Wolf Wondratschek 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...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

. He was born in Rudolstadt

Rudolstadt

Rudolstadt is a town in the German Bundesland of Thuringia, close to the Thuringian Forest to the southwest, and to Jena and Weimar to the north....

 in Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

.

Life

Wondratschek grew up in Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe

The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

. From 1962 through 1967, he studied literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 and sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg

Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg

The Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg is a public research university located in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386, it is the oldest university in Germany and was the third university established in the Holy Roman Empire. Heidelberg has been a coeducational institution...

, Georg-August University of Göttingen

Georg-August University of Göttingen

The University of Göttingen , known informally as Georgia Augusta, is a university in the city of Göttingen, Germany.Founded in 1734 by King George II of Great Britain and the Elector of Hanover, it opened for classes in 1737. The University of Göttingen soon grew in size and popularity...

, and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main

Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main

The Goethe University Frankfurt was founded in 1914 as a Citizens' University, which means that, while it was a State university of Prussia, it had been founded and financed by the wealthy and active liberal citizenry of Frankfurt am Main, a unique feature in German university history...

. In 1968, Wolf won the prestigious Leonce and Lena Prize for poetry. http://www.literarischer-maerz.de/preistraeger.php The next year, Wolf's first book, Früher begann der Tag mit einer Schußwunde, came out to critical acclaim; the short stories included his famous piece, Mittagspause. During 1970 and 1971, Wolf was a guest-lecturer at the University of Warwick

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

. He continued to publish both poetry and prose during the 1980s when he took an extended vacation to the United States and Mexico. Upon his return to Germany, Wondratschek settled into residences in Munich and Vienna, publishing not only poetry and prose, but also radio plays and screenplays.

Work

Wondratschek was influenced mainly by writers from Gruppe 47, such as Ingeborg Bachmann

Ingeborg Bachmann

Ingeborg Bachmann was an Austrian poet and author.-Biography:Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of a headmaster. She studied philosophy, psychology, German philology, and law at the universities of Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna...

 and Paul Celan

Paul Celan

Paul Celan was a poet and translator...

. His work is characterized by its sparseness and usage of "colloquial language; his sentences are short and clear, grammatically reduced to a minimum."