Klaus Hoffer
born on 27.12.1942 in Graz, where he still lives today. In the 1960s, he studied German, Latin and art history at the University of Graz, then German and English after a longer period of study in the USA in 1964/65, completed his studies with a dissertation on The Image of the Child in the Work of Franz Kafka (1970), worked initially as a freelance journalist and advertising copywriter and from 1973-2002 as a secondary school teacher. From 1970-1973 he was a member of the "Arbeitskreis österreichischer Literaturproduzenten", from 1973-1975 he was the first general secretary of the "Grazer Autorenversammlung", as well as co-referent since 1973 and from 1981-1984 sole literary advisor of the Forum Stadtpark.
His first texts appeared in "manuskripten" as early as the mid-1960s, followed by the two volumes Bei den Bieresch, Halbwegs and Der große Potlatsch in 1979 and 1983 respectively, which earned him several prizes and largely euphoric reviews. Apart from the shorter book publications Am Magnetberg (1982) and the essay Pusztavolk (1991), fragments of a larger narrative project entitled Rutte were published in manuskripten in the 1980s, which the author is still working on today. In 2008, he published a collection of essays from several decades under the title Die Nähe des Fremden.
Hoffer's highly intertextual work revolves around the mediation of paradoxical life experiences at the tipping point between foreign and self, outside - inside, victimhood and perpetration, but also reading and writing, literature and reality - apart from Kafka, the authors of the Vienna Group, but also Borges, should be mentioned in particular - which unfolds the aporias of being in different text patterns with grim humor: from the (development) novel dressed up as ethnographic writing about the contradictory systems of explaining the world Bei den Bieresch to the account of the "Zolden" Am Magnetberg, which is "out of joint", to the most recent succinct "Sprach-Denk-Bildern" about the possibilities of knowledge.
Since 1980, Klaus Hoffer has continuously published translations from English of texts by Kurt Vonnegut, Raymond Carver, Jakov Linds, Nadine Gordimers, Joseph Conrad and Lydia Davis. Hoffer held several guest lectureships in the 1980s and 1990s, including in Germany, the USA and Senegal. In 1985/86, he held the first "Graz Poetics Lecture", entitled Methoden der Verwirrung. Reflections on the Fantastic in Franz Kafka. He was honored in 1980 for Halbwegs. At the Bieresch 1 with the Rauris Literature Prize, also in 1980 for Der große Potlatsch. At the Bieresch 2 as a "work in progress" with the Alfred Döblin Prize, 1983 for Am Magnetberg. Ein Fragment (1982, ed. 1983) with the Promotion Prize of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education and the Arts, in 1986 he received the Literature Prize of the Province of Styria and in 1992 the "manuskripte" Prize of the Province of Styria.
Bequest inventory 1
Scope: 15 archive boxes
Contents:
Works, correspondence, life documents, collections.
3 archive boxes with typescript versions with handwritten corr. to the most important works (with the exception of the translations and the Graz Poetry Lecture) up to 2008 (including the largely unpublished novel fragment "Rutte")
5 archive boxes with correspondence with approx. 75 different correspondents. Correspondence partners (including Samuel Beckett, Elias Canetti, Peter Handke, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Elfriede Jelinek and Kurt Vonnegut)
1 archive box with life documents
6 archive boxes with collections, 3 of them with print media publications by and about K.H.
1 archive box with works by other authors relating to K.H. (laudations, introductions to readings...)
Degree of processing: The fonds are finely indexed, a detailed index is available.
Call number: FNI-HOFFER, Klaus
Acquisition: Purchased by the Province of Styria in January 2009, donated to the Nabl Institute in February 2009.
Bequest stock 2
Scope: 2 archive boxes
Contents:
Works, correspondence, life documents, collections.
2 archive boxes, 1 of which contains translations by Klaus Hoffer in typescript
Degree of processing: The fonds are roughly indexed, an overview of contents is available.
Call number: FNI-HOFFER, Klaus-2
Acquisition: Purchased by the Province of Styria in December 2013, donated to the Nabl Institute in July 2014.
Restriction notice: Biographical material or material relating to the privacy of third parties or business matters may only be published in any form with the consent of the donor and his legal successors.