Remembering Thomas Brasch
News10.02.2025
On 19 February 2025, the poet, playwright, filmmaker and translator Thomas Brasch would have turned 80. To coincide with this occasion, in January 2025, Suhrkamp published Brasch’s collected prose works under the title You Have to Walk against the Wind.
This title was taken from one of the commandments that Brasch wrote at the age of just 17. At the time, he could hardly have sensed how symbolic this phrase would become for his life. After publishing his first poem in the mid-1950s, Brasch went on to become one of the major literary figures of East German literature. Always relentlessly critical of those in power and ruling orthodoxies, Brasch ran afoul of the East German censors and moved to the West in 1976, where he continued to critique the government of his new home. In 2021, the film Dear Thomas was released, a biopic based on Brasch's life, which was received positively by critics and the public alike.
Brasch passed away in 2001 at the age of just 56. He left behind a significant body of work spanning various genres. You Have to Walk Against the Wind gathers together Thomas Brasch’s published and unpublished fictional and essayistic prose (stories, speeches, criticism, commentary, opinion pieces) from 1956 to 2000 – with the exception of the novel material published as Child Killer Brunke.
For more information on this title or any of Thomas Brasch’s works, please contact the rights manager for your region.
This title was taken from one of the commandments that Brasch wrote at the age of just 17. At the time, he could hardly have sensed how symbolic this phrase would become for his life. After publishing his first poem in the mid-1950s, Brasch went on to become one of the major literary figures of East German literature. Always relentlessly critical of those in power and ruling orthodoxies, Brasch ran afoul of the East German censors and moved to the West in 1976, where he continued to critique the government of his new home. In 2021, the film Dear Thomas was released, a biopic based on Brasch's life, which was received positively by critics and the public alike.
Brasch passed away in 2001 at the age of just 56. He left behind a significant body of work spanning various genres. You Have to Walk Against the Wind gathers together Thomas Brasch’s published and unpublished fictional and essayistic prose (stories, speeches, criticism, commentary, opinion pieces) from 1956 to 2000 – with the exception of the novel material published as Child Killer Brunke.
For more information on this title or any of Thomas Brasch’s works, please contact the rights manager for your region.