Literature

You can learn to write better: the Leipzig German Creative Writing Program and the University of Hildesheim train writing talents to become authors.

They are called “Creative Writing” (Leipzig) and “Creative Writing and Cultural Journalism” (Hildesheim) and are among the most popular university courses in Germany. Each year, approximately 600 young writers apply to the German Creative Writing Program in Leipzig (Deutsches Literaturinstitut in Leipzig / DLL) and scarcely fewer to the University of Hildesheim. Only about 20 applicants at each school succeed in getting into the Bachelor and, more recently, the Masters program. The requirement: submitted sample texts must show sufficient literary talent. In other words, they have to work and show the recognizable beginnings of an independent voice. Once they have passed this scrutiny, the authors are invited to a personal interview with professors and student representatives of the faculty. But what does a course of studies at a writing school look like?

The versatile author: creative writing and cultural journalism in Hildesheim

The skills taught at Hildesheim are versatile. Thomas Klupp studied Creative Writing and Cultural Journalism in Hildesheim, is now a lecturer there and, by the way, also a successful writer. He describes the profile of the Hildesheim program as follows: “We focus on writing practice, on reflective and literary critical elements”, adding as clarification: “You can already see that from the teachers. We have three heads: Hanns-Josef Ortheil, the founder of the Institute, is a seasoned writer and has a doctorate in German philology; Stephan Porombka is a literary critic, journalist and literary entrepreneur; and Christian Schärf is a literary critic”.

Thus Hildesheim sets store on versatilely trained graduates. They should be able write at the highest level not only in literature but also in cultural journalism. In addition, the students are introduced to fields such publishing. The editor Jan Strümpel, for example, explains in his seminar what happens to a manuscript before it someday gets printed as a book.

Important festival, own publishing house, renowned journal

Hardly another creative writing institute can compete with what Hildesheim has to offer: in the Edition Pächterhaus , it has its own publishing house, which puts established authors such as Tobias Hülswitt as well as Hildesheim students into bookshops. The Hildesheim literature journal BELLA triste is also now one of the most important German publications when it comes to recent literature. And since 2005, the Hildesheim festival for young German literature, Prosanova, has been drawing thousands of people into the rooms and halls round the Institute: within the shortest space of time, it has established itself an essential part of the German cultural scene. The students themselves organize everything.

Focused and established: the German Creative Writing Program in Leipzig

Learning to write is a tradition in Leipzig. Since 1955, the university has taught creative writing. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Johannes R. Becher Institute for Literature was dissolved. Since 1995, everything in Leipzig again revolves round one thing: writing – at the newly founded German Creative Writing Program, now no longer its own university but a central institute of the University of Leipzig.

The study of “creative writing” in Leipzig has a focal point, namely work on the texts of the students. Students read and then criticize each other’s texts – if need be, for three hours on end. Each week a student has to study up to 100 pages of text by other students, and do so above all critically.

Claudius Nießen is the Executive Director of the DLL. “The training in Leipzig takes place mainly in the workshop seminars. Here everything turns on the literary texts of the students”. While most of the Leipzig seminars see themselves as text workshops, there are also courses in speech training and events on professional careers in literature and on the literary scene. Nießen contradicts the myth of the writer who need care for nothing other than his writing: “We naturally want writers to think about how they conduct themselves at readings, how they present themselves to the public. Every writer is in the end also an entrepreneur, who should have heard at least once in his life of things such tax statements, collecting societies such as VG WORT, and the Artists’ Social Insurance”.

Austria and Switzerland follow suit

Since 2006 and 2009 respectively, the Institute for Swiss Literature in Biel and the Institute for Language Art in Vienna have also been offering programs in creative writing. For Nießen and the DLL, networking with similar programs is important: “We place great value on exchange offerings for students”. In this way, students and teachers from Vienna and Biel keep coming to Leipzig and Hildesheim, and vice versa. For example, Sabine Scholl first taught at Leipzig and now teaches in Vienna. “The ties are close and the relationships collegial”, says Nießen.