Helga Königsdorf
Helga Königsdorf (13 July 1938 – 4 May 2014) was an East German author and physicist.[1][2][3]
Life
She was born as Helga Bunke in Gera, a farmer's daughter.[1] She went into academia and was appointed to the East Berlin Academy of Sciences of the GDR from 1961 to 1990.[2] Since 1974, she headed the Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics. At age 40, she published her first short-story collection Meine ungehörigen Träume ("My Indecent Dreams").[1]
Her writing peers included Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann and Maxie Wander, who worked on woman's rights issues in the GDR in the 70s and 80s.[1] In 1990 she left academia to devote herself to writing full-time. Helga suffered from Parkinson's disease for more than 30 years.[1]
Awards
- 1985 Heinrich Mann Prize
- 1992 Roswitha Prize
Works
Fiction
- Meine ungehörigen Träume (short stories, 1978), Aufbau-Verlag
- Der Lauf der Dinge (short stories, 1982), Aufbau-Verlag
- Respektloser Umgang (short stories, 1986), Aufbau-Verlag
- Lichtverhältnisse (short stories, 1988), Aufbau-Verlag
- Ungelegener Befund (short stories, 1990), Aufbau-Verlag
- Adieu DDR (memoir, 1990)
- Gleich neben Afrika (short stories, 1992), Rowohlt Berlin Verlag
- Im Schatten des Regenbogens (novel, 1993), Aufbau-Verlag
- Über die unverzügliche Rettung der Welt (essays, 1994), Aufbau-Verlag
- Die Entsorgung der Großmutter (novel, 1997), Aufbau-Verlag
- Landschaft in wechselndem Licht (memoir, 2002), Aufbau-Verlag
Math
- Helga Bunke: Gewöhnliche Differentialgleichungen mit zufälligen Parametern. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1972.
- Olaf Bunke, Helga Bunke (Hrsg.): Statistical methods of model building. Berlin 1986.
- Olaf Bunke, Helga Bunke (Hrsg.): Nonlinear regression, functional relations and robust methods. 2 Bände, New York 1989.
English translations
Few of her fiction works have been translated into English. Fission was published by Northwestern University Press.
