Ror Wolf


Ror Wolf was a German writer, poet, and artist who also published under the pseudonym Raoul Tranchirer. He wrote audio plays, novels, and poems and made collages.

Life

Born Richard Georg Wolf in Saalfeld, Thuringia, he grew up without his father, who was drafted to the army when the boy was six and only returned 10 years later. The child enjoyed his father's library, reading the books of Wilhelm Busch at an early age. After World War II, the family's shoe shop was expropriated, and his mother was imprisoned for one year which he spent alone, at age 14 to 15. After his Abitur in 1951, he applied for a place to study, but was not successful. He worked for two years in concrete building, and then, when his application was rejected again, left the German Democratic Republic in July 1953 for the West. He lived first in Stuttgart, making a living as an unskilled labourer for a year. He then studied literature, social studies and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, with Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Höllerer and Max Horkheimer. He soon published prose, poetry, collages and reviews of literature, theatre and jazz in the student paper Diskus. His name as an artist combines letters from his given names. He developed his pseudonym from writing his first name "Richard" backwards. Wolf continued his studies in Hamburg in 1958, and graduated from Frankfurt in 1961.
Wolf became contributing editor of literature for the Hessischer Rundfunk broadcaster for two years. He worked freelance from 1963. His first novel appeared in 1964, influenced by Franz Kafka. His first audio play was aired in 1971. His audio plays often focus on football, and keep being aired. The audio play Leben und Tod des Kornettisten Bix Beiderbecke aus Nord-Amerika, about the life and death of jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, was awarded the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden in 1988. The 2007 audio play Raoul Tranchirers Bemerkungen über die Stille received the award "Radio Play of the Year" from the German Academy of Performing Arts.
Wolf settled in Mainz for the last 30 years of his life, after having moved 34 times. He died there on 17 February 2020.

Works

Wolf's texts often begin in simple everyday-life situations, changing abruptly to the grotesque in a combination of comical and horrible aspects. He worked last on an autobiography in the form of a collage. His works have beem published by. The publisher plans a complete edition of his works, not only those already published, entitled Ror Wolf Werke :
Volume 1 contains the poems, volumes 2 to 5 prose works, volume 7 the audio plays, and volume 9 Raoul Tranchirers Enzyklopädie für unerschrockene Leser, an encyclopedia for "intrepid readers".

Awards

Wolf was the recipient of numerous awards for his poetry, including the 2008 Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis, the 2004 Kassel Literary Prize, the of Rhineland-Palatine and the SWR, the in Leipzig in 2015, the Schiller Memorial Prize from the in Baden-Württemberg in 2016, and the Rainer-Malkowski-Preis in 2018. The Schiller Memorial Prize's jury wrote in 2016: