Karl-Markus Gauß
Encyclopedia
Karl-Markus Gauß is an Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n contemporary writer, essayist and editor. He lives in Salzburg.

Biography

Gauß has a degree for German Philology
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and History
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 from the University of Salzburg. He very early published literary essays, primarily in the magazine Wiener Tagebuch (Viennese Diary). Since 1991, Gauß is editor in chief of the literary magazine Literatur und Kritik
Literatur und Kritik
The Austrian literary magazine Literatur und Kritik was founded in April 1966 by the Austrian writers Rudolf Henz, Gerhard Fritsch, and Paul Kruntorad as successor of the literary publication Wort in der Zeit, which had existed since 1955.-Profile:Compared to its predecessor, Literatur und Kritik...

, published by the Salzburg publishing house Otto Müller Verlag. In addition, he writes articles and essays for Austrian, German and Swiss newspapers and magazines, such as Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...

, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...

, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung is a major German language Swiss daily newspaper based in Zurich.One of the oldest newspapers still published, it originally appeared as Zürcher Zeitung, edited by Salomon Gessner, from January 12, 1780, and was renamed to Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821...

, Salzburger Nachrichten and Die Presse
Die Presse
Die Presse is an Austrian daily newspaper based in Vienna. It was founded in 1946 by World War II resistance fighter Ernst Molden and stands in tradition of the Viennese newspapers "Die Presse" and "Neue Freie Presse" . The paper covers general news topics...

. In 2006, Karl-Markus Gauß was accepted as member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry
Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung
The Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung was founded on August 28, 1949—the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—in Paulskirche in Frankfurt...

.

Works

Primarily, Karl-Markus Gauß writes essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s. One of his main topics are ethnic minorities
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...

, some of which aren't sometimes known to the readers even by their name, such as the Aromanians
Aromanians
Aromanians are a Latin people native throughout the southern Balkans, especially in northern Greece, Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, and as an emigrant community in Serbia and Romania . An older term is Macedo-Romanians...

, Roma, Arbëreshë
Arbëreshë
The Arbëreshë are a linguistic and ethnic Albanian minority community living in southern Italy, especially the regions of Apulia, Basilicata, Molise, Calabria and Sicily...

 and the Sephardim
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...

. Other important topics are Central and South Eastern Europe. Gauß visited these countries on several occasions, usually jointly with the photographer Kurt Kaindl.

His cultural reports and essays describe cultural encounters and intellectual exchanges with the writers of those countries, but also with people "like me and you", on the streets and in pubs. Gauß uses his books very often to present and promote writers from Central and Eastern Europe, who are relatively unknown in Austria and Germany.

Literary Prizes and Awards

  • 2010 Johann-Heinrich-Merck-Preis
  • 2007 Mitteleuropa-Preis
  • 2006 Georg Dehio-Buchpreis
  • 2005 Manès-Sperber-Preis Vienna
    Vienna
    Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

  • 2004 René-Marcic-Preis
  • 2001 Award of the Austrian Book Sellers for Tolerant Thinking and Acting
  • 1998 Bruno-Kreisky-Preis for the Political Book for Ins unentdeckte Österreich
  • 1997 European Essay Prize Charles Veillon for Das Europäische Alphabet
  • 1994 Österreichischer Staatspreis für Kulturpublizistik
  • 1994 Buchprämie des Bundesministeriums für Unterricht und Kunst
  • 1992 Subsidy for Literature by the City of Salzburg
    Salzburg
    -Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...

  • 1989 Buchprämie des Bundesministeriums für Unterricht und Kunst
  • 1988 State Subsidy for Literature by the Austrian Department of Education and Cultural Affairs
  • 1987 International Prize of Portorož for Essays

External links

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