Ludwig Harig

Ludwig Harig was born in Sulzbach, in 1927. He was a German writer, radio playwright, literary translator, and an important figure in concrete poetry and experimental literature. Harig trained as a teacher and worked for more than two decades as an educator. In the 1950s, he began publishing experimental poetry, prose, essays, and radio plays before later expanding his writing into autobiographical novels. Closely associated with the Stuttgart group around philosopher Max Bense, Harig collaborated for decades with Saarländischer Rundfunk on experimental radio productions that used recorded speech, sound collage, and stereophonic sound. 

His early experimental texts used repetition, permutation, and montage to explore the visual and structural possibilities of language through concrete poetry. During the 1960s he became an important figure in the development of the New Radio Play in Germany through stereophonic radio productions built from recorded speech and sound collage. Works such as Das Fußballspiel, Staatsbegräbnis, and Ein Blumenstück used documentary recordings, radio broadcasts, children’s rhymes, and collective speech to examine how language shapes memory, authority, and public life in the aftermath of National Socialism. Alongside his literary work, Harig translated French authors including Raymond Queneau, whose writing influenced his interest in structure, wordplay, and experimental forms. 

Harig received numerous literary and cultural honors throughout his career, including the Heinrich Böll Prize, the Radio Play Prize of the War Blind, the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, the Carl Zuckmayer Medal, and the Prize of the Frankfurt Anthology. He was a member of the PEN Center Germany, the German Academy for Language and Literature, the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, and the Free Academy of Arts in Mannheim. His work was featured in exhibitions and research projects on concrete poetry, experimental literature, and media art, including shows at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. In 2001 he was appointed Brothers Grimm Visiting Professor at the University of Kassel. Harig passed away in 2018.