Gert Hofmann

Who was Gert Hofmann?

Gert Hofmann was a German writer and professor of German literature. Hofmann was born in Limbach, Saxony and died in Erding.

He grew up in his native Limbach. In 1948, he moved with his family to Leipzig. There, he attended a school for translators, studying English and Russian. In 1950, he enrolled to the University of Leipzig, where he studied Romance languages and Slavic languages. In 1951, he fled from the German Democratic Republic and settled in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he continued his studies. In 1957, he graduated with a thesis on Henry James.

After one year as a research assistant at the University of Freiburg, he left Germany in 1961 to teach German literature in Europe and the United States: he taught at universities in Toulouse, Paris, Bristol, Edinburgh, New Haven, Berkeley and Austin. From 1971 to 1980 he lived in the southern Austrian town of Klagenfurt, while teaching at the University of Ljubljana. In 1980 he moved to Erding, where he died in 1993.

Hofmann began his career as a writer of radio plays, becoming a novelist later in life after his return to Germany. He subsequently received several literary awards during his lifetime including the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis, the Alfred-Döblin-Preis, and the Müncher Literaturpreis.