Herta Müller

Career

Müller's first book, Niederungen (Nadirs), was published in Romania in German in 1982, receiving a prize from the Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth. The book was about a child's view of the German-cultural Banat. Some members of the Banat Swabian community criticized Müller for "fouling her own nest" by her unsympathetic portrayal of village life. Müller was a member of Aktionsgruppe Banat, a group of German-speaking writers in Romania who supported freedom of speech over the censorship they faced under Nicolae Ceaușescu's government, and her works, including The Land of Green Plums, deal with these issues. Radu Tinu, the Securitate officer in charge of her case, denies that she ever suffered any persecutions, a claim that is opposed by Müller's own version of her (ongoing) persecution in an article in the German weekly Die Zeit in July 2009.

After being refused permission to emigrate to West Germany in 1985, Müller was finally allowed to leave along with her then-husband, novelist Richard Wagner, in 1987, and they settled in West Berlin, where both still live. In the following years, she accepted lectureships at universities in Germany and abroad. Müller was elected to membership in the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung in 1995, and other honorary positions followed. In 1997, she withdrew from the PEN centre of Germany in protest of its merger with the former German Democratic Republic branch. In July 2008, Müller sent a critical open letter to Horia-Roman Patapievici, president of the Romanian Cultural Institute in reaction to the moral and financial support given by the institute to two former informants of the Securitate participating at the Romanian-German Summer School.

The critic Denis Scheck described visiting Müller at her home in Berlin and seeing that her desk contained a drawer full of single letters cut from a newspaper she had entirely destroyed in the process. Realising that she used the letters to write texts, he felt he had "entered the workshop of a true poet".

The Passport, first published in Germany as Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt in 1986, is, according to The Times Literary Supplement, "couched in the strange code engendered by repression: indecipherable because there is nothing specific to decipher, it is candid, but somehow beside the point, redolent of things unsaid. From odd observations the villagers sometimes make ("Man is nothing but a pheasant in the world"), to chapters titled after unimportant props ("The Pot Hole", "The Needle"), everything points to a strategy of displaced meaning ... Every such incidence of misdirection is the whole book in miniature," for although Ceausescu is only mentioned in one paragraph (in the chapter "A Big House"), he is central to the story, and cannot be forgotten. "The resulting sense that anything, indeed everything – whether spoken by the characters or described by the author – is potentially dense with tacit significance means this short novel expands in the mind to occupy an emotional space far beyond its size or the seeming simplicity of its story."

2009 success

In 2009, Müller enjoyed the greatest international success of her career. Her novel Atemschaukel (published in English as The Hunger Angel) was nominated for the German Book Prize and won the Franz Werfel Human Rights Award. In this book, Müller describes the journey of a young man to a gulag in the Soviet Union, the fate of many Germans in Transylvania after World War II. It was inspired by the experience of the poet Oskar Pastior, whose memories she had made notes of, and also by what happened to her own mother.

In October 2009, the Swedish Academy announced its decision to award that year's Nobel Prize in Literature to Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." The academy compared Müller's style and her use of German as a minority language with Franz Kafka and pointed out the influence of Kafka on Müller. The award coincided with the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism. Michael Krüger, head of Müller's publishing house, said: "By giving the award to Herta Müller, who grew up in a German-speaking minority in Romania, the committee has recognized an author who refuses to let the inhumane side of life under communism be forgotten".

In 2012, Müller commented on the Nobel Prize for Mo Yan by saying that the Swedish Academy had apparently chosen an author who 'celebrates censorship'.

On 6 July 2020 a no longer existing Twitter account published the fake news of Herta Müller's death, which was immediately disclaimed by her publisher.

Influences

Although Müller has revealed little about the specific people or books that have influenced her, she has acknowledged the importance of her university studies in German and Romanian literature, and particularly of the contrast between the two languages. "The two languages", the writer says, "look differently even at plants. In Romanian, 'snowdrops' are 'little tears', in German they are 'Schneeglöckchen', which is 'little snow bells', which means we're not only speaking about different words, but about different worlds." (However here she confuses snowdrops with lily-of-the-valley, the latter being called 'little tears' in Romanian.) She continues, "Romanians see a falling star and say that someone has died, with the Germans you make a wish when you see the falling star." Romanian folk music is another influence: "When I first heard Maria Tănase she sounded incredible to me, it was for the first time that I really felt what folklore meant. Romanian folk music is connected to existence in a very meaningful way."

Müller's work was also shaped by the many experiences she shared with her ex-husband, the novelist and essayist Richard Wagner. Both grew up in Romania as members of the Banat Swabian ethnic group and enrolled in German and Romanian literary studies at Timișoara University. Upon graduating, both worked as German-language teachers, and were members of Aktionsgruppe Banat, a literary society that fought for freedom of speech.

Müller's involvement with Aktionsgruppe Banat gave her the courage to write boldly, despite the threats and trouble generated by the Romanian secret police. Although her books are fictional, they are based on real people and experiences. Her 1996 novel, The Land of Green Plums, was written after the deaths of two friends, in which Müller suspected the involvement of the secret police, and one of its characters was based on a close friend from Aktionsgruppe Banat.

Letter from Liu Xia

Herta Müller wrote the foreword for the first publication of the poetry of Liu Xia, wife of the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo, in 2015. Müller also translated and read a few of Liu Xia’s poems in 2014. On 4 December 2017, a photo of a letter from Liu Xia to Herta Müller in the form of a poem, in which Liu Xia wrote that she was going mad in her solitary life, was posted on Facebook by Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu.

On 7 October 2023 massacres

At the 7 October Forum held in Stockholm on 25 and 26 May 2024, Müller commented on the "unimaginable massacre" committed by Hamas in its "limitless contempt for humanity" in the 7 October attacks and described it comparable to German extermination pogroms. Müller also criticized two progressive groups: Berlin club-goers and Ivy League students. "Hatred of Jews has infiltrated Berlin's nightlife," she said. Furthermore, she stated: "After October 7, the Berlin club scene literally ducked away. Although 364 young people, ravers like them, were massacred at a techno festival, the club association did not comment on it until days later. And even that was just a dull exercise in compulsory action, because antisemitism and Hamas were not even mentioned."

In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, she cast doubt on the veracity of images coming out of Gaza. "Hamas controls the selection of images and orchestrates our emotions," she wrote. "Our feelings are their strongest weapon against Israel’.

Editor

• Theodor Kramer: Die Wahrheit ist, man hat mir nichts getan ("The Truth Is No One Did Anything to Me"), Vienna 1999
• Die Handtasche ("The Purse"), Künzelsau 2001
• Wenn die Katze ein Pferd wäre, könnte man durch die Bäume reiten ("If the Cat Were a Horse, You Could Ride Through the Trees"), Künzelsau 2001