Botho Strauss (German: [ˈboːtoː ˈʃtʁaʊs] ; written as Botho Strauß) (born 2 December 1944) is a German playwright, novelist, and essayist.[1]
Botho Strauss | |
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.jpg) Botho Strauß photographed by Oliver Mark, Uckermark 2007 | |
| Born | 2 December 1944 (age 79) Naumburg, Germany |
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Early life
editHis father was a chemist.
After finishing his secondary education, Strauss studied German, History of the Theatre and Sociology in Cologne and Munich. He never finished his dissertation on Thomas Mann und das Theater. During his studies, he worked as an extra at the Munich Kammerspiele.
Career
edit
From 1967 to 1970, he was a critic and editorial journalist for the journal Theater heute (Theater Today). Between 1970 and 1975, he worked as a dramaturgical assistant to Peter Stein at the West Berlin Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer.
After his first attempt as a writer, a Gorky film adaptation, he decided to work as a writer. Strauss had his first breakthrough as a dramatist with the 1977 Trilogie des Wiedersehens, five years after the publication of his first work. In 1984, he published Der Junge Mann (The Young Man), translated by Roslyn Theobald in 1995.
With a 1993 Der Spiegel essay, Anschwellender Bocksgesang ("Swelling He-Goat Song")[N 1][2] a critical examination of modern civilisation, he triggered a major political controversy as his conservative politics was anathema to many.
In his theoretical work, Strauß showed the influence of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Adorno, but his outlook was also radically anti-bourgeois.
In 2014, Carl Hanser Verlag brought out a compendium of Strauß’s aphorisms called Allein mit allen, spanning close to four decades from 1977 to 2013, and edited by German scholar Sebastian Kleinschmidt.
Strauss lives in Berlin as well as in the nearby Uckermark region. In 2017, he switched from his long-time publisher Carl Hanser Verlag to Rowohlt Verlag.[3]
Recognition
edit- 1974: Hannoverscher Dramatikerpreis
- 1977: Förderpreis of the Schiller Memorial Prize
- 1981: Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste
- 1982: Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis
- 1987: Jean Paul Prize
- 1989: Georg Büchner Prize
- 1993: Berlin Theatre Prize
- 2001: Lessing-Preis der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg
- 2007: Schiller Memorial Prize
Notes
editReferences
edit- ^ Adelson, Leslie A. (1984). Crisis of subjectivity: Botho Strauss's challenge to West German prose of the 1970s. Rodopi. pp. 240ff. ISBN 978-90-6203-906-7. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
- ^ Strauss, Botho (8 February 1993). "Anschwellender Bocksgesang". Der Spiegel (in German). Retrieved 15 October 2019.
- ^ "Botho Strauß künftig bei Rowohlt". Boersenblatt.net (in German). 26 January 2017. Retrieved 6 February 2017.
External links
edit
- Botho Strauß: New German dramatic art. Goethe-Instituts Website
- "Books in Brief: Fiction" on Couples, Passersby by Erik Burns, The New York Times (29 December 1996)