The first biography of the cult author – commemorating the 50th anniversary of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's death.
Rolf Dieter Brinkmann was the enfant terrible of German literature and is now considered almost cult. Until now, no one had attempted to capture this restless and tragically short life in a biography – until Michael Töteberg and Alexandra Vasa took on the challenge. They trace Brinkmann's life from his early years in the middle-class Catholic town of Vechta to his time in Cologne, where he witnessed the tremors of the 1968 upheaval and wrote poems that struck like a blow to German poetry; from his stay at Villa Massimo, which produced the fiercely angry book Rom, Blicke, and several trips to the USA, to his magnum opus Westwärts 1 & 2 and his tragic death in London in 1974.
Literary scholars Michael Töteberg and Alexandra Vasa had access to previously sealed archives, unpublished literary works, and letters. Through conversations with contemporaries and close friends, a portrait of Brinkmann emerges: uncomfortable, radical, uncompromising, yet also sensitive and empathetic. A wild provocateur, tender family man – and perhaps the most significant German poet since Brecht and Benn.
