Feridun Zaimoğlu

Feridun Zaimoğlu (born 4 December 1964 in Bolu) is a German author and visual artist of Turkish origin.

Zaimoğlu has developed since 1995 to have become one of the important poets of contemporary German language. His central theme are the problems of the second and third generation of Turkish immigrants to Germany.

Feridun Zaimoğlu, born in Bolu/Turkey, came in 1965 with his parents to Germany. He lived until 1985 in Berlin and Munich, and then began studying Medicine and Arts in Kiel where he continues to live. Today, he works as an author and journalist. His essays and critiques of literary have appeared in leading German newspapers like i.e. DIE ZEIT, Die Welt, SPEX and the Tagesspiegel. From 1999 to 2000 he was working in Mannheim at the . In 2003 he became Island poet on the island of Sylt, and in 2004 he was a visiting fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin.

In his first book "Kanak Sprak" 1995, he attempts to express the authentic, tough and subversive power of slang language spoken by young Turkish male youth in Germany, and calls for a new self-confidence.

The grotesque figure of the maganda – as it can be traced also in popular satirical Turkish magazines – emerges as an "important medium for the formulation of new gender identities, urban subjectivities, and class relations" (Ayse Oncu in References 1, p. 187) His book became inspirational for the group "kanak attak".

In 2005, his installation of flags with the title "KanakAttak – The 3rd Turkish siege of Vienna" was exhibited at the Kunsthalle Wien, an art gallery in Vienna. It refers to the Siege of Vienna (17 July – 12 September 1683) that was an expedition by the Turks against the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor Leopold I that resulted in their defeat.

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