28 Facts About Peter Handke

Peter Handke was a member of the Grazer Gruppe and the Grazer Autorenversammlung, and co-founded the Verlag der Autoren publishing house in Frankfurt.

Peter Handke collaborated with director Wim Wenders, and wrote such screenplays as The Wrong Move and Wings of Desire.

In 1999, as a protest against the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Peter Handke returned the prize money to the German Academy for Language and Literature.

Peter Handke has drawn significant controversy for his public support of Serbian nationalism in the wake of the Yugoslav Wars.

Peter Handke was born in Griffen, then in the German Reich's Reichsgau Carinthia.

Peter Handke's father, Erich Schonemann, was a bank clerk and German soldier whom Handke did not meet until adulthood.

The family lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin from 1944 to 1948, where Maria Handke had two more children: Peter's half-sister and half-brother.

Peter Handke experienced his stepfather as more and more violent due to alcoholism.

In 1954, Peter Handke was sent to the Catholic Marianum boys' boarding school at Tanzenberg Castle in Sankt Veit an der Glan.

Peter Handke's mother took her own life in 1971, reflected in his novel Wunschloses Ungluck.

Peter Handke is the subject of the documentary film Peter Handke: In the Woods, Might Be Late, directed by Corinna Belz.

Since 2012, Peter Handke has been a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Peter Handke is a member of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Peter Handke abandoned his studies in 1965, after the German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag accepted his novel Die Hornissen for publication.

Peter Handke gained international attention after an appearance at a meeting of avant-garde artists belonging to the Gruppe 47 in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1966.

Peter Handke became one of the co-founders of the publishing house Verlag der Autoren in 1969 with a new commercial concept, as it belonged to the authors.

Peter Handke co-founded the Grazer Autorenversammlung in 1973 and was a member until 1977.

Peter Handke collaborated with director Wim Wenders on a film version of Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter, wrote the script for Falsche Bewegung and co-wrote the screenplay for Der Himmel uber Berlin including the poem at its opening and Les Beaux Jours d'Aranjuez.

Peter Handke directed films, including adaptations from his novels The Left-Handed Woman after Die linkshandige Frau, and The Absence after Die Abwesenheit.

Since 1975, Peter Handke has been a jury member of the European literary award Petrarca-Preis.

Peter Handke writes from an area beyond psychology, where feelings acquire the adamancy of randomly encountered, geologically analyzed pebbles.

Abbott added that Peter Handke viewed the disintegration of country as the disappearance of utopia.

Tanjil Rashid noted that "Peter Handke's novels, plays and memoirs demonstrate the evil of banality".

The writer's public support of Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia who died that year while on trial for genocide and war crimes, caused controversy after Peter Handke spoke at his funeral.

Peter Handke was selected to receive that year's Heinrich Heine Prize, though he refused it before it was to be revoked from him.

Peter Handke received countless mails that included threats, or unsanitary content.

Peter Handke has written novels, plays, screenplays, essays and poems, often published by Suhrkamp.

Peter Handke's works are held by the German National Library, including:.