Guest of the ilb 2002
Elke Schmitter was born in Krefeld in 1961. She studied Philosophy in Munich and then worked at S. Fischer Publishing and moved in 1989 as editor to the feuilleton of the 'tageszeitung', where she was editor in chief from 1992-1994. Since 1994 the cultural journalist and literary critic has written for publications including 'Die Zeit' and the 'Süddeutsche Zeitung'. Since 2001 she has been editor at the 'Spiegel'. Her first literary publication, the poetry volume 'Windschatten im Konjunktiv' came out in 1981. Four years ago, in 1998, on the occasion of Heinrich Heine’s 200th birthday, she published the essay volume 'Und grüß’ mich nicht unter den Linden'. In the spring of 2000, Schmitter’s first novel 'Frau Sartoris' was enthusiastically received with critics and readers. Awarded as 'out-standing debut' with the 'Niederrheinischer Kulturpreis der Stadt Krefeld', the novel has in the meantime been translated into numerousanguages. Elke Schmitter’s protagonist, Margarethe Sartoris, tells of life in the German provinces in the fifties and sixties, from the romanticized first love, which fails due to class differences and the following unsuccessful marriage. A daughter is born, family life moves sadly on but her life doesn’t become "real" again until she falls in love with a married man. The novel is a literary play on the figure of Madame Bovary. In 2001, the author received a year long grant of the German Literature Funds. In the spring of 2002 Elke Schmitter’s second novel 'Leichte Verfehlungen' came out: images of the present time set in the intellectual landscape of Berlin. The focus is on the journalist Selma Craiss and her three friends. Selma awakes one morning and finds herself in love, but not with her long-term partner, Wolfgang. As an experienced theorist, Craiss soon goes about smothering the seed of this unusual feeling under a thick layer of possible meanings and yet she gives into this real feeling which is like a sudden flash of reality into her world. The legendary English society novels by Jane Austen through to Evelyn Waugh could well have been regarded as forerunners. 'Leichte Verfehlungen' humorously leads the reader into the confused inner life of that unusual species of the "woman around her forties" – a romance in the big city written with a critical view and a portrait of the elite. Schmitter's third novel, 'Veras Tochter' (t: Vera's daughter) relates in a self-referential manner back to her first novel. The protagonist Katharina is convinced to recognise her mother Vera to be the main character of "Frau Sartoris", thereby blurring the levels of fiction and reality, literature and life. Elke Schmitter lives in Berlin.
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