Lutz Seiler

Lutz Seiler at the presentation of his novel Kruso at the Erlangen Poetry Festival 2014

Save the Date:

The GPP events with Lutz Seiler will take place on the following dates

• Wed., June 17, 2026, 6-8 p.m.: public poetry lecture
• Thu, June 18, 2026, 12-14: Poetics seminar (for Kassel students with pre-registration)
• Thursday, June 18, 2026, 6-8 p.m.: public reading

- Stefanie Kreuzer | As of March 3, 2026 -

Lutz Seiler (*1963) is currently one of the most important contemporary German-language authors. Originally appearing as a poet, he has also published stories, two novels and several essays 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).

Lutz Seiler's lyrical texts are characterized by a linguistically experimental and at the same time intertextually allusive style, with which he tentatively explores landscapes of the soul and past times in both the private and the socio-political sphere.

As a novelist, he takes up historical GDR themes at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification period, which the East German writer, who grew up in the Thuringian outskirts of Gera, experienced for himself as a witness to the reunification of Germany during his student days in Halle and Berlin. His debut novel Kruso (2014) is set around 1989 on the Baltic Sea island of Hiddensee and tells the story of a group of dropouts, misfits and GDR refugees around the eponymous leader 'Kruso' and the utopia of freedom beyond everyday life under real socialism. Kruso has been read as a page-turner that has 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 partly based on the events and characters of his first novel, but is set in the months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It focuses on an East German family that tries to build a new life in West Germany but is separated in the process, causing the father, mother and adult son to become increasingly estranged. Themes of East German and reunified German remembrance culture emerge clearly in both novels. At the same time, however, the texts also create anachronistic utopias and dystopias of human (co)existence, which appear to be removed in time and space. In this way, Seiler's texts, some of which are autobiographical, document the historical turning point on the one hand, but on the other hand they can be read as philosophical reflections on freedom and (living) community.

Lutz Seiler is now internationally renowned as a contemporary author. His texts have been translated into over 25 languages. Kruso was adapted for film under the eponymous title KRUSO (D 2018) in the German production directed by Thomas Stuber. Lutz Seiler has also 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. Lutz Seiler also 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) and finally the Kassel Grimm Poetry Professorship in 2026.