Reinhard Lettau
Reinhard Lettau was a German-born author and academic, noted for his contributions to literature and his exploration of complex themes through a unique narrative style. Born in 1929 in Erfurt, Germany, he later studied at the University of Heidelberg and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, specializing in comparative literature. Lettau taught at the University of California, San Diego, where he focused on German literature and language. His literary works predominantly include short stories, poems, and plays, with his collection "Schwierigkeiten beim Häuserbauen" reflecting a grotesque tradition akin to Kafka and Borges.
Lettau's writing often employs a surreal narrative style characterized by unemotional detail and explores the disjunction between perception and reality. Through works such as his novel "Feinde," he provides social commentary, questioning concepts like war and identity. Lettau's literary focus emphasizes the absurdity of human behavior, making his contributions relevant to discussions of modern literature's themes of alienation and fragmentation. His ability to intertwine the literal with the metaphorical invites readers to critically engage with familiar realities.
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Reinhard Lettau
Playwright
- Born: September 10, 1929
- Birthplace: Erfurt, Germany
- Died: June 17, 1996
- Place of death: Karlsruhe, Germany
Biography
Reinhard Lettau was born in Erfurt, Germany, in 1929, the son of Reinhard and Gertrude Felsberg Lettau. He studied at the University of Heidelberg and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, concentrating on comparative literature. He married Mary Gene Carter in 1954 and the couple had three children. Lettau spent much of his professional career teaching in the United States, primarily at the University of California, San Diego, where he was an associate professor of German literature and language.
Lettau’s literary output primarily consists of short stories and poems, but he also wrote plays, one of which received an award as the best German radio play of 1978. His collection of short stories, Schwierigkeiten beim Häuserbauen (1962 ; Obstacles, 1965), has been described as being in the tradition of the grotesque, a literary genre employed by a diverse group of writers, including Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges and Southern American gothic authors; his short stories have been compared to those of Kafka and James Thurber. Lettau’s stories are characterized by linguistic techniques that employ the literal as the real, thereby skewing reality for characters who deal in an alternate, or subjective, reality. Like Kafka, Lettau’s narrative style has been described as using unemotional, descriptive, concrete detail to create a surreal environment.
For example, the concept of the doppelganger, or double who confronts himself, is seen in the short story “Wettlauf.” A character named Manig, featured in the short-story collection Auftritt Manigs, confuses the idea of an object for the object itself, resulting in a loss of all integrated meaning for the object and a confused sense of perceived reality. Lettau also produced specifically social commentaries in his novel Feinde (1968; Enemies, 1973), which satirizes the concept of war and repeatedly asks the question, “Who is the enemy?” His play, Frubstucksgesprache in Miami (pb. 1977; Breakfast in Miami, pb. 1981), also is a social commentary; it is constructed as a group of forty-three scenes depicting deposed dictators who speak their outrageous opinions and satirize themselves and those who choose to follow them. The poems published in his collection Gedichte also tend to be topical and political.
Lettau’s style and focus on the grotesque emphasize the absurdity of human behavior and explore the gap between perception and objective reality. In his unique use of language and his emphasis on the split between the literal and the metaphorical, Lettau’s work undermines the unquestioning acceptance of the familiar, commonplace, and established reality of human existence, establishing his link to modern literature with its emphasis on the alienation and fragmentation of human beings in a strangely unknowable world.