The Modern Novel

Biography

Wolfgang Koeppen was born 1906 in Greifswald. He was illegitimate and was brought up by his mother. He left school shortly after the end of World War I and worked in a bookshop and volunteered in a theatre, while pursuing studies at the local university. He continued in a variety of odd jobs, including theatre work, while starting to write. After his mother’s death at age 44 in 1925 from a brain tumour, he left Greifswald and moved to Berlin. He became more and more involved in theatre and worked as literary and theatre critic for the Berliner Börsen-Courier, till it is closed down by the Nazis at the end of 1933. His first novel appeared in 1934 and his second one the following year. During the war he worked as a scriptwriter in Munich. He took up novel writing again after the War, with Tauben im Gras (Pigeons on the Grass), his best-known work, published in 1951. This was the first in a trilogy that criticized the post-war Adenauer era and brought him to fame. He continued to publish till his death in 1996. He is now best known for possibly having stolen the memoirs of a Jew who survived the Holocaust and publishing them as his own original fiction.

Other links

Wolfgang Koeppen
Wolfgang Koeppen (in German)
Wolfgang Koeppen (in German)
Wolfgang Koeppen (in German)
Wolfgang Koeppen (in German)
Wolfgang Koeppen (in German)
Der Fall Koeppen (in German)
Interview (in German)
Interview (in German)