Hubert Fichte was born on March 21, 1935 in Perleberg Hospital. A few weeks after his birth his family moved to Hamburg-Lokstedt. Fichte's mother worked as stenographer and he was mostly raised by his grandmother. His father, a Jewish merchant, emigrated to Sweden and Fichte never met him. His parents were not married. As a child Fichte was made to believe he was a half-orphan. He received an education as an actor and as a farmer. In the late fifties he worked in Montjustin, not far from Forcalquier in Provence, as a shepherd for several months at painter Serge Fiorio. From 1961 on he lived in Hamburg. In the mid sixties Fichte published his first novels. He then had a regular column called Plattenragout in the magazine konkret. In 1966 he criticised the German police's work in those days in an article called "the police – your friend and aide": "Shall the baton displace arguments, humour, understanding from the side of the police in this young democracy, burdened with an evil mortgage?". His main influences were Marcel Proust, Hans Henny Jahnn and Jean Genet. With Genet he did a famous interview. He first met Jahnn in 1949 and Jahnn helped Fichte reveal his homosexuality. Fichte described their friendship in his novel Versuch über die Pubertät in 1974. In the seventies Fichte worked more and more on ethnological research. From 1971 to 1975 he travelled to Bahia, Haiti and Trinidad several times. He later described the works based on this travels, like Xango and Petersilie, as "Ethnopoesie". With them he created his very own technique of combining science and poetry. A sort of "domestic ethnology" was done with his St. Pauli interviews like in Wolli Indienfahrer. Fichte's cohabitee Leonore Mau published her photograph volumes Xango and Petersilie at the same time. In the late sixties Fichte began writing his main work Die Geschichte der Empfindlichkeit a monumental cycle of novels. His last set of plans showed his intention to write nineteen books, most of them novels, but also some volumes of essays, called “Glossen”. For these “Glossen” he wanted to compile and rewrite much of his journalistic work like radio features, news paper articles and interviews. The novels describe the life of the homosexual writer “Jäcki” and his cohabitee “Irma”, an older woman and photographer. Fichte could not finish the whole cycle. The existing parts were published after his death. They contain 6 complete novels, 2 fragments of novels, 4 “Glossen”-volumes and 5 supplement volumes. The latter contain interviews, articles and features he wanted to use for “Glossen” books, but could not revise them. At least three more novels he had planned are completely missing. Fichte died of AIDS-related illness in 1986. Since 1995 the city of Hamburg has awarded the Hubert Fichte Prize for extraordinary literary works.
