Bøger af Franz Fuhmann

The dignity of cognitively disabled people and the ethics of representing their lives are at the heart of an extraordinary yet little-known book first published in the former German Democratic Republic. Was für eine Insel in was für einem Meer, or What Kind of Island in What Kind of Sea (Rostock, Hinstorff, 1986) depicts residents of a church-run institution for people with cognitive disabilities in astonishing black-and-white photographs by Dietmar Riemann and in a probing, poignant essay by esteemed German writer Franz Fühmann. This important text, which moved from a medical model to a historical and cultural view of disability as an aspect of human identity and experience, is translated into English for the first time by Elizabeth Hamilton and includes reflections on the book and its impact. As fuller, global histories of disability are now being written, What Kind of Island in What Kind of Sea opens an essential window onto a formerly shuttered world, demonstrating the power of the arts to hone our capacity to perceive and appreciate human difference.

Franz Fühmann's magnum opus. At the Burning Abyss is a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry. Picking up where his last book, The Jew Car, left off, Fühmann probes his own susceptibility to ideology's seductions--Nazism, then socialism--and examines their antidote, the goad of Trakl's enigmatic verses. He confronts Trakl's "unlivable life," as his poetry transcends the panaceas of black-and-white ideology, ultimately bringing a painful, necessary understanding of "the whole human being: in victories and triumphs as in distress and defeat, in temptation and obsession, in splendor and in ordure." In 1982, the German edition of At the Burning Abyss won the West German Scholl Siblings Prize, celebrating its "courage to resist inhumanity." At a time of political extremism and polarization, has lost none of its urgency.

Four classical Greek myths retold with unexpected twists by an East German dissident.  Franz Fÿhmann‿s subversive retellings of four Greek legends were first published in East Germany in 1980. In them, Fÿhmann plumbs the ancient tales‿ depths and makes them his own. Attuned to conflict and paradox, he sheds light on the complexities of sex and love, art and beauty, politics and power. In the title story, the love of the goddess Eos for the mortal Tithonos reveals the blessing and curse of transience, while “Hera and Zeusâ€? probes the divine couple‿s tumultuous relationship and its devastating consequences for a world embroiled in war. Fÿhmann‿s unflinching account of Marsyas‿ flaying by Apollo has been widely read as a dissident political statement that has lost none of its incisive force. At times charged with sensuality, and at others honed to a keen analytical edge, Fÿhmann‿s shimmering prose is matched by Sunandini Banerjee‿s exquisite collages.

Offers an examination of the psychology of National Socialism. In this title, each story presents a snapshot of a personal and historical turning point in the life of the narrator, beginning with childhood anti-Semitism and moving to a youthful embrace - and an ultimate rejection - of Nazi ideology.

This work is a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry. Picking up where his last book, 'The Jew Car', left off, Fèuhmann probes his own susceptibility to ideology's seductions - Nazism, then socialism - and examines their antidote, the goad of Trakl's enigmatic verses.