The writer Birgit Vanderbeke is dead. The author died unexpectedly on December 24th, announced the Piper Verlag in Munich. The publisher cited the author’s family, who lived in the south of France. She was 65 years old. “With Birgit Vanderbeke, German-language literature is losing a powerful, headstrong and unmistakable voice. Our condolences go out to her husband and family,” said Piper publisher Felicitas von Lovenberg.
Vanderbeke was born in 1956 in Dahme, Brandenburg, and moved to Frankfurt am Main with her family in 1961. There she studied law, German and Romance languages. Her tale “Das Muschelessen” is best known. She also wrote “Alberta Receives a Lover” and an autobiographical trilogy of novels. Vanderbeke has received several awards, such as the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize and the Kranichsteiner Literature Prize. In 2007 she received the Brothers Grimm Professorship at Kassel University.