Katrin Askan (born 21 February 1966) is a German author. She was born in East Germany, but in 1986, three years before the changes that finally adumbrated an end to the one-party dictatorship, she managed to escape to the west. A (slightly) fictionalised version of the long build-up to the event and of the escape itself, with a powerful resonance of authenticity, constitutes the core of her 2000 novel "Aus dem Schneider".[1][2][3]

Life and works

Katrin Askan was born in East Berlin. After passing her Abitur (school leaving exams), which under most circumstances would have cleared the path to university-level education, she was enrolled on a traineeship in a hospital.[4] She subsequently found work in a book shop.[5] In 1986 she succeeded in smuggling herself into West Berlin, apparently taking an indirect route that included, during the most critical stage in the exercise, three hours in the boot of a car from the west.[1][2] This was followed by a lengthy stay in Sweden where one of the ways in which she supported herself was by undertaking translation work on programmes for radio stations.[6] She went on to study Germanistics and Philosophy at the Free University in the part of the city known before 1990 as West Berlin.[7] Then, in 1998, Askan moved to Germany's western media capital, Cologne, where she supports herself as a freelance author and Swedish language translator.[7]

Askan's debut novel, "A-Dur",[lower-alpha 1] appeared in 1996. Set in Berlin, it deals with the lives in the German Democratic Republic of three different characters and the destruction of their three individual dreams. It also treats the more generalised disorientation characteristic of post-modern societies.[8] It was well reviewed by critics.[4][7] "Aus dem Schneider",[lower-alpha 2] which appeared four years later, was three times as long and founder a wider audience.[9] It touched on a number of the same themes.[2]

Since 1988, Askan has also been publishing poems and prose pieces in various journals and anthologies. An example is her short story "Der Skorpion" which appeared in Muschelhaufen. She has also authored a number of radio pieces for Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg's Ohrenbär, a producer of radio programmes for children aged between four and eight.[10]

Recognition

In 1998 Katrin Askan won the Friedrich Hölderlin Literary Award ("Förderpreis") from the municipality of Bad Homburg.[11] In 1999 she was the recipient of the annual Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann Stipendium, funded and administered by her home city of Cologne.[6] In 2001 she won the "3sat-Prize", one of several annual awards made at the (Klagenfurt) Festival of German-Language Literature, for her novella "Landläufig".[12]

Selected works

  • Askan, Katrin (1998). A-Dur : Roman. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag. ISBN 3-932776-15-1. OCLC 39628224.
  • Askan, Katrin (1998). Eisenengel : Roman (in German). Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag. ISBN 3-932776-20-8. OCLC 39955163.
  • Askan, Katrin (2000). Aus dem Schneider : Roman (in German). Berlin: Berlin Verlag. ISBN 3-8270-0358-X. OCLC 45209186.
  • Askan, Katrin (2002). Wiederholungstäter : Erzählungen (in German). Berlin: Berlin Verlag. ISBN 3-8270-0421-7. OCLC 49333558.

Notes

  1. ↑ "A-Dur" translates into English as "A major"
  2. ↑ "Aus dem Schneider" translates into English literally as "from the tailor" or "tailor-made". However, in colloquial usage it also sometimes refers to what in English approximates to "getting out of the soup".[6] In both languages, this colloquial usage is becoming old fashioned, however.

References

  1. 1 2 Michael Adrian (8 September 2000). ""Aus dem Schneider": Vor der Flucht - Katrin Askan lässt Fragen offen". Verlag Der Tagesspiegel GmbH, Berlin. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 Hajo Steinert (25 May 2000). "Katrin Askan: Aus dem Schneider Roman Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2000 298 S. (review)". Die Zeit (online). Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  3. ↑ "Katrin Askan Aus dem Schneider". reviews from Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung & Süddeutsche Zeitung. Perlentaucher Medien GmbH, Berlin. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  4. 1 2 Marta Fernández [in Spanish] (2009). "Askan, Katrin". In Manuel Maldonado Alemán (ed.). La narrativa de la unificación alemana: autores y obras (in Spanish). Peter Lang. pp. 33–36. ISBN 978-3-03911-706-2.
  5. ↑ "Katrin Askan, Autorin, Lesung "Mutterstadt"". Regionale Künstler*innen. Glanz der Provinz, Groß Kreutz. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  6. 1 2 3 "Katrin Askan". Tysk forfatter, født i Østberlin. Borgrummet. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  7. 1 2 3 Weronika Buchwald (15 December 2011). "Reibungslose Fahrten? – die Reisen nach und fort von Ostdeutschland". Nicht anders als anderswo: Die Reisen in den europäischen Osten in der deutschsprachigen Literatur nach 1989/90 (PDF) (PhD thesis) (in German). pp. 149–158. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  8. ↑ Katrin Askan (1996). "A-Dur". VGE Verlag. ISBN 978-3354008915.
  9. ↑ Katrin Askan (2000). Aus dem Schneider. Berlin Verlag. ISBN 978-3827003584.
  10. ↑ Katrin Askan (author); Richard Barenberg (reader). Wer will schon Froschwurst essen?. Aus der OHRENBÄR-Radiogeschichte: Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst (Folge 7 von 7). Archived from the original on 2019-12-30. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  11. ↑ "Die Preisträgerinnen und Preisträger .... 1998". Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis der Stadt Bad Homburg. Hölderlin-Gesellschaft e.V., Tübingen. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  12. ↑ "Katrin Askan, "Landläufig"". 25. Tage der deutschsprachigen Literatur 2001. ORF Kärnten Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis, Klagenfurt. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
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