A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF

ROLF DIETER BRINKMANN

Rolf Dieter Brinkmann was born in Vechta/Northern Germany on April 16, 1940.
In March 1958 he left secondary school after tenth' grade, and in 1959 he started
a training as a bookseller in Essen.
Without finishing it he moved to
Cologne in 1962. In 1964 he married
Maleen Kramer and his son Robert
was born.
Since the early sixties Brinkmann
published poems and prose - in the
beginning the latter was influenced
by the nouveau roman. In the midsixties he became one of the writers
who demanded the abolition of the
boundaries between 'high' prose and
'bold' writing. One way to press these changes forward could have been the
representation and adoption of style of the American beat literature and pop art in
European or German literature. Brinkmann's hope to influence the literal life in
the Federal Republic - too conventional in his opinion - was not fulfilled in this
way.
At the same time he was disappointed by the (post-)civil rights movement, which
displayed from his point of view a one-sided politicisation that draws all the public
attention. He reacted to these developments not only with partly subjective elitist
remarks and appearances but also with a growing loss of confidence in his own
artistic convictions.
As a result he continued his search for adequate forms of prose in seclusion and
writes collections of material that was not published during his lifetime. Literal
signs of life during this time are his radio plays, which are at the same time the
audible expression of doubt about the exclusively written form.
On April 23, 1975 Rolf Dieter Brinkmann died in a car accident in London,
England, after an appearance at an international poets' meeting in Cambridge,

because he disregarded the left-hand traffic - a German newspaper wrote: a

sensational "death la Andy Warhol."
His most important works are the novel "Keiner weiss mehr", the anthology
"Acid," the collection of letters "Rom, Blicke" and the collection of poems
"Westwaerts 1&2".
Translation: Su-Zien Kim
Something more:
"Ladies and gentlemen, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann"
bio and work
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