Kassel Grimm Poetics Professorship goes to Felicitas Hoppe

Hamelin-born Felicitas Hoppe (58) has been awarded numerous prizes and honors, including the Georg Büchner Prize in 2012. Her best-known narrative texts include the novels Paradiese, Übersee (2003), Johanna (2006), the fictional (auto)biography Hoppe (2012), and the young adult book Iwein Löwenritter (2008). She wrote about a voyage around the world on a container ship in the novel Pigafetta (1999).Last year she published Pravda. An American Journey, her fifth novel.

"We can look forward to a very interesting visiting professor and to insights into her complex and reflective understanding of writing and poetics," said Prof. Dr. Stefanie Kreuzer, a literature and media scholar from the Institute of German Studies at the University of Kassel; she oversees the Grimm Poetics Professorship. "Felicitas Hoppe has - in addition to numerous prizes, scholarships and honors - already held several poetics lectureships in Germany and abroad. She travels internationally, and her books have now also been translated into several languages, with the constellation of travel and writing appearing repeatedly in her literary works. In addition, Hoppe's play with fictionality and factuality, with postmodern strategies of textualization and self-reflexive procedures, with authenticity and masking, her authorial personality and various role assumptions is also reflected in the film 'Felicitas Hoppe says'. This is particularly interesting in the context of the Grimm poetics professorship, which is increasingly opening up to different medial modes of narration." This film (Oliver Held and Thomas Henke) was released in 2017.

Hoppe will deliver her inaugural public lecture at the university on July 2, tentatively at 6 p.m. A public reading from her work will follow on July 3, also at 6 p.m. In addition, she will give a poetics seminar for students. Exact times and locations for the events are yet to be announced.

The Grimm Poetics Professorship has been awarded annually at the University of Kassel since 1985 and is supported by the Kasseler Sparkasse. Previous holders include Juli Zeh, Rafik Schami and Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller. The Grimm Poetics Professorship is not to be confused with the professorship "The Work and Impact of the Brothers Grimm," held by Kassel Germanist Prof. Dr. Holger Ehrhardt.

Editors can obtain pictures of Felicitas Hoppe on request from the publisher S. Fischer.

Further information: https://www.uni-kassel.de/go/felicitas_hoppe

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Stefanie Kreuzer
University of Kassel
Modern German Literature / Media Studies
Tel.: +49 561 804 3319
E-mail: stefanie.kreuzer@uni-kassel.de

Sebastian Mense
University of Kassel
Communication, Press and Public Relations
Tel.: +49 561 804-1961
E-Mail: presse[at]uni-kassel[dot]de
www.uni-kassel.de