In 1980, the then 28-year-old Wolfgang Hegewald, as an author with ambitions, presented a book by Harry Martinson, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in the magazine “Sinn und Form”.

Under the heading "Thoughts while reading" he wrote that Martinson's novel comes along "rather hesitantly, deliberately, often pausing, is occasionally stubborn to the point of stubbornness, and I dare call it wise" - from today's perspective an astonishingly accurate one Characterization of Hegewald's own life and writing.

Ambivalence and duality characterize his biography.

Raised in Dresden, studied in Leipzig, first information processing (a forerunner of today's computer science), then, when he was denied his doctorate, theology at the church university.

Writing developed alongside academic training and increasingly came to the fore: after a reading in 1977, Hegewald struck up a conversation with Franz Fühmann, which in the years that followed grew into mentorship.

The one-generation older writer sides with the younger one, who has a similar style – both tend to playfully virtuosic but concise literary expression and to enthusiastic, off-the-beaten-track reading.

A double German way of life

But even Fühmann's authority can do nothing against the following publication farce.

Hegewald is officially provided with book contracts and fees by Hinstorff Verlag - but simply not published.

The editorial demands for a system-compliant revision of his texts, which have been perfidious censorship for years, lead to an application to leave the country, which is granted surprisingly quickly.

In 1983, Hegewald reached his adopted home of today, Hamburg, with the cross-zone train.

In West Germany he advanced to become a literary hope: in 1984 he was awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition and published his debut novel “The Opposite of Photography”.

Other novels and grants follow.

Nevertheless, Wolfgang Hegewald builds on a second mainstay: in 1993 he enters the public service, he is co-founder and first director of the visionary Tübingen studio literature and theater.

A "Stylisticum" (as the predecessor was called, which Ludwig Uhland had brought to life in 1830 at the University of Tübingen) or in Hegewald's own words: a "workshop of literalism".

With the interdisciplinary ability to express the language of the students, their heart should also be formed, with linguistic clairaudience, the perception of the world should also be trained.

Against the cozy sponginess

But even in the Federal Republic of Germany, the publication history does not run smoothly.

Change of editors and other imponderables keep Hegewald in editorial homelessness.

Unaffected by the constant search for a publishing home, an unmistakable work with a great awareness of form has emerged.

In addition to novels, it consists of crystallized yearly notes (most recently for the year 2020 under the title "Daily Rates"), prose miniatures and a grandiose "Lexicon of Life" (2017): an alphabetically ordered total of Wolfgang Hegewald's life with mental images from biographical traces, absurd anecdotes and flashes of inspiration "semantic depth of field" (again a Hegewaldian term).

In his writing, the author shows himself to be a political spirit, resolutely spearing empty language and incorruptibly distinguishing where cozy vagueness prevails.

For example, he calls for the euphemism "Republic flight" for the route from the GDR to West Germany to be renamed "Diktatoraturflug" - he interprets neglected language as a harbinger of a neglect in the world.

The frustrating efforts to get it printed did not let Wolfgang Hegewald resign, but led to an extraordinary founding act: In 2000 he launched the Italo Svevo Prize on his own initiative.

To this day, this prize, with him as jury chairman, honors aesthetic stubbornness, literary works whose fame does not correspond to their deserved rank.

The list of honorees is an exquisite canon for literary connoisseurs.

The namesake Italo Svevo, who worked on weekdays under his real name Hector Schmitz in a Trieste ship paint company specializing in seashell and algae-repellent underwater paints, wrote novels that were hardly noticed at the time under a pseudonym and translated Sigmund Freud into Italian.

The commitment of his friend James Joyce,

The attention that the Svevo Prize focuses on the outlandish, the non-fitted, the supposedly marginal makes it indispensable in the German literary scene.

It is a tragic point that the ideal winner will never receive this award: Wolfgang Hegewald himself. Today the writer is seventy years old.