Hubert Fichte

Hubert Fichte (March 21, 1935, Perleberg, Province of Brandenburg – March 8, 1986) was a German novelist.

Hubert Fichte was born on March 21, 1935 in Perleberg Hospital. A few weeks after his birth his family moved to Hamburg-Lokstedt. Fichtes mother worked as stenotypist and he was mostly raised by his grandmother. His father, a Jewish merchant, emigrated to Sweden and Fichte never met him. His parents were not married. As a child Fichte was made believe he was a half-orphan. He received an education as an actor and as a farmer. In the late fifties he worked in Montjustin, not far from Forcalquier in Provence, as a shepherd for several months at painter Serge Fiorio. From 1961 on he lived in Hamburg.

In the mid sixties Fichte published his first novels. He then had a regular column called Plattenragout (record ragout) in the magazine konkret. In 1966 he criticised the German police's work in those days in an article called "the police – your friend and aide": "Shall the baton displace arguments, humour, understanding from the side of the police in this young democracy, burdened with an evil mortgage?" (konkret, Nr. 8). His main influences were Marcel Proust, Hans Henny Jahnn and Jean Genet. With Genet he did a famous interview. He first met Jahnn in 1949 and Jahnn helped Fichte reveal his homosexuality. Fichte described their friendship in his novel Versuch über die Pubertät (Attempt about the puberty) in 1974.

In the seventies Fichte worked more and more on ethnological research. From 1971 to 1975 he travelled to Bahia (Brazil), Haiti and Trinidad several times. He later described the works based on this travels, like Xango (1976) and Petersilie, (1980) as "Ethnopoesie". With them he created his very own technique of combining science and poetry. A sort of "domestic ethnology" was done with his St. Pauli interviews like in Wolli Indienfahrer (St. Pauli is a famous low income and subculture district in Hamburg). Fichte's cohabitee (since 1961) Leonore Mau published her photograph volumes Xango and Petersilie at the same time.

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