Gisela Elsner (2 May 1937 – 13 May 1992) was a German writer. She won the Prix Formentor in 1964 for her novel Die Riesenzwerge (The Giant Dwarfs).
Gisela Elsner | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 13 May 1992 Munich, Germany | (aged 55)
Occupation | Writer |
Known for | dramatized in No Place to Go |
Political party | German Communist Party |
Movement | Group 47 |
Children | Oskar Roehler |
Awards | Prix Formentor 1964 Die Riesenzwerge |
Elsner was born in Nuremberg, Middle Franconia. In 1959, she went to Vienna to study philosophy, Germanic letters and drama.
Elsner then lived as a freelance writer in various places: Lake Starnberg, Frankfurt, in Rome from 1963 to 1964, in London from 1964 to 1970, then in Paris, Hamburg, New York, and finally in Munich.
She was among the members of Group 47,[citation needed] which also included Günter Grass[1][2] and Heinrich Böll.
In her 1970 novel Berührungsverbot (The Touch Ban or The Prohibition of Contact), several couples try to transcend the limits of the bourgeois sexual mores of their middle-class background by engaging in group sex orgies. In Switzerland, a journal that published excerpts from the novel was banned, and in Austria it was attacked as harmful to children.[3]
Elsner described herself as a Leninist. She was a long lasting member of the German Communist Party.[4]
Elsner committed suicide by jumping out of a window, in Munich, on 13 May 1992.[5]
A dramatized film about her life, No Place to Go, was made by her son Oskar Roehler.