seiler already held the Heidelberg Poetry Lectureship in 2015, followed by the Bamberg Poetry Lectureship (2023) and the Visiting Professorship for German-Language Poetics at the Free University of Berlin (2023/24).

The GPP events with Lutz Seiler will take place on the following dates at the University of Kassel on the Holländischer Platz campus (HoPla):

• Wed, June 17, 2026, 6-8 pm | Campus Center, Lecture Hall 4 - public poetics lecture:
  "Lost in Los Angeles. The unwritten novel"
• Thursday, June 18, 2026, 12-14 p.m. | KW 5, Room -1030 - Poetics seminar (for Kassel students with registration): "Workshop of written and unwritten texts"
• Thursday, June 18, 2026, 6-8 p.m. | Campus Center, Lecture Hall 4 - public reading:
  "Das tickende Herz. The written novel & other stories"

Background: Brothers Grimm Poetry Professorship
The Poetry Professorship has been awarded by the University of Kassel since 1985 and is currently endowed by the Kasseler Sparkasse. To date, important authors, playwrights and filmmakers have been honored - including Herta Müller (1998), Volker Schlöndorff (2011), Felicitas Hoppe (2019), Terézia Mora (2021) and Judith Herrmann (2025). In public events, the prizewinners reflect on artistic processes and their work.

Further information:
www.uni-kassel.de/go/gpp-seiler

Organization/contact:
Prof. Dr. Stefanie Kreuzer
www.uni-kassel.de/go/gpp