Wolfgang Koeppen
© Isolde Ohlbaum
Wolfgang Koeppen
Wolfgang Koeppen was born on June 23, 1906 in Greifswald and died on March 15, 1996 in Munich. After spending eleven years in Ortelsburg (East Prussia), he returned to Greifswald in 1919. Due to financial reasons he had to leave grammar school and change to a lower secondary school, which he left without obtaining a diploma. After that, he dabbled in many different professions: he worked in a bookshop and at Greifswald's city theatre. As a commis chef he went to Sweden and Finland; in Würzburg he worked as a dramaturge. In 1927 he settled down in Berlin, where he began to work as an editor at the Berliner Börsen-Courier in 1931. He stayed there for two years. He wrote reportages, for the feuilleton, and started on his first literary works. His first novel, Eine unglückliche Liebe, was published in 1934. That same year he emigrated to the Netherlands, which is where he began writing the novel Die Jawang-Gesellschaft, which was to remain...
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Wolfgang Koeppen was born on June 23, 1906 in Greifswald and died on March 15, 1996 in Munich. After spending eleven years in Ortelsburg (East Prussia), he returned to Greifswald in 1919. Due to financial reasons he had to leave grammar school and change to a lower secondary school, which he left without obtaining a diploma. After that, he dabbled in many different professions: he worked in a bookshop and at Greifswald's city theatre. As a commis chef he went to Sweden and Finland; in Würzburg he worked as a dramaturge. In 1927 he settled down in Berlin, where he began to work as an editor at the Berliner Börsen-Courier in 1931. He stayed there for two years. He wrote reportages, for the feuilleton, and started on his first literary works. His first novel, Eine unglückliche Liebe, was published in 1934. That same year he emigrated to the Netherlands, which is where he began writing the novel Die Jawang-Gesellschaft, which was to remain unfinished. In 1935, the novel Die Mauer schwankt was published but hardly received any recognition. Koeppen returned to Germany in 1938, started working for the Bavaria Movie Corporation in 1941, and moved to Munich in 1945. He published Jakob Littner: Aufzeichnungen aus einem Erdloch anonymously in 1948. He agreed to have the book appear under his name only in 1992. In 1951, 1953 and 1954 three novels were published that are regarded as the most accurate description of the atmosphere of the republic under Konrad Adenauer: Tauben im Gras, Das Treibhaus and Der Tod in Rom. Koeppen's Reisen nach Rußland und anderswohin, Amerikafahrt und andere Reisen in die Neue Welt and Reisen nach Frankreich und andere Reisen created high regard for travel literature in Germany.
PUBLICATIONS
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Year of Publication: 2024
Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 2024
Novel Fragments
Wolfgang Koeppen’s novel fragments were produced over a period of almost sixty years. Though the author enjoyed phases of increased productivity, such as between 1951 and 1954, when his novels Pigeons on the Grass, The Hothouse and Death in Rome were released, he regularly found himself unable to realise his literary plans. Wolfgang Koeppen was without a doubt an author...
Year of Publication: 2018
Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 2018
Feuilletons
Wolfgang Koeppen once stated that no bibliography could ever exist that drew up a comprehensive list of all the newspaper contributions issuing from his pen. Jörg Döring has refuted this pessimism with this volume of the Complete Works. The complete overview of the feuilleton pieces is the result of a meticulous autopsy of almost every publication mouthpiece where Koeppen had the opportunity...
Year of Publication: 2016
Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 2016
Youth
Youth, published in 1976, is the only longer prose work that Wolfgang Koeppen completed after refraining from the genre for almost twenty years. Youth is composed of a...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Dalkey Archive), France (Hachette)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Russia (Progress), Netherlands (Querido), Japan (Dogakusha), Poland (Czytelnik), Czech Republic (Odeon), Bulgaria (Narodna Kultura)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Hörverlag)
Year of Publication: 1954
Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 1954
Death In Rome
In 1954, Wolfgang Koeppen published Death In Rome, the conclusion of a series of novels that are regarded today as the critical inventory of the early years of the German Federal...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Granta / Penguin), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Lucidabooks), France (Typhon), Netherlands (Cossee), Turkey (Kültür Yayinlari Iş), Greece (Kritiki), Macedonia (Ad Verbum)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (RBA), Catalan rights (La Magrana), Russia (Progress), Italy (Zandonai), Norway (Bokvennen), Poland (PIW), Czech Republic (Academia), Slovakia (Slovensky Spisovatel), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Narodna Kultura), Latvia (Liesma), Slovenia (Mladinska Knijga)
Year of Publication: 1953
Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 1953
The Hothouse
Bonn, March 1953: the days of the debates on re-militarization and Germany's accession to the European Defense Community become a fiasco for Keetenheuve, a member of parliament for the Social...
Rights sold to:
Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Lucidabooks)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (W.W.Norton; UK sublicense: Granta), Spanish world rights (RBA), Russia (Progress), Netherlands (Thoth), Finland (Kirjaythymä), Poland (PIW), Czech Republic (Academia), Slovakia (Slovensky Spisovatel), Hungary (Europa), Latvia (Liesma)
Year of Publication: 1951
Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 1951
Pigeons on the Grass
»Koeppen's work consists, as does that of all writers, of books of varied degrees of importance. I myself appreciate the early novel A Sad Affair, Death In Rome and the fragment...
Rights sold to:
USA (New Directions), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Lucidabooks), Serbia (Fabrika), Greece (Kritiki)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (RBA), Russia (Progress), France (Laffont), Netherlands (Thoth), Norway (Bokvennen), Finland (Kirjayhtymä Oy), Czech Republic (Academia), Slovenia (PAN), Israel (Carmel)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)
Year of Publication: 1934
Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 1934
A Sad Affair
A romantic roman à clef that tells the story of Sibylle, one of the greatest literary femmes fatales since Salomé.
A romance that anticipated Beat...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (W.W. Norton), France (Albin Michel), Norway (Bokvennen), Finland (Karisto)
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