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Herta Müller is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature for 2009
German author Herta Müller, her works once banned under the Romanian dictatorship, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2009. Müller received the news in Berlin, where she now lives. In announcing the prize on October 8, the Swedish Academy said that Müller “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.”
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- Müller carries a bouquet of flowers as she leaves her apartment in Berlin on the morning it was announced she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- (© dpa - Bildfunk)
Müller is the thirteenth German-language author to receive the Nobel Prize in literature since its inception in 1901. Her forerunners include Elfriede Jelinek (2004), Günther Grass (1999), Heinrich Böll (1972), Hermann Hesse (1946), and Thomas Mann (1929). She is also the twelfth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, one hundred years after the first woman, Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, was awarded the prize in 1909.
Born in 1953 in the German-speaking town of Nitzkydorf, Müller made her literary debut in 1982 with the collection of short stories Niederungen, censcored in Romania but published uncensored two years later in Germany. Her work Drückender Tango (oppressive tango) was also published in 1984. “In these two works Müller depicts life in a small, German-speaking village and the corruption, intolerance and repression to be found there,” according to a biography on Nobelprize.org. Müller left her native country in 1987, however, emigrating to Germany with her husband as she was prohibited from publishing in Romania because she had publicly criticized the Ceausescu dictatorship.
Her subsequent works — Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger (1992; Even Back Then, the Fox Was the Hunter), Herztier (1994; The Land of Green Plums, 1996) and Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet (1997; The Appointment, 2001) — continued to illustrate daily life under a failing dictatorship. Her latest work, Atemschaukel (2009), depicts the exile of German Romanians in the Soviet Union. Müller’s mother was one of many German Romanians to be deported by the Soviets in 1945 and she spent five years at a work camp in what is now Ukraine.
“I have not chosen the topic, the topic always chose me,” Müller said of the themes of dictatorship and exclusion that run through her works in an interview posted on Nobelprize.org. “I always wrote for myself in order to comprehend internally what was actually happening and what had become of me.” Müller said that feeling like an outsider has always been normal for her. She grew up as part of a minority, but even the German minority in Romania did not accept her because she did not write the “Heimat” literature they demanded. “In Germany I am always the Romanian, and in Romania I was always the German.”
Germany Hails Award for Müller
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- Author Herta Müller, here at a reading in Stuttgart, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2009.
- (© dpa - Report)
In Germany, the Nobel distinction was hailed as especially appropriate coming in the year of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“Again and again you have depicted in detail and poignancy what an unjust system does to the hearts and souls of the people,” Federal President Horst Köhler said in congratulating Müller. “Over and over you have written against forgetting and thereby reminded us of the high value of freedom, which is never a matter of course.”
Chancellor Merkel called the award a wonderful signal 20 years after the fall of the wall. “Herta Müller belongs to those writers who have more than earned this distinction. [She writes] outstanding literature, energized by a life experience that speaks of dictatorship, repression and fears but also of unbelievable courage.”
The head of the German Publishers & Booksellers Trade Assocation called the award a welcome surprise. “She is one of the greatest voices that we have; strong and dignified,” said Gottfried Honnefelder.
Literary critic Hellmuth Karasek, though rooting for US author Philip Roth, praised the work of Müller. Her new book Atemschaukel is one of the strongest works about the destructive effect of communism on people since Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.
In Washington, German Embassy Spokesman Matthias Klause also welcomed the distinction for the German author and for German-language literature. “We are pleased that through Herta Müller the German language and literature has again demonstrated its vibrancy and possibilities for artistic expression. As to the political dimension, Herta Müller is a personification of Europe’s complex history, the coexistence of various cultures in their Romanian and German heritage. By overcoming borders she has demonstrated, above all, the power of freedom and creativity. Herta Müller and her work personify the thirst for artistic and personal freedom. The Swedish Academy’s decision therefore has enormous symbolic political significance to us 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
© Germany.info
