Hartmut Geerken
Encyclopedia
Hartmut Geerken is a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 musician, composer, writer, journalist, playwright, and filmmaker.

Life

Geerken studied orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...

, philosophy, German studies and comparative religion
Comparative religion
Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes the similarities and differences of themes, myths, rituals and concepts among the world's religions...

 in Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

 and Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, and produced a dissertation on Hellmut Ritter. He gave German language courses in Turkey for the first Turkish guest workers planning to go to Germany. As an employee at the Goethe Institute, he lived in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

 from 1966–1972, in Kabul
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...

 from 1972–1979, and in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 from 1979–1983. Since then he has lived in Herrsching am Ammersee.

Achievements

Geerken is as artist and arts organizer. As a percussionist, he has collaborated with a variety of free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 musicians such as Sun Ra
Sun Ra
Sun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...

, John Tchicai
John Tchicai
John Martin Tchicai is a Danish jazz saxophonist. He was one of the earliest European free jazz musicians. He is of Danish and Congolese descent....

, Sainkho Namtchylak
Sainkho Namtchylak
Sainkho Namtchylak is a singer originally from Tuva, a small autonomous republic in the Russian Federation just north of Mongolia. She is known for her Tuvan throat singing or Khöömei.-Style:...

. As a poet, he is a practitioner of concrete poetry
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....

 and organizes events such as the annual Bielefeld
Bielefeld
Bielefeld is an independent city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 323,000, it is also the most populous city in the Regierungsbezirk Detmold...

 New Poetry Colloquium. As an actor, he appeared in six films by Herbert Achternbusch and appeared in two of Achternbusch's plays at the Munich Kammerspiele
Munich Kammerspiele
The Munich Kammerspiele is a successful German language theatre in Munich. The Schauspielhaus in the Maximilianstrasse is the major stage.-History:...

. From 1991–1992, he held the Chair of Poetics at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen
Essen
- Origin of the name :In German-speaking countries, the name of the city Essen often causes confusion as to its origins, because it is commonly known as the German infinitive of the verb for the act of eating, and/or the German noun for food. Although scholars still dispute the interpretation of...

.

Geerken was also dedicated to the memory of the German literati Anselm Ruest. When he was on the trail of the estate of Victor Hadwiger, Geerken investigated an uninhabited house in southern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, where he instead found parts of the estate of Ruest, who had died in 1943. Ruest was, along with Mynona, editor of the Stirnerite journal Der Einzige, which was published in a small edition from 1919–1925. From the funds of the estate, Geerken found it was possible to reprint a complete set of Der Einzige, which was published in 1980.

In 1979, while Geerken was living in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

, Geerken made a study of the ethnomycology
Ethnomycology
Ethnomycology is the study of the historical uses and sociological impact of fungi , and can be considered a subfield of ethnobotany or ethnobiology...

 of the areas of Afghanistan in which he traveled, co-authoring two papers on the topic. In the second paper, he states that he had discovered a tradition of recreational use of the Amanita muscaria
Amanita muscaria
Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita , is a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita...

use among the Parachi-speaking people of the Shutul Valley.

Awards

Munich Literature Year (1984), Schubart Literary Prize (1986), Karl Sczuka Prize for Works of Radio Art: "südwärts, südwärts" (BR 1989) and "hexenring" (BR 1994).

Major works

  • Book publications include "murmel gedichte" (1965), "verschiebungen" (1972), "sprünge nach rosa hin" (1981), "poststempel jerusalem" (1993), "kant" (1998), "ogygia: vom ende des südens" (2004), "phos" (2005), "forschungen etc.'" (2006), "klafti" (2007), "kyrill" (2007), "soyd" (2008), "moos" (2008).
  • Co-editor of the series "Frühe Texte der Moderne". Editor of the works of Salomo Friedlaender, of various articles from expressionists, dadaists, and anarchists from the first half of the 20th Century, and the German biographer of Sun Ra.
  • Compositions, installations, albums, films, and radio plays.

External links

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