Günter Eich. German poet , playwright and composer of radio works .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Trajectory
- 2 Death
- 2 Awards
- 3 Source
Biographical synthesis
Born in Lebus ( Brandenburg ), on February 1 , 1907 . He began to study Business Sciences at the universities of Berlin and Paris .
Trajectory
Before finishing his university studies, he decided he wanted to be a writer and published his first poems under the pseudonym Erich Günter in an anthology (Antologie jüngster Lyrik) edited by W. Fehse and K. Mann in 1928 . He became friends with O. Loerke and the circle of the literary magazine Die Kolonne (The column). He also worked for the radio. During the war he was taken prisoner by the Americans; he has never spoken in public about these years when practically nothing was known about him. He was one of the co-founding members of the Group of 47 .
He is considered to be the creator of the lyrical radio script. Despite the fact that his publications over 40 years were not very abundant (some collections of poems, only 30 radio scripts, two works for the puppet theater, two volumes of prose and some short stories).
In 1953 he married Ilse Aichinger, also a writer, and his publications decreased until 1968 , the year in which he returned his attention to him with an almost incomprehensible collection of prose texts (Maulwürfe, Topos). It is a montage of meaningless miniatures, aphorisms, banalities and political slogans.
He always refused to express himself about his texts, since he considered literature as a means of recognition that cannot be directed or analyzed. Most of his poems fit into the genre of a lyric of nature, like that of E. Langgässer and W. Lehmann, although their poems are more realistic, perhaps even more naturalistic. The later poetry books, however, reflect a negative nature, full of sadness (Untergrundbahn, Metropolitano, 1949).
His most famous poem is, without a doubt, the one titled Inventur (Inventory), in which he laconically reflects the reality of the prisoner of war. In 1970 he published Ein Tibeter in meinem Büro (A Tibetan in my office), understood as a continuation of Topos. In 1972 he published one more book of poems and a radio script, but in one of his last conversations with W. Jens in 1971 , he confessed that he was truly tired of writing.
In his radio scripts, Eich elaborates, among other themes, the postwar collective dream (Die Mädchen aus Viterbo, The Girls of Viterbo, 1958). He also reworked themes from the tales of popular tradition and mythology and religion, always with the critical intention of alerting his listeners to their apparent safety.
Death
He dies in Salzburg , Austria on December 20 , 1972 .
Awards
It achieved great popularity and won numerous awards: the Group of 47 in 1950 , the best radio script award given by the war blind in 1952 and the Georg Büchner in 1959 .
