Jürgen Becker in Wiepersdorf
Obituary for Jürgen Becker
The writer Jürgen Becker died in Cologne on 7 November at the age of ninety-two. Becker is famous for his poetry and prose and also wrote numerous radio plays for Deutschlandfunk. In 2014, he was honoured with the Georg Büchner Prize as an ‘influental voice of contemporary poetry’. His first novel and his engagement with the history of German division in the 1990s as well as numerous visits connect him with Wiepersdorf. Jürgen Becker, born in Cologne in 1932, had lived in Erfurt from 1939 to 1947 and was able to rediscover the places and landscapes in the East after the German reunification. For him, it was also about ‘rediscovering a time that had seemed lost since childhood’ (as he wrote into the Wiepersdorf guest book).
Jürgen Becker stayed at Schloss Wiepersdorf for two months as a scholarship holder in 1996 and remained closely connected to the place ever since. Here, he worked on a piece of prose he had recently begun and, as he noted, made significant progress thanks to the concentrated atmosphere. This writing later became his novel ‘Aus der Geschichte der Trennungen’, which was published in 1999 and was influenced by his Fellowship in Wiepersdorf:
‘We sat under a huge chestnut tree in front of the old village smithy while the red color of the sunset faded between the distant park trees. Jörn poked around in the cracks of the table beams with a burnt match. Jörn stayed in the area for a few summer weeks - in the Niederer Fläming, he had grunted on the phone ...’
During his stay, he occasionally struck up conversations with people in the village pub. In the copy of the novel that he gave to the Wiepersdorf library, Becker wrote by hand: ‘Where it begins and ends, in Wiepersdorf.’ From then on, he enjoyed coming back regularly and was also present at the reunion of former fellowship holders in 2010.
We mourn the loss of an outstanding writer and endearing, warm-hearted person who left a lasting impression and took a piece of Wiepersdorf with him in his literary works.
