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Ludwig Fels (1946-2021)
Photo: Katja Lenz / picture alliance / dpa
The German writer and poet Ludwig Fels is dead. He died on Monday at the age of 74 in Vienna, his adopted home, as announced by his publishing house Jung und Jung.
Born in Treuchtlingen in Middle Franconia, Fels wrote novels and poetry as well as plays and radio plays.
He was known for his powerful visual style and his great immediacy.
His most recent work »Moon Quake«, which was published in 2020, was on the long list for the Austrian Book Prize.
After his school days in Bavaria, Fels first began an apprenticeship as a painter, which he quickly broke off.
He then worked as a laborer in various industries until he got into writing.
His experiences in the precariat and the anger against exploitation remained major themes in his work.
SPIEGEL called him, probably quite appreciatively, a "proletarian writer."
In 1973 Ludwig Fels published his first volume of poetry, »Anllauf«, followed by a volume of prose and other collections of poetry.
In 1975 the first novel "The Sins of Poverty" came out on the market.
The novel »An Absurdity of Love« (1981) was made into a film by ZDF.
In "Heaven Was A Great Presence" he dealt with his mother's cancer death.
Deceptive lifeline love
"Even his early books are characterized by a clear everyday language, which is often interspersed with aggressive vocabulary," writes the Berlin International Literature Festival about him.
His characters often live on the fringes of society, and love often appears as a deceptive lifeline.
One critic described Fels as "the most desperate erotic in contemporary literature."
In 2006, his "Journey to the Center of the Heart" was on the long list for the German Book Prize.
Recently his language seemed to have become a little milder and smaller, less violent language and fine emotions could also be read.
Fels lived in Vienna, his adopted home, since the 1980s.
For his often polarizing works, he received the City of Nuremberg Culture Prize, the Wolfgang Koeppen Prize, the Wolfram von Eschenbach Prize and the Johann Alexander Döderlein Culture Prize, among others.
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feb / dpa