Rainald Goetz
Autorenfoto zu Rainald Goetz

Rainald Goetz

Rainald Goetz, born in Munich in 1954, studied history and medicine in Munich and obtained a PhD in both subjects. He briefly worked as a physician but quit the profession for the sake of literature in his early thirties. His first novel Irre, set in a psychiatric hospital, was published in 1983. Goetz subsequently also succeeded as a playwright. In 1998, Goetz wrote the internet diary »Rubbish for Everyone«, probably the first literary blog in Germany, which was published in book form in 1999 and together with Rave, Jeff Koons, Celebration and Dekonspiratione, constitutes Heute Morgen, Goetz’s great history of the present. Rainald Goetz has received numerous prizes, most notably the Büchner Prize in 2015. He lives in Berlin.

Rainald Goetz, born in Munich in 1954, studied history and medicine in Munich and obtained a PhD in both subjects. He briefly worked as a physician but quit the profession for the sake of literature in his early thirties. His first novel Irre, set in a psychiatric hospital, was published in 1983. Goetz subsequently also succeeded as a playwright. In 1998, Goetz wrote the internet diary »Rubbish for Everyone«, probably the first literary blog in Germany, which was published in book form in 1999 and together with Rave, Jeff Koons, Celebration and Dekonspiratione, constitutes Heute Morgen, Goetz’s great history of the present. Rainald Goetz has received numerous prizes, most notably the Büchner Prize in 2015. He lives in Berlin.

Awards (selection)
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 2018
Georg Büchner Prize 2015
Marieluise Fleißer Prize 2013
Schiller-Gedächtnispreis 2013
Berliner Literaturpreis along with the Heiner Müller Guest Professorship at the Peter Szondi Institute of the Free University of Berlin 2012
Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize 2000
Else-Lasker-Schüler-Dramatikerpreis 1999
Heinrich Böll Prize 1991
Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis 1988, 1993,...
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Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 2018
Georg Büchner Prize 2015
Marieluise Fleißer Prize 2013
Schiller-Gedächtnispreis 2013
Berliner Literaturpreis along with the Heiner Müller Guest Professorship at the Peter Szondi Institute of the Free University of Berlin 2012
Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize 2000
Else-Lasker-Schüler-Dramatikerpreis 1999
Heinrich Böll Prize 1991
Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis 1988, 1993, 2000
Kranichsteiner Literaturpreis 1983
Praise
»Behind his nervous, tense willingness to experience, there is a broad education and a sensitive historical consciousness that endow his language with a balance of passionate expressiveness, observational coolness and satirical clarity.« The German Academy of Language and Literature, on the occasion of the awarding of the 2015 Georg Büchner Prize

»Rainald Goetz is the most important trendsetter in German literature.« Süddeutsche...
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»Behind his nervous, tense willingness to experience, there is a broad education and a sensitive historical consciousness that endow his language with a balance of passionate expressiveness, observational coolness and satirical clarity.« The German Academy of Language and Literature, on the occasion of the awarding of the 2015 Georg Büchner Prize

»Rainald Goetz is the most important trendsetter in German literature.« Süddeutsche Zeitung

PUBLICATIONS

Lapidarium
Year of Publication: 2024
Rainald GoetzYear of Publication: 2024
LAPIDARIUM is a book featuring three plays that address the dark matter of humanity in the early 21st century: torture, terror, suicide.

The comedy of manners REALM OF DEATH portrays the political process that led from the 9/11 terror attacks to the systematic torture of prisoners of war in the American detention facilities in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. With reference to...
wrong
Year of Publication: 2024
Rainald GoetzYear of Publication: 2024
WRONG: Performance, lecture, lesson, interview, critique: all wrong, time and again. And yet, it is important as an author to participate directly in public discussions through these kinds of textual interventions, lively, chaotic, glimmering, the self presented without protection, not just distilled in the final death-form of the work.

Writing as if you were talking, as if you wanted...
Johann Holtrop
Year of Publication: 2012
Rainald GoetzYear of Publication: 2012
The fall of a CEO. Johann Holtrop tells the story of a German CEO in the first decade of the twenty-first century.


For the charismatic, clever, successful chief executive Dr. Johann Holtrop,...
Rights sold to:

Netherlands (Leesmagazijn), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Fazi)

Jeff Koons
Year of Publication: 2002
Rainald GoetzYear of Publication: 2002
Jeff Koons is the second volume of Heute Morgen (This Morning), a five-volume contemporary history that appeared between 1998 and 2000 and also includes Rave,...
Rights sold to:

France (L'Arche)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Oberon Books), Korea (Sung Kyun Kwan UP), Japan (Ronsosha), Poland (Ksiegarnia Akademicka), Czech Republic (Zivilverein Transteatral)

Rave
Year of Publication: 1998
Rainald GoetzYear of Publication: 1998

»Rave tells stories from life in the depths of the night. What are they really doing, these people who live at night, when they go somewhere to party every weekend? They listen to...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Fitzcarraldo), Netherlands (Het Balanseer), Denmark (Det poetiske Bureau), Sweden (it-lit)

Insane
Year of Publication: 1983
Rainald GoetzYear of Publication: 1983
In his legendary, audacious first novel, originally published in 1983, Rainald Goetz writes about psychiatry and about a hero of our time. What is the pain of the insanity of the insane? How...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Fitzcarraldo), Spanish world rights (Sexto Piso), France (Gallimard), Netherlands (Het Balanseer)


DISCOVER

News
Suhrkamp congratulates Rainald Goetz on his 70th birthday.
News
08.07.2015
The German Academy for Language and Literature has awarded the Georg Büchner Prize 2015 to Rainald Goetz.