According to media reports, the German writer Martin Walser (1927-2023) has died. The “Südkurier” writes that the relevant information should be available, but that the family has not yet given a statement. Walser died at the age of 96, reports the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”.
Walser was born in 1927 in Wasserburg on Lake Constance. He was considered one of the most important authors of German post-war literature. The author received the Hermann Hesse Prize in 1957 for his first novel, “Ehen in Phillipsburg”. Numerous other awards were to follow. In 1981, for example, Walser was honored with the Georg Büchner Prize and in 1998 with the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
Other works by Walser include the novella “A Fleeing Horse” and the novel “A Jumping Fountain” as well as the novel “Death of a Critic”, which was controversial about two decades ago. At that time, anti-Semitism allegations against Walser, who rejected the allegations. The fact that the literary pope Marcel Reich-Ranicki (1920-2013), who liked to work on Walser, can be seen in the character of André Ehrl-König is “obvious”, the writer told the “Welt” in May 2002. And: “You can parody any public figure in literature, why not Reich-Ranicki?”
