ABSTRACT
Born in the Lower Rhineland Wellershoff served in the army from 1943 to 1945, studied German literature, art history and psychology, completed in 1952 a doctoral dissertation on the poet Gottfried Benn, which was followed by the critical study Gottfried BennPhänotyp dieser Stunde (1959). He read before the Gruppe 47 in 1960 and spent 1973 as writer in residence at the University of Warwick. His earliest impact was as an author of radio plays, which consist mainly of psychological portraits in monologue form collected in Das Schreien der Katze im Sack (1970), but include also social criticism conveyed through the medium of a criminal investigation in Wünsche (1970). Meanwhile as reader for the publishers Kiepenheuer und Witsch he gathered together and promoted a number of young writers (including Herburger, Brinkmann and Born) who before they developed in different directions became associated under the label of the Cologne school of new realism, a theoretical concept devised and elaborated in a number of important essays. Having declared his allegiance to an international prose avant-garde in Der Gleichgültige (1963) he advocated in Literatur und Veränderung (1969) and Literatur und Lustprinzip (1973) a combination of psychological insight into characters under emotional pressure and precise evocation of everyday objects and surroundings as practised in the French nouveau roman, believing that the author by entering the subjectivity of his principal figures widens his own awareness and that of his readers. Other essay collections and theoretical works include Wiederherstellung der Fremdheit (1967), Fiktion und Praxis (1968), Transzendenz und scheinhafter Mehrwert (1972), Das Verschwinden im Bild (1980) and Der Roman und die Erfahrbarkeit der Welt (1989). After Ein schöner Tag (1966), about the breakup of a family, he produced three novels, Die Schattengrenze (1969), Einladung an alle (1972) and Die Schönheit des Schimpansen (1977), in which men are driven by various circumstances to commit serious crimes followed by flight or suicide. Die Sirene (1980) traces the collapse of a scientist’s ordered mental world under the influence of the title-figure, a female voice on the telephone. The long Der Sieger nimmt alles (1983) covers twenty years in the life of a businessman who after a deprived childhood studies economics, marries into a firm, undertakes shady deals which fail and dies alone from a heart attack in a hotel, alienated from wife and son. Wellershoff is also the author of short stories (Ein Gedicht von der Freiheit (1974) and Die Körper und die Träume (1986)), plays mainly for theatre and television and the autobiography Die Arbeit des Lebens (1985). Blick auf einen fernen Berg (1991) is a story on a brother’s death. Das geordnete Chaos (1992) comprises literary essays and Angesichts der Gegenwart (1994) assembles eighteen political pieces. Zikadengeschrei (1995) describes a holiday encounter between an architect and a mysterious women and its consequences.
