Biography

Military service with the marines and on board ‘Admiral Scheer’

Studies Philosophy, English and Literature at the University of Hamburg

Internship with the English occupying forces newspaper Die Welt  in Hamburg, later becoming news editor and subsequently features editor

Works as a freelance writer

Joins Gruppe 47 (post-war German literary association)

Member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg

East Prussia Literature Prize; Literature Prize of the Free Port of Hamburg

Active in the Social Democratic pressure from the electorate

Arts Prize for Literature from the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia; Hamburg Readers’ Prize

Lecture trips to Australia and the USA

Travels along with Günter Grass at the invitation of Willy Brandt to the signing of the Warsaw treaty between Germany and Poland

Member of the German Academy for Language and Literature

Honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg

Culture Prize of the town of Goslar

Andreas Gryphius Prize

Lübeck’s Thomas Mann Prize

Wilhelm Raabe Prize

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Association

Literature Prize from the Heinz Galinski Foundation

Honorary doctorate from the Ben Gurion University in Israel

Bavarian Federal State Prize for Literature

Adolf Würth Prize for European Literature

Frankfurt’s Goethe Prize

Literature Prize of the town of Weilheim; honorary citizenship of the Free Port of Hamburg; honorary senator of the University of Hamburg; honorary doctorate of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg

Guest professor at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Gold Medal

Granted honorary citizenship by the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein

Lives in Hamburg and in Leböllykke in Denmark