Honored Persons

Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek, born in 1946, grew up in Vienna. For her literary work, which includes novels as well as plays, poetry, essays, translations, radio plays, scripts and opera libretti, she received numerous awards, including the Georg Büchner Prize, the Franz Kafka Literature Prize and four times the Mülheim Dramatikerpreis. In 2004 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In her works, Jelinek critically examines the Austrian Nazi past and its aftereffects in the present. This has resulted in her getting the reputation of a "Nestbeschmutzerin" (someone who is not loyal to their own people) in Austria; especially the tabloids have their problems with Elfriede Jelinek. Her texts contain a lot of personal experience, at least as inspiration. Elfriede Jelinek was formed by her mother as a musical "child prodigy". Already in elementary school she received piano, guitar, flute, violin and viola lessons. At the age of 13, she was admitted to the Vienna Conservatory and studied organ, piano, recorder and composition. Her close relation to music becomes visible in her famous novel "Die Klavierspielerin". On December 10, 2013, Human Rights Day, she was one of five Nobel laureates of 560 writers who opposed the systematic surveillance on the Internet as part of the "Stop Watching Us" campaign Intelligence agencies protested. When Donald Trump was elected President of the USA, Elfriede Jelinek began to write her play "Am Königsweg". The Bayerischer Rundfunk produced the radio play version; the premiere in the theater was in October 2017 at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg.