Lecture by Patrick Roth

This year’s winner of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s literature prize, Patrick Roth, was born in 1953 in Freiburg in Breisgau, South Germany. He grew up in Karlsruhe, relocated to Los Angeles in 1975 after a short stay in Paris, and began his work in film and literature. He subsequently made films (by and with Charles Bukowski), and wrote film scripts, radio plays, film critiques and works of prose. As long ago as 1990, in his literary debut »Die Wachsamen. Drei Monodramen« [The Vigilant. Three monodramas] his theme was the overlap of landscapes and biographies with mythical material. From 1991 to 1996 his trilogy with Christian motifs was published which - to use the words of Esther Röhr - »attacks images in order to conserve them«. In 1992, Roth received the Rauris Literature Prize, in 1997 the Bible and Culture Foundation Prize, in 2002 the Dusseldorf Stadtsparkasse prize and the Hugo Ball Prize from the city of Pirmasens.