Writer Monika Maron: author Monika Maron celebrates 75th birthday – Augsburger Allgemeine

Monika Maron is 75: In the GDR it was followed, in the West it was hailed as a critical voice. On Friday the Berlin writer Monika Maron 75 years old.

conflicts has Monika Maron never shied. Even with her debut novel “fly ash” to put the stepdaughter of former East German Interior Minister Karl Maron, 1981 to the SED state. For the first time they denounced the example Bitterfeld environmental degradation in the GDR – and promptly got pressure ban. In the West the book from the state became a bestseller. The German history remained since the film on which the Berlin writer unfolds its great themes of remembering and displacing, love and desire, break and age.

Monika Maron participates in political debates

Besides the contentious essayist switched repeatedly pointed in current political debates one, remember in the last few years with anti-Islamic tones, the critics of the stimulus figure Thilo Sarrazin. “I know I therefore harvest contradiction. But that’s nothing that bothers me in the slightest, “she says in an interview with the German Press Agency. That this neat, slim lady on Friday (June 3) turns 75, one would hardly believe in their vigor.

 

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Perhaps their resistance that the feeling I-against-all, already developed very early? “At school I was the only pioneer, I came from a Polish-Jewish family, was an illegitimate child and have squinted,” says the winner of the Kleist Prize. “That impressed likely.”

For the GDR Maron was a persona non grata

For the GDR remains despite its sensational West success with “fly ash” a persona non grata. Also the following works such as “The misunderstanding” and “The defector” come out only in the Federal Republic, but read in the GDR however.

In 1988, the mood is so bad that they GDR leaves with her family with the help of a three-year visa – with a reputation for a flawless dissident who has sometimes gone quite hard with their own countrymen to task ( “dullness “and” cowardice “).

All the more surprising proposes 1995 message, Maron had previously spied for the Stasi. Your silence is criticized without, however, it turns out that there are only two, moreover gave GDR critical reports under its code name Mitsu. Then Maron broke off cooperation with the secret service and was even observed from 1978 until their departure and out in the Act, “wild boar”.

Monika Maron’s books sell over a million copies

To date, the links are to its two reports on the author page of the publishing house, talking she does not like about the matter. “To me have my twelve Years Party membership more difficult weighed as the affair with the Stasi,” she had said earlier once.

Once again took the past they did last year, as the writer Chaim Noll in his memoirs, “The smuggling across the time limit” made dubious hints of Maron. You could enforce a removal of the passages.

Even after the Fall of the recent German past a theme, as in the successful novel was “Silence line six” (1991), in which it is about a generation gap in the GDR. Later just arise beyond politics remarkably insightful novels. Overall, their books sold over a million copies.

is convincing at the award-winning author, the exact drawing her characters and laconic, dry and ironic style. “Monika Maron is always kind to the cause. She still holds the fire of wrath soothing distance to the subject, “the verdict of the” Neue Zürcher Zeitung “once.

The age goes Monika Maron loosely

One of her most memorable works applies the book “Pavel’s letters”, in which they will investigate the history of their Polish and deported by the Nazis grandparents. To aging and failed life plans it comes about in the critically acclaimed romance novel “Animal triste” (1996), but also in “Ah Luck” (2007) and “Interlude” (2013).

Personally goes the passionate smoker age to rather loosely. With the birthday they connect especially feel to live, she says. “Is it beautiful. I would have to be already dead. “After several marriages (how many, will not reveal) she lives alone with her mongrel dog Momo in deepest West Berlin. Her son, photographer Jonas Maron, and her two grandchildren she has a good rapport.

And fear of dying? “Anxiety? No, it’s only just inconceivable that you simply may be lost, “she says. “I do not believe in a life after death – then only as Daisy or something.” dpa

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