User:Obwaam/Gerhard Wolf (author)

Gerhard Wolf (born October 16th, 1928, Bad Frankenhausen) was a German author and publisher. He was married to Christa Wolf.

Life
Gerhard Wolf is the son of an accountant, and his mother died when he was twelve years old. He attended gymnasium in his hometown of Bad-Frankenhausen. He was employed as an airforce assistant from 1944 to 1945 and ended up being taken as a prisoner of war by the Americans. He passed his exit exams following his release in 1947. He was a teaching assistant and Neulehrer in Schlotheim (Thuringia) from 1951 to 1953. He studied German studies and history at the University of Jena from 1949 to 1951, marrying Christa Wolf in 1951. He was active as a radio editor in Leipzig and Berlin from 1951 to 1953. He continued his studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin, graduating with a German degree with distinctions. He has been working as an author since 1957.

In the following years, Gerhard Wolf was an active essayist, critic, and screenplay writer, most prominently as the chief editor of the Mitteldeutsche Verlag, where he was a publisher and promoter of the young generation of East German lyricists. He had always been a great admirer of Rilke. He was subject to Stasi observation starting in 1969. Wolf wrote the libretto for the opera Litauische Claviere (Lithuanian Pianos) by the composer Rainer Kunad, based on the novel of the same name by Johannes Bobrowski. The work made its debut in 1976 in the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, directed by Klaus Dieter Kirst. Wolf was among one of the signers of the 1976 resolution by which DDR creative artists protested against Wolf Biermann’s exile, upon which Gerhard Wolf was barred from the SED, which he had belonged to since 1946. He published the Märkischer Dichtergarten (Märkisch Poet's Garden) series during the 80s in collaboration with Günter de Bryn, who played an important part in the new reception of German Romanticism in the DDR. Works by numerous authors who were part of resistance groups of lyricists and DDR dissidents from the Berlin district Prenzlauer Berg appeared in the series Außer der Reihe (Out of the Ordinary), which was overseen by Wolf. He founded the publishing company Janus Press in 1991. He currently resides in Berlin.

Gerhard Wolf has been a member of the DDR writer’s union since 1958, and part of the DDR PEN-International center since 1973. He remains a member of the PEN-Centre in Germany to this day. He was elected as an honorary member of the Saxon Academy of the Arts in 2003. He received the Heinrich-Mann Prize in 1974 and jointly received the Rahel-Varnhagen-von-Ense Medal with Christa Wolf in 1994.