Jump to content

Klaus Ebner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bocaj Neerg (talk | contribs) at 15:13, 4 June 2008 (→Life: Linguistic Review). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Klaus Ebner (2008)

Klaus Ebner (August 8, 1964 in Vienna) is an Austrian writer of narrative prose, essays and poetry, and a translator of French and Catalan literature into German. While publishing articles and books on software topics since 1989, and early literary fiction in magazines in the 1980s, his first collection of short stories was printed in 2007. Ebner writes poetry in German and in Catalan. His topics include multiculturalism and tolerance, and in numerous essays he talks about Catalan culture. He is a member of several Austrian writers' associations, such as the Grazer Autorenversammlung.

Life

Klaus Ebner was born on August 8, 1964 in Vienna, Austria. While his mother, Ingeborg, worked as a hairdresser, his father, Walter, was an employed salesman who, in the 1970s and later, sold home entertainment products. He grew up in a bourgeois middle class family in Vienna's third district.[1] In 1969, Barbara, his sister, was born. One year later, the family moved to Vienna's twentieth and slightly more working class oriented district. During several years, the family owned a small garden in Lower Austria where Ebner stayed on weekends and for summer vacation. For eight years, he attended high school in the neighboring second district in Vienna. His first writing experiences date back to this time already.[2] Much of his leisure time was dedicated to reading, science fiction first and then world literature. Another affinity was toward language and culture. Sometimes only supported by language books, he learned Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, and some basic Danish and Arabic.[3] This knowledge would leave traces in many literary texts to come.

In 1982, after a one month summer university stage in Tours, France, Klaus Ebner began to study Romance languages, German philology and studied Translation at the University of Vienna. His translation studies included the following languages: German (as basis), French and Italian. At the German philology department he used the opportunity to learn some Yiddish and to get acquainted with Jewish culture. At that time, he was already working for a literary circle and a Viennese magazine for literature.[4] Eventually he concentrated on various professional careers, such as translation,[5] foreign language teaching and the engagement in IT projects.[6] In the 1990s, he published articles and books on software and networking topics; while these books were written in German,[7] he also wrote some articles in English.[8] In 1999, he spent six weeks in North Carolina and was the co-author of a book in English about PC servers;[9] the other team members came from the US and Italy.

In 2001, while studying European economy at a Viennese university of applied sciences, he authored a paper in politics about islamism in Europe, which was published eventually in Germany.[10] The author's interest in Arabic and Muslim civilizations is reflected in several stories, such as in Momentaufnahme (Snapshot) and Flug sechs-zwo-zwo (Flight six-two-two)[11], orgiastisch (orgiastic)[12] and others. The university of applied sciences also provided him with basic knowledge in Russian.

Ebner has three children: David Dominique (*1987) and Sarah Aline (*1993) from his first marriage, and Eliah Antoine (*2002) with his lifetime companion Melania Leszecz. He has a very close relationship to his children and talks exclusively French with them in order to raise them bilingual. The writer is still living and working in Vienna. He is a member of the Austrian Writers' Associations Grazer Autorenversammlung (GAV)[13] and Österreichischer Schriftstellerverband (ÖSV).

Work

Since graduation from school, Klaus Ebner has written short prose, poetry and radio plays. Usually he published them in literary and cultural magazines. He is highly interested in Catalan language and culture; the topic of his university graduation paper from 1989, written in French, is titled The image of the Catalan Countries in French literature from Romantism till today and gives an early documentation of this inclination. Excerpts of a Catalan Diary were published in 1987.[14]

After the birth of his first son in 1987 and due to efforts of his bread and butter jobs, the literary activities came almost to a halt. During the 1990s he only published very few literary works. However, Ebner began to work on his novel Feuer's Geraun. Two chapters of this novel were published in early versions by the Upper Austrian magazine die Rampe in 1994 (Der Schreiber von Aram) and 1997 (Das Gesetz).[15] Jewish and biblical traditions form the heart of these stories, but when it comes to religion, the author remains ostensibly neutral due to his own atheist and non-religious conviction.[16]

After the year 2004, literary publishing became much more frequent.[17] Today, Klaus Ebner is an author of narrative fiction (novel, short story, short prose), essays and poems. He writes poetry in German and Catalan. Supported by a subsidy for literature from the Austrian government, he went to Andorra in 2007 and wrote an essay about the country in the Pyrenees.[18] He also translated the novel L'Absent written by his friend, the Catalan author Josep Navarro Santaeulàlia, into German. The inclination toward Catalan culture also translates to some cultural essays published by the magazine Literatur und Kritik.[19]

Style of writing

Ebner's works reflect the awareness of multicultural societies, the togetherness of different mentalities, languages, ethnicities and faiths.[20] Tolerance plays an eminent role, shown quite clearly by the second book, a collection of short prose, Auf der Kippe (On the Brink).[21] Several stories reveal social and political involvement. However, writing seems also to be a torture. On May 4, 1986, he wrote in his journal: Running became a torture. I wasn't allowed to stop, I had to move on steadily to ensure the course of events.[22] This theme came back with the first publication of short stories: Fortlauf (Continuation) tells an astonishingly similar story.[23]

His writing style is characterized by a very careful and acribic wording. Each sentence has its melody, and especially short prose tends to sound quite lyrical. Paul C. Jezek put it that way: His sentences are like Japanese paintings - every word has been chosen with special care.[24]

Since the early 1980s, Klaus Ebner writes a - non-published - journal. In an early publication, which also contains some pages from this journal, he described the act of writing a journal or diary as essential for evolving as a writer and refine his literary style.[25] The Catalan Diary indicates that Ebner's journal includes travel reports, lyrical descriptions of landscapes and people, and even some poetry.[26]

Critical interpretation

The publications of Klaus Ebner reveal a huge variety of topics. Bound together under the umbrella of five sections, each of which assembling nine stories, the book Lose (Destinies) presents somewhat rural communities,[27] scenes of city life,[28] autobiographic experiences,[29] stories that evoke Austria's Nazi past[30] or islamism,[31], and lyrical impressions.[32]

While the story Der Pflücker (The Picker)[33] describes a man who goes into the deep forest to pick some children who are riping on trees, in order to bring them to their new families, and thus evokes the traditional image of the child-bearing stork, the text sheds an ambiguous light on how our society treats children in general. The picker is recognized from far, so he gives his name, which is only a designation, to the whole story:[34]

The picker could be recognized from a distance, since nobody was as tall as he, and nobody trudged as tenaciously over streets and fields as he, rolling a cumbersome wagon with wooden wheels from village to village, in most cases to return right before dusk and take lodging in a country inn, and nobody else laid as much importance on going to people and asking what they would like him to bring them the next time he came by.

— From: The picker, Translation by Anne Holcomb

When the picker arrives at the clearing, a rather surrealistic scene is presented:[34]

With his face turned upwards, the picker stepped around and through the trees, determining where the most girls and the most boys grew, and in case there was an equal number of each for a change, he sat on the ground and observed the behavior of the children from between the leaves: their facial expressions, the glances they threw one another, the gestures with their tiny hands, and the attempts to work themselves loose from the twig - which naturally did not succeed because the connection to the mother-tree was in their backs where they could not reach.
The movements of those children who were left-over in the autumn and endured the winter in the crown of the tree grew weaker in the cool season, because the cold sapped their body-heat and their skin became bluish-red and stiff-frozen. Quietness hovered over the clearing after a fresh snowfall, and now and then a tiny cornice of snow would fall to the ground as one of the children opened its eyes or sneezed. On winter days such as these, the picker came only to see that his trees and the fruits he wanted to sell early in the year were not being harmed by the frost.

— From: The picker, Translation by Anne Holcomb

Most of the story ressembles an idyll or a fairy tale. However, the end evokes rather a massacre, when the picker stumbles and loses the basket with the children that rolls along the path and hits hard on the ground:[34]

Shocked and panting with anger, he knelt on the ground, righted the basket, and opened it. He shook his head ever so slightly as he gazed at the muddled confusion of individual arms and legs, feet and hands, rumps and heads, which had totally lost their relationship to each other. Dumbfounded, he pulled a small leg out, looked at it from all sides, surprised that the little bodies had not held together better than that.

— From: The picker, Translation by Anne Holcomb

Although the story of The picker has been included in the book Lose, its first publication dates back to 1995.[35] Klaus Ebner uses symbols and rarely narrates fully realistic stories. Therefore his protagonists only have first names or even no name at all. Thomas Rackwitz calls the wine cellar of the story Weinprobe (Wine degustation) a "place full of symbols".[36] Symbols also show up in early publications, such as Der Kaiser (The Emperor), in which the monarch eats up the book of a writer.[37] On the other hand, the allusions of the short story Physikstunde might insinuate a difficult relationship between the author and his mother at youth.[38]

Awards and accomplishments

In 1982, he was awarded the Youth Prize for Literature (Großer Österreichischer Jugendpreis) for the novella Das Brandmal (The stigma), which had attracted the attention of Austrian critic and jury member Hans Weigel. Weigel compared Ebner to Austria's 19th century novella writer Ferdinand von Saar.[39] The novella tells the story of a young community servant who through his service gets acquainted with a seemingly bewildered pensioner. Eventually he learns that the old man is a Viennese Jew whose bewilderment is a direct consequence of his experiences during the Third Reich. For the first time in his life, the young community servant learns about Austria's role during World War II and about the concentration camps, about which the old man begins to talk. One year later the novella was published in several parts in Israel's German newspaper Israel Nachrichten.[40]

At the International Poetry Prize Nosside, he was mentioned with a poem in German, accompanied by its English translation. The jury referred to the "metropolitan tristesse" in the poem which describes a paperman whose "meal consists of loneliness".[41] The short verses depicts a homeless person, someone who lives in public parks and owns some paper stuff packed onto an old supermarkt caddy. The poem[42] goes as follows:

German
(original poem) 		English
(presented to Nosside by the author)

ein Zettler krank
 vergessen ganz im Suff
 die Wagenräder sperren
 zäh
 sein Mahl besteht aus Einsamkeit
 garniert
 mit Sehnsucht nach Vergangenem
 betört von lauten Rufen
 Hoffnung
 wie vor langem sie
 verlosch

a paperman and sick
 forlorn in drunkenness
 the wheels are blocking
 clumsily
 his meal consists of loneliness
 its garnish
 is the yearning for the past
 beguiled by shouts of thunder
 hope
 that long ago
 has died

In 2008 Klaus Ebner was awarded the Wiener Werkstattpreis of 2007. The winning short story Der Flügel Last (The Wings' Burden) describes a seven year old girl who suffers from cancer. The narrative style evokes the child's perspective. The winning essay Was blieb vom Weißen Ritter? (What Remains of the White Knight?) gives some insight into the medieval novel Tirant lo Blanch by Joanot Martorell from Valencia. The author intermingled his own reading experience with philological and historical information.[43]

Awards and Literary Prizes

  • 2008 Subsidy for Literature by the Austrian Government
  • 2007 Wiener Werkstattpreis 2007, Vienna
  • 2007 Travel Subsidy by the Austrian Government
  • 2007 "Menzione" at the Premio Internazionale di Poesia Nosside, Reggio Calabria
  • 2005 Feldkircher Lyrikpreis (4th)
  • 2004 La Catalana de Lletres 2004 Mention and publication in the anthology, (Barcelona)
  • 1988 Erster Österreichischer Jugendpreis for the novel Nils
  • 1984 Radio Play Award by the literary magazine Texte (3rd)
  • 1982 Erster Österreichischer Jugendpreis for the novella Das Brandmal/The Stigma

Books

  • Auf der Kippe/On the brink; prose (in German), Arovell Verlag, Gosau 2008, ISBN 978-3902547675
  • Lose/Destinies; short stories (in German), Edition Nove, Neckenmarkt 2007, ISBN 978-3852511979

Contributions to anthologies (examples)

  • Träume/Dreams; short prose (in German), in: Junge Literatur aus Österreich 85/86, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-215-06096-5
  • Heimfahrt/Coming Home; short story (in German), in: Ohnmacht Kind, Boesskraut & Bernardi, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-7004-0660-6
  • Island/Iceland; poem (in German), in: Vom Wort zum Buch, Edition Doppelpunkt, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-85273-056-2
  • Abflug/Departure; short story (in German), in: Gedanken-Brücken, Edition Doppelpunkt, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85273-102-X
  • El perquè de tot plegat/The Reason of All This; poem (in Catalan), in: La Catalana de Lletres 2004, Cossetània Edicions, Barcelona 2005, ISBN 84-9791-098-2
  • Das Begräbnis/The Funeral; short story (in German), in: Kaleidoskop, Edition Atelier, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-902498-01-3
  • Weinprobe/Wine degustation; short story (in German), in: Das Mädchen aus dem Wald, Lerato-Verlag, Oschersleben (FRG) 2006, ISBN 3-938882-14-X
  • Routiniert/Routined; short story (in German), in: Sexlibris, Schreiblust Verlag, Dortmund (FRG) 2007, ISBN 978-3-9808-2781-2
  • Die Stadt und das Meer/The City and the Sea; essay (in German), in: Reisenotizen, FAZ Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3950229943

Additional sources

  • Author's handbook "Literarisches Leben in Österreich" (Literature in Austria) Nr. 5 from the IG Autorinnen Autoren in Austria, Editor Gerhard Ruiss, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-900419-29-9, p. 730
  • Anthology "Kaleidoskop", Editor Eleonore Zuzak, Edition Atelier, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-902498-01-3, biography on p. 368
  • Literary Magazine "Lichtungen" Nr. 109/2007, Graz (Austria) 2007, ISSN 1012-4705, biography on p. 114
  • Literary Magazine "Podium" Nr. 143/144, Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-902054-48-7, story on p. 77, biography on p. 83
  • Literary Magazine "Literatur und Kritik" Nr. 397/398, Salzburg (Austria) 2005, essay on p. 19, biography on p. 111
  • Author's biography, literary magazine DUM (Austria)
  • Literary Magazine "Neue Sirene" Nr. 21, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-020358-9, ISSN 0945-9995, biography on p. 131

Notes

  1. ^ Cf. to the biographical note on the author's official website.
  2. ^ E.g. Ebner wrote a short theater play at the age of twelve and rehearsed it with his comrades at school. However, the play was never performed.
  3. ^ Cf. to the biographical note on the author's official website.
  4. ^ Austrian National Library; cf. entries about the magazine Texte, Vienna 1983-1986.
  5. ^ Cf. Ebner, Klaus and Dieter Lorenz: DNS-Implementierung im Windows-Netzwerk/Implementing DNS on Windows Networks; Microsoft Press, Unterschleißheim 2004, p. 427.
  6. ^ Cf. idem and Credle, Rufus, Klaus Ebner, John Greco and Massimo Re Ferrè: Migrating IBM Netfinity Servers to Microsoft Windows 2000; ITSO Redbook, Research Triangle Park NC 1999, p. X.
  7. ^ The books were published by Data Becker, Markt & Technik, IWT, TEWI and Microsoft Press between 1989 and 2004.
  8. ^ NT Update, issues 9, 10, 14ff., xephon, London 1999-2002.
  9. ^ Migrating IBM Netfinity Servers to Microsoft Windows 2000; ITSO Redbook, Research Triangle Park NC 1999.
  10. ^ Ebner, Klaus: Islamischer Fundamentalismus in der EU/Islamic Fundamentalism in the EU; essay (in German), GRIN Verlag, Munich 2001/2007, ISBN 978-3638696982
  11. ^ In: Lose, Neckenmarkt 2007, p. 133f.
  12. ^ In: Auf der Kippe, Gosau 2008, p. 79f.
  13. ^ Cf. to the members' list of GAV, entry about Klaus Ebner.
  14. ^ Cf. Der Erste Österreichische Jugendpreis: Literaturjahr 1987, Vienna 1987.
  15. ^ die Rampe 2/94 and 2/97, Linz 1994 and 1997.
  16. ^ Idem and biographical note on the author's official website.
  17. ^ Cf. to the anthology publication list on the author's official home page www.klausebner.eu, which indicates the respective publishing year.
  18. ^ Cf. Ebner, Auf der Kippe, p. 139 (author's biography).
  19. ^ He published essays about Barcelona and Andorra .
  20. ^ Cf. e.g. to the stories Notruf (Emergency Call), Momentaufnahme (Snapshot) and Der Pflegling (The Foster Son) in: Ebner, Klaus: Lose, Neckenmarkt 2007.
  21. ^ E.g. dämonisch/demoniac describes the encounter of two men personalizing islamism and evangelicalism, hanebüchen/preposterous questions fatalism, grotesk/grotesque and xenophil/xenophile attack xenophobism.
  22. ^ Das Laufen wurde zur Qual. Stehenbleiben durfte ich nicht, ich mußte laufen, um den Ablauf des Geschehens zu gewährleisten. In: Ebner, Klaus: Lyrisches, Vienna 1986, p. 31.
  23. ^ Ebner, Klaus: Lose, Neckenmarkt 2007, p. 75f.
  24. ^ Seine Zeilen sind wie japanische Malerei: Jedes Wort ist sorgfältig gewählt. Paul C. Jezek in: Club 1 Magazin nr. 54, Vienna 1988, p. 11.
  25. ^ Ich führe diese Aufzeichnungen, um mich ans Schreiben als Arbeitsvorgang zu gewöhnen, mich darin in vielerlei Hinsicht zu üben und, letzten Endes, sprachlich auszubilden. In: Ebner, Klaus: Lyrisches, Vienna 1986, p. 24.
  26. ^ Cf. to the extracts from the Catalan Diary in: Der Erste Österreichische Jugendpreis. Literaturjahr 1987, Vienna 1987, p. 64f.
  27. ^ Cf. to Der Pflücker, Der Trinker, Das Gehöft and Die Straße.
  28. ^ Cf. to Der Sammler, Das Stiegenhaus and Der Pflegling
  29. ^ Especially Widerspruch.
  30. ^ Cf. to Der Bücher Schatten.
  31. ^ Cf. to Momentaufnahme.
  32. ^ Cf. to Der Trinker and Höhenflug.
  33. ^ The English translation by Anne Holcomb, Little Rock AR, USA, is published on the author's official website.
  34. ^ a b c Translation by Anne Holcomb, Little Rock, AR USA
  35. ^ Der Pflücker (The picker) in: literary magazine Podium nr. 95, Neulengbach/Vienna 1995.
  36. ^ Rackwitz, Thomas (Ed.): Das Mädchen aus dem Wald, Oschersleben (FRG) 2006, p. 197.
  37. ^ In: Die Presse, Aprilbeilage, Vienna 1985
  38. ^ Cf. to Physikstunde. In: Physikstunde (Physics Lesson), p. 29ff.
  39. ^ Cf. to the article Ab nach Frankreich in: Club 1 Magazin nr. 1/83, Vienna 1983, p. 10f.
  40. ^ Das Brandmal, in: Israel Nachrichten, April issues 1983.
  41. ^ Cf. Amoroso, Giuseppe: L'immaginario dei poeti del Nosside 2007 e il loro potere di esprimere il mondo, Città del Sole Edizioni ISBN 978-8873511847, Reggio Calabria 2007; p. 41 (Italian version), p. 49f. (Spanish version), p. 58 (Portuguese version).
  42. ^ Ebner, Klaus: a paperman and sick, in: Amato, Pasquale and Mariela Johnson Salfrán: Nosside 2007, Città del Sole Edizioni, Reggio Calabria 2007, p. 113.
  43. ^ Both texts have been published in the Prize Brochure: Schaden, Peter (Ed.): wordshop x, FZA Verlag, Vienna 2008.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Klaus_Ebner&oldid=217083691"