literature
Emine Sevgi Özdamar receives the Georg Büchner Prize
The author Emine Sevgi Özdamar is awarded the Georg Büchner Prize 2022. photo
© Heike Steinweg/SV/German Academy for Language and Poetry/dpa
German literature owes her “a highly poetic sound” – Emine Sevgi Özdamar is the Büchner Prize winner 2022. In an interview with the dpa, she describes the motivation behind her work.
Preserving the past and loved ones is what drives Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s artistic work. “I used to always say I wanted to remember the dead,” the writer told the German Press Agency on Tuesday.
The German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt had previously announced that Özdamar would be awarded the renowned Georg Büchner Prize 2022. The Academy is thus honoring an author who has made remembering a central motif in her novels.
literature as memory
“When you write, you also find people you loved but who are no longer alive,” she says. Literature as memory – this is how one could perhaps summarize her work. Özdamar’s texts, which have been widely praised for their poetic language, are often autobiographical in color and contain references to literary works, films or artist friends.
She won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 1991. In 2022 her latest novel “A Room Delimited by Shadows” was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. Before that, nothing had been heard from her for several years. One of her best-known books is the novel “Life is a caravanserai: has two doors, I came in from one and went out from the other” (1992). The book is inspired by her life, as are the follow-up works The Bridge of the Golden Horn (1998) and Strange Stars Staring at the Earth (2003) and her most recent novel.
She worked at the theater
Özdamar was born in Malatya, Turkey and grew up in Istanbul and Bursa. In 1965 she came to West Berlin for the first time. After the military putsch in Turkey in 1971 with mass arrests and censorship, she returned to Berlin. She worked at various theaters, including with the Brecht student Benno Besson and with Claus Peymann. She began writing in Germany in the 1980s.
Turkey, Berlin, Munich, Bochum, Düsseldorf: “I’ve lived everywhere,” said the artist. “I found my first words for my books in Düsseldorf. It was a peaceful city and that’s where I started to write.” She was only rarely able to go to Turkey at the time. “We used to be able to come very little because I worked in the theater and so did my husband.” She now lives alternately in Turkey and Berlin.
The jury announced on Tuesday that the writer, who was born on August 10, 1946, has been enriching the German-language literary scene with her novels, short stories and plays for more than three decades. “With Emine Sevgi Özdamar, the German Academy for Language and Poetry is honoring an outstanding author to whom the German language and literature owes new horizons, themes and a highly poetic sound.”
Unfamiliar literary stylistic devices and ways of speaking inspired by Turkish shaped their texts, the jury said. In addition to intimate personal experiences, these would unfold a broad panorama of German-Turkish history, from the First World War to the present. Poetic, experimental, sprawling – that’s how others have described their work.
The book has to mature like a pregnancy
And she herself? “Human bodies are like ancient civilizations. We store several feelings in layers, these are the substances,” says Özdamar about her intention. She doesn’t want to put herself under pressure in her work. “From the very beginning I knew I wanted to write three novels in a row – childhood, young girl, young woman.” But she doesn’t like to start a new one immediately after she’s finished a book. Like a child during pregnancy, it has to mature.
The award of one of the most important literary prizes for German-language literature came as a surprise to her. “You’re always surprised, even with the other prizes. Suddenly the call comes.” As an early birth gift, Özdamar, who is currently on the Aegean coast in Turkey, doesn’t see the prize. “I didn’t even think of that.” She will be 76 this Wednesday and is only the twelfth woman to receive the Georg Büchner Prize.
Since 1951, the Academy has awarded the prize to writers who write in German. Özdamar is to receive the award, which is endowed with 50,000 euros, on November 5 in the State Theater in Darmstadt.
Information on the Büchner Prize Academy for Language and Poetry