Wolfgang Koeppen

Wolfgang Arthur Reinhold Koeppen (23 June 1906 – 15 March 1996) was a German novelist and one of the best known German authors of the postwar period.

Koeppen was born out of wedlock in Greifswald, Pomerania to Marie Köppen, a seamstress who also worked as a prompter at the Greifswald theater. He did not have contact with his father, ophthalmologist Reinhold Halben, who never formally accepted the fatherhood. Wolfgang lived first in his grandmother's house on Bahnhofstrasse, but after her death in 1908 moved with his mother to her sister's in Ortelsburg (Szczytno), East Prussia, where Koeppen began attending the public school. He and his mother moved back to Greifswald in 1912, but only two years later returned to East Prussia. Koeppen returned to Greifswald after World War I, working as a delivery boy for a book dealer. During that time he volunteered at the theater and attended lectures at the University of Greifswald. Finally in 1920, Koeppen left Greifswald permanently, and after 20 years of moving about, settled in Munich, living there the remainder of his life. Throughout the 1950s, Koeppen travelled extensively, to the U.S., the Soviet Union, London and Warsaw.

Koeppen's wife died in 1984, and he died in a nursing home in Munich in 1996. In remembrance of the author and to archive his literary achievements and personal belongings, the Wolfgang Koeppen Foundation (German: Stiftung) was founded upon the initiative of fellow authors Günter Grass and Peter Rühmkorf in Greifswald in 2000.

Koeppen started as a journalist. In 1934 his first novel appeared while he was in the Netherlands. In 1939 he returned to Germany, and from 1943 until his death he lived in Munich.

In 1947, Koeppen was asked to write the memoirs of the philatelist and Holocaust survivor Jakob Littner (born 1883 in Budapest, died 1950 in New York City). The resulting book was published in 1948 without mention of Koeppen's name. It caused some controversy based on whether Koeppen was given a written manuscript to guide his work on Littner, and the novel never sold well. In 1992, a new edition was published, acknowledging Koeppen's authorship. In 2000, Littner's original manuscript was published in English and in 2002, in German.

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