The gathering, announced by his publisher as a “celebration”, was also supposed to be his evening. There was a celebration of 35 years of the Bibliothek der Provinz publishing house and a new year for Klaus Voswinckel. It was no coincidence that the Austrian publisher Richard Pils had invited people to the Lyrik Kabinett in Maxvorstadt on the evening before his birthday, on May 23rd. Voswinckel’s new prose work was also to be presented on this occasion. The title: “On the Way with Hope”.
But Voswinckel cancelled shortly beforehand, without stressing his situation. And Pils was also unable to present the book that evening as planned, because the author had not corrected the proofs in time. Now Voswinckel has died, on his birthday. His last texts, his publisher reports, can be read in retrospect as references to his illness, to his approaching farewell. For him, Voswinckel’s lines about “being on the road”, about an “inner and outer journey” were the high points of the deep feeling that the “modest, extremely warm and approachable” author was capable of.
Voswinckel was born in Hamburg in 1943. He studied philosophy in Freiburg im Breisgau and German at the LMU in Munich, where he lived from the mid-1960s when he was not in Apulia. Voswinckel found a second home in southern Italy. Voswinckel wrote his doctorate on the poet Paul Celan, whom he met in Paris. His study of the poet, who was born in what is now Ukraine, had a strong influence on the author and filmmaker. Further visits to the French capital led to intellectual encounters with Celan.
Despite all the depth that Voswinckel was able to throw himself into in his work, for example in his literary coping with his mother’s dementia, he also managed to achieve a refreshing lightness in words and images. This ability was perhaps due to his love of music and nature. In numerous films – he founded his own production company in 1977 – he devoted himself knowledgeably to composers and musicians, but also landscapes, foreign cultures and their people. He created film portraits of the pianist Nicolas Economo, the composers Wolfgang Rihm, Steve Reich, Moritz Eggert, as well as Siberia and Ghana.
Voswinckel was a member of the Association of German Writers and the German Pen Center. He received scholarships and awards, including the Literature Prize of the City of Munich, the Wilhelm Hausenstein Award of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and the Documentation Prize at the Unerhört Film Festival. Voswinckel leaves behind his wife Ulrike, a daughter, and a wealth of work. His last book is “not necessarily congruent with world events” (…) “a reflection on something quieter” and “gives us strength to breathe,” as Voswinckel wrote to his publisher.