Peter Handke

Handke spent part of his childhood in Carinthia and Berlin. He stayed in Tanzenberg as a boarding school student. In 1961, Handke completed his high school diploma in Klagenfurt. After school he began studying law in Graz. There he got to know the Graz group "Forum Stadtpark". This was followed by publications of prose texts and work on radio. His first novel "The Hornets" was published in 1966. Handke dropped out of his studies. Since then he has lived as a professional writer. Handke changed his residence between Germany, Austria and France. He has lived in Chaville near Paris since 1991. Handke played a key role in the discussion about the war in Kosovo and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. His political opinion on this sparked a public, controversial discussion. Peter Handke's early work is dedicated to language-critical considerations, including Berthold Brecht and contemporary playwrights.

He also commented on this at a meeting of "Group 47" in 1966. His most important thematic work is "Kaspar" (1968). The title already refers to the foundling Kaspar Hauser. In this work, Handke draws attention to the determinability and influence of language. In other works, Handke also turned critically to the conventionalized ways of perceiving and experiencing through language. He demanded that literature dissolve conventionalized meanings. He denied this ability to descriptive literature with its claim to realism. From 1969 to 1970 Handke lived in Paris. He then returned to Germany. In his story "The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty Kick" (1970), Handke himself used traditional narrative methods and broke away from the abstract nature of his reflective work on language and storytelling. Nevertheless, the piece is about perception influenced by language.

In his subsequent story "The Short Letter to the Long Farewell" (1972) begins a thematic series about the relationship between the self and the world and the individual self-discovery process. These thematic works include titles such as "Wishless Misfortune" (1972), "The Hour of True Sensation" (1975) or "The Left-Handed Woman" (1976), some of which are interspersed with autobiographical parts. Some of these works have a high level of writing style or mythicization, which gives them a special quality - for example the works "Long Homecoming" (1979), "The Teaching of Sainte-Victoire" (1980), "Children's Story" (1981) and "About the villages. Dramatic poem" (1981) of the tetralogy "Long Homecoming". Peter Handke reflects on writing in his short story "The Repetition" (1986) and in other works. His most extensive work is entitled "My Year in Nobody's Bay. A Fairy Tale from the New Times" (1994). In it, the writer describes the creation of the work "My Year in Nobody's Bay. A fairy tale from the new time". But themes and scenes from Handke's earlier work are also repeatedly included.

The title "On a dark night I left my quiet house" (1997) also contains a review of Handke's activities. His other works include "Audience Insults and Other Speech Pieces" (1966), "The Peddler" (1967), "The Inner World of the Outer World of the Inner World" (1969), "Chronicle of Current Events" (1971), "The Edge of Words, Stories, Poems, Pieces" (1975), and "The Weight of the World. A Journal" from 1977. Works such as "The Story of the Pencil" (1982), "Afternoon of a Writer" followed in the 1980s. (1987), "The hour when we knew nothing about each other" (1992), "A winter journey to the rivers Danube, Sava Morawa and Drina or Justice for Serbia" (1996), "Lucie in the forest with the Thingsda" (1999) or "Questioning through tears. Subsequent notes from two wartime crossings of Yugoslavia, March and April 1999" (2000). Literary critics discuss the author Peter Handke and his works controversially. The spectrum of judgment extends from admiration to polemic. On the one hand, his literary individualism and the precision of his linguistic expression are praised, but on the other hand, there are accusations of being unrealistic and of false pathos.

In 2004, Handke visited Slobodan Milosevic in prison in The Hague, which once again sparked critical discussions in the media. He also appeared as a speaker at Milosevic's funeral on March 18, 2006. In May 2006, the renowned Comédie Française in Paris removed Handke's play "Game of Questions" from its program. Meanwhile, there were numerous arguments because Handke was nominated for the Heinrich Heine Prize. On June 8, 2006, he announced his renunciation of the literature prize, which was endowed with 50,000 euros. At the time of its founding, Handke declared that he did not want to see his person or his work continue to be exposed to the "harassment" of local politicians. Handke's award, which was decided by the jury and questioned again by the Düsseldorf city council, was heavily criticized internationally because of his advocacy for Serbian politics and his participation in the funeral of the former ruler Slobodan Milosevic.

In 2018, Handke received the Nestroy Theater Prize for his life's work and in 2019 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.