Herta Müller

The content on this page was translated automatically.

The Brothers Grimm Professorship for the summer semester 1998 has been awarded by the University of Kassel (GhK) to the writer and essayist Herta Müller.

The Kassel honor follows numerous awards that Herta Müller has received since she first attracted the attention of the literary public in the Federal Republic of Germany with her prose volume Niederungen, first published in Bucharest in 1984. This was quickly followed by works such as Drückender Tango(1984), Reisende auf einem Bein(1989), Barfüßiger Februar(1990), Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger(1992) and, in 1995, the novel Herztier (1995) and the collection of essays Hunger und Seide(1995).

Herta Müller, who is considered one of the most important contemporary German-language writers, lives and works in Berlin. She is a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry.

Herta Müller was born in Nitzkydorf/Romania in 1953 and studied German and Romance languages and literature at the University of Timisoara from 1972 to 1976. After initially working as a translator and German teacher, she was dismissed from teaching due to her refusal to cooperate with the "Securitate" secret police. Since then, she has worked as a freelance writer. However, because of her criticism of the Romanian Ceausescu regime, she was banned from working and publishing in 1984. In March 1987, she moved to the Federal Republic of Germany with her husband, the writer Richard Wagner.

GPP event series with Herta Müller

As part of the Brothers Grimm Poetry Professorship, Herta Müller gave a two-part poetry lecture entitled "Der fremde Blick oder Das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne" (The Foreign Gaze or Life is a Fart in the Lantern) on June 24 and 25, both starting at 7 p.m., in the Eulensaal of the Murhard Library. On the afternoon of June 26, she offered a workshop in conjunction with the GhK's Department of German Studies from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Eulensaal, and in the evening from 7 p.m. she read from her works in the Eulensaal.

Prizes and awards (selection):

1985 Rauris Literature Prize
1987 Ricarda Huch Prize
1989 Marieluise Fleißer Prize
1989 German Language Prize
1990 Roswitha Prize
1994 Kleist Prize
1995 European Literature Prize Prix Aristeion
1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
1999 Franz Kafka Prize of the City of Klosterneuburg
2001 Tübingen Poetry Lectureship
2002 Carl Zuckmayer Medal
2004 Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation
2005 Berlin Literature Prize
2006 Würth Prize for European Literature
2006 Walter Hasenclever Literature Prize
2007/2008 Scholarship of the International House of Artists Villa Concordia
2009 Honorary Award of the Heinrich Heine Society
2009 Nobel Prize for Literature
2009 Franz Werfel Human Rights Prize
2010 Hoffmann von Fallersleben Prize for contemporary critical literature
2010 Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany
2010 Honorary doctorate from Seoul Women's University (Korea)
2011 Samuel Bogumil Linde Prize
2011 Monismania Prize
2014 Hannelore Greve Literature Prize