Lutz Seiler wins top German literary award
July 18, 2023
The jury of the German Academy for Language and Poetry on Tuesday named poet-turned-novelist Lutz Seiler the winner of the Georg Büchner Prize.
The 60-year-old writer is perhaps best known for his novels, Kruso and Star 111, both influenced by his younger life in the former East Germany.
Who is Lutz Seiler?
Born in the town of Gera, Thuringia, Seiler first started to take an interest in literature while completing his national service in the East German army and went on to study language, literature and history.
His first publications were poetry collections, including the debut "Berührt-Geführt" (Touched-Guided), as well as the acclaimed "Pech & Blende" (Pitch & Glint), "Vierzig Kilometer Nacht" (Forty Kilometer Night), and "Schrift für Blinde Riesen" (Writing for Blind Giants).
In 2007, he was the recipient of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for the short story collection "Turksib" but it was the novel Kruso that propelled him to wider fame.
The story was inspired by Seiler's own life working as a seasonal employee on the island of Hiddensee, off the northeastern coast of Germany, which became a refuge for free thinkers and disillusioned East Germans wishing to escape across the sea to Denmark.
Kruso (a reference to Robinson Crusoe) documents the community of "shipwrecked people" on Hiddensee during the final months of the East German state.
The novel, which won the 2014 German Book Prize, was translated into 25 languages and adapted for theater and film.
Seiler's second novel Stern 111 (Star 111) tells the tale of a young man who joins a group of squatters in East Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It won the prestigious Leipzig Book Prize in 2020.
What is the Georg Büchner Prize?
The award, given by the German Academy of Language and Literature to German-language authors, is accompanied by €50,000 ($56,000) and is considered the most important German-language literary award.
Named after the 19th-century dramatist and writer Georg Büchner, it celebrates writers "in the German language who have notably emerged through their oeuvre as essential contributors to the shaping of contemporary German cultural life."
The plaudit was originally awarded to a whole range of artists, including actors and singers, but only those who came from Büchner's home state of Hessen. In 1951 changed to a general literary prize for all writers in the German language.
The prize is to be awarded to Seiler in the western German city of Darmstadt on November 4.
rc/sms (dpa, epd, KNA, AFP)