Life

Hermann was born in West Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 in the St. Joseph hospital. She grew up in the West Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln and remained there until the mid-nineties, when she moved to the district of Prenzlauer Berg in the former East Berlin.

She holds a Masters degree in German and Philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 and attended the Berliner Journalistenschule, a highly selective professional academy for journalists. During this training she did an internship with the German language newspaper Aufbau

Aufbau

Aufbau is a journal for German-speaking Jews around the globe. It was founded in 1934 and is a member of Internationale Medienhilfe . Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Stefan Zweig wrote for the publication. Until 2004 it was published in New York...

 in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. While she was in America she worked on some of her first literary texts, and realized that short stories were "her" genre. In an interview she explained that her training as a journalist helped her to write concisely, although she knew that journalism was not suitable for her.

After returning to Berlin, she worked briefly as a free-lance journalist before she was awarded the Alfred-Döblin stipend from the Berliner Akademie der Künste

Akademie der Künste

The Akademie der Künste, Berlin is an arts institution in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1696 by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as the Prussian Academy of Arts, an academic institution where members could meet and discuss and share ideas...

 (Berlin Academy of Arts) in 1997. Recipients of this stipend are financed for three to twelve months while they live and work in the Alfred-Döblin House in Wewelsfleth.

In 1998 her first volume of short stories, called Sommerhaus, später was published, and well received by critics. From her work came the "sound of a new generation" and a "female wonder" (Spiegel 12/1999). The "female wonder" (Fräuleinwunder) refers to a generation of young female authors who are highly successful authors like Jenny Erpenbeck

Jenny Erpenbeck

-Life:Jenny Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner. In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, where she graduated in 1985...

, Felicitas Hoppe

Felicitas Hoppe

Felicitas Hoppe is a German writer.-Early Years:Felicitas Hoppe was born in Hamelin and grew up there. After her Abitur she studied literature, rhetorics and theology: from 1982 to 1984 at the Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen, from 1984 to 1986 at the University of Oregon and from 1987 to...

, Zoe Jenny

Zoë Jenny

Zoë Jenny is a Swiss writer. Her first novel, The Pollen Room, was published in German in 1997 and has been translated into 27 languages. Since 2003 she has been living in London. In 2008 she married Matthew Homfray, a British veterinary surgeon and pharmaceuticals consultant...

, Juli Zeh

Juli Zeh

Juli Zeh is a German novelist.Her first book was Adler und Engel , which won the 2002 Deutscher Bücherpreis for best debut novel. She traveled through Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2001, which became the basis for the book Die Stille ist ein Geräusch...

 or Julia Franck

Julia Franck

Julia Franck is a German writer.In 1978 Julia Franck and her family moved to West Berlin and later to Schleswig-Holstein. She studied German Literature and American Studies at the Free University of Berlin and spent some time in the United States, Mexico and Guatemala...

. Although "Fräulein" is an oldfashioned term and not politically correct anymore, the term is now often used in Literary Criticism. Judith Hermann received both the Hugo Ball Prize and the Bremer Literatur-Förderpreis. In 2001 she was awarded with the Kleist Prize

Kleist Prize

The Kleist Prize is an annual German literature prize. The prize was first awarded in 1912, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Heinrich von Kleist. The Kleist Prize was the most important literary award of the Weimar Republic, but was discontinued in 1933.In 1985 the prize...

.

This was followed up in 2003 by her second collection of stories Nichts als Gespenster, but to some extent she was unable to fulfill the high expectations of German critics. In 2009, her latest collection of short stories was published. Alice are five stories about the death of five men. This made Iris Radisch, a famous German critic for the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit

Die Zeit

Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...

 title her article about Hermann's new book "Das große Männersterben" (The death of many men). Despite the melancholic subject, these stories are also about hope and that life has to go on after death. In this respect, Alice is different from her earlier works, which had a much darker tone.

Works

• Summerhouse, later (2001, HarperCollins) ISBN 0-06-000686-2
• Sommerhaus, später (1998, S. Fischer) ISBN 3-596-14770-0
• Nothing but ghosts (2005, Fourth Estate) ISBN 0-00-717455-1
• Nichts als Gespenster (2003, S. Fischer) ISBN 3-596-15798-6
• Alice (2009, S. Fischer) ISBN 978-3-10-033182-3

Films

• Eisblumenfarm (based on "Sommerhaus, später")

Short-film by Dominik Betz (2004); with Philip Hellmann, Sara Hilliger, Gunnar Solka

• Freundinnen

Short-film by Tobias Stille (2005); with Anneke Kim Sarnau, Regina Stötzel, Murat Yilmaz

• Nichts als Gespenster

Drama by Martin Gypkens (2006); with August Diehl

August Diehl

August Diehl is a German actor, known for playing SS-Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellstrom in Inglourious Basterds and Michael "Mike" Krause, Evelyn Salt's husband, in the movie Salt.-Life and career:...

, Chiara Schoras, Fritzi Haberlandt

External links

• Portrait in "ZEIT" by Iris Radisch (German)