Writer Robert Schopflocher dies in exile
January 26, 2016
Robert Schopflocher passed away in Buenos Aires on Saturday (23.01.2016), his German publishing house Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt (FVA) said on Monday. He was 92.
Schopflocher and his family came from Fürth, Germany, where he was born on April 14, 1923. They fled the Nazis before the war in 1937 and found refuge in Argentina, where he would live for the rest of his life.
Initially, Schlopflocher worked in agriculture in the Patagonia region and later took over his father's chemical company. It wasn't until age 57 that Schopflocher took up writing fiction, mainly focusing on life between languages and cultures, the Jewish exile community in Argentina and his memories of Germany.
Publisher FVA called Schlopflocher the "German voice of Argentina." The house had released his most recent novel, "Das Komplott zu Lima" (The Lima conspiracy) in August 2015.
Schlopflocher published novels and plays in Spanish as well as German. His most successful German-language books include "Fernes Beben. Erzählungen aus Argentinien" (Distant shaking. Takes from Argentina, 2003), "Spiegel der Welt. Erzählungen" (Mirror of the world, 2006), and "Weit von wo. Mein Leben zwischen drei Welten" (Far away from where. My life between three worlds, 2010), among others.
As an agricultural expert, he also published a number of non-fiction books in Spanish, including one on breeding chickens with a print run of 50,000 copies.
DW met with Robert Schopflocher in 2012. Watch the video above for a detailed look at his life, and what it was like to live among three cultures.
kbm/ (with dpa)