Felicitas Hoppe

Early years

Felicitas Hoppe was born in Hamelin and grew up there. After her Abitur she studied literature, rhetorics and theology: from 1982 to 1984 at the Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen, from 1984 to 1986 at the University of Oregon and from 1987 to 1990 at the Freien Universität Berlin. In 2006 she was a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. She worked as a dramaturge and journalist. Since 1996 she has been a freelance writer living in Berlin.

Career

Her work often deals with transitory themes, as in "Picknick der Friseure", in a comical, but nevertheless thrilling way, which make her stories seem to be absurd. She also uses the technique of quotation for her novels, as in "Johanna", where she reconstructs the story of Joan of Arc using official case records. As a relatively young, successful and female writer, she belongs to a group of writers which literary criticism calls the "Fräuleinwunder".

For her work as a writer she received the following awards: in 1994 Alfred-Döblin-Stipendium (a scholarship), in 1996 Aspekte-Literaturpreis and the Ernst-Willner-Preis at the Festival of German-Language Literature in Klagenfurt, in 1997 the Rauriser Literaturpreis, in 2004 the Nicolas Born-Preis des Landes Niedersachsen, the Heimito von Doderer-Literaturpreis and the Spycher: Literaturpreis Leuk, in 2005 the Brüder-Grimm-Preis der Stadt Hanau. In 2005 she also held the Poetikdozentur: junge Autoren der Fachhochschule Wiesbaden. In 2007 she received Literaturpreis der Stadt Bremen and the Roswitha-Preis. In 2008 Hoppe held the Bert Brecht Gastprofessur at the University of Augsburg.

In 2012, Felicitas Hoppe was awarded the most prestigious literary prize in German literature, the Georg Büchner Prize.

Works