The German writer Sibylle Lewitscharoff (“Blumenberg”) is dead. She died yesterday in Berlin at the age of 69, as Suhrkamp Verlag announced, citing the author’s environment. The exact circumstances of death are not yet known. She had suffered from multiple sclerosis for years.
The writer, who was born in Stuttgart, was awarded numerous prizes, especially for her early work. With her story “Pong” she won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt in 1998. This was followed later by the 2009 Leipzig Book Fair Prize for “Apostoloff” and the 2013 Georg Büchner Prize.
A year later, Lewitscharoff caused a stir and sustained criticism with a speech in Dresden. In it, she described test-tube children as “half-beings” and compared reproductive medicine with practices from National Socialism. She later distanced herself from her statements. Critics then demanded that she be deprived of the Büchner Prize.
The daughter of a Bulgarian father and a German mother studied religious studies in Berlin, where she also lived after lengthy stays in Buenos Aires and Paris. Lewitscharoff was also a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry and the Berlin Academy of Arts.
