The German died on Thursday in Cologne at the age of 92 poet, novelist and author of radio plays Jürgen Becker, who was the laureate of the prestigious German Georg Büchner Literary Prize, the APA agency reported on Sunday, writes TASR.
He has been a member of Gruppe 47 since 1960 and won the aforementioned Georg Büchner Prize in 2014. A statement from the German Academy for Language and Poetry stated at the time that Becker “persistently changed the genre boundaries of poetry and prose”. As APA added, Becker worked until the last months of his life. The book launch of his new book was planned for the end of August, but Becker had to cancel it due to health reasons.
Becker was born in Cologne in 1932. At the beginning of World War II, the family moved to Erfurt. In the 1950s, Becker returned to the Rhineland. The memory of the war experienced in Thuringia and the experience of the division of Germany had a great influence on his work. Becker studied theater science, art history and German studies. Among other things, he was the editor of the Rowohlt Verlag publishing house and the head of the radio play editorial department at Deutschlandfunk.
Becker appeared on the literary scene in the 1960s, presenting himself with his highly experimental workwhich was the opposite of conventional discourse. In addition to poems, which are the mainstay of his work, Becker also wrote prose and radio plays.
