"Ich gestehe, ich brauche Geschichten, um die Welt zu verstehen." Die Vielfalt der Themen und die Entwicklung eines unvergleichlichen Stils treten in den Erzählungen von Siegfried Lenz deutlich hervor. Brillant verdichtet er auf engstem Raum und mit außerordentlicher Intensität Situationen und die Gefühlswelten seiner Figuren. In der Tradition der deutschen Novelle, der russischen Erzählung und der angelsächsischen Kurzgeschichte stehend, hat Siegfried Lenz die kurze Form zu einer in der Gegenwartsliteratur beispielhaften Meisterschaft geführt. "Lenz schreibt unglaubliche und letztlich, da mit künstlerischen Mitteln beglaubigt, doch glaubhafte Erzählungen; sie mögen einem bisweilen unwahrscheinlich vorkommen, aber sie sind immer wahr." Marcel Reich-Ranicki Diese eBook-Ausgabe wird durch zusätzliches Material zu Leben und Werk Siegfried Lenz ergänzt.
Author
Siegfried Lenz (1926 - 2014) was a German author who wrote twelve novels and produced several collections of short stories, essays, and plays for radio and the theatre. He was awarded the Goethe Prize in Frankfurt-am-Main on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's birth. Lenz and his wife, Liselotte, also exchanged over 100 letters with Paul Celan and his wife, Gisèle Lestrange between 1952 and 1961. Lenz was the son of a customs officer in Lyck (Elk), East Prussia. After his graduation exam in 1943, he was drafted into the navy. According to documents released in June 2007, he may have joined the Nazi party on the 12th of July 1943. Shortly before the end of World War II, he defected to Denmark, but became a prisoner of war in Schleswig-Holstein. After his release, he attended the University of Hamburg, where he studied philosophy, English, and Literary history. His studies were cut off early, however, as he became an intern for the daily paper Die Welt, and served as its editor from 1950 to 1951. It was there he met his future wife, Liselotte (d. February 5, 2006). They were married in 1949. Since 1951, Lenz worked as a freelance writer in Hamburg and was a member of the literature forum "Group 47." Together with Günter Grass, he became engaged with the Social Democratic Party and aided the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt. A champion of the movement, he was invited in 1970 to the signing of the German-Polish Treaty. Since 2003, Lenz was a visiting professor at the Düsseldorf Heinrich Heine University and a member of the organization for German orthography and proper speech.
