In Case of Loss

by Lutz Seiler, Martyn Crucefix (Translator)

In Case of Loss gathers the best of Lutz Seiler's non-fiction from last twenty-five years, revealing his essays to be different to, but on a par with, his fiction and poetry. Seiler's beautifully anecdotal and associative pieces throw fascinating light on literature and his background, not least the environmental and human catastrophe of the Soviet-era mining in the community he grew up in, “the tired villages . . . beneath which lay the ore, uranium.” Other essays focus on poetry, including his discovery of poetry during his military service and pieces on German poets, including Ernst Meister, Jürgen Becker and Peter Huchel, whose former house, outside Berlin, is now home to Lutz Seiler, after he broke and entered it with Huchel's widow's blessing. Meanwhile, the title essay—a fascinating insight into creative process—describes Huchel's notebook, a kind of dictionary of poetic images organised by mood and location. Providing a perfect welcome in to his work as a whole, In Case of Loss sees one of Europe's most original writers speak with openness and clarity in essays full of insight, humanity and a poet's attention to the importance of often overlooked objects and lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, German Literature

192 pages, Paperback

Published April 2, 2024

About the author

Lutz Seiler grew up in the Langenberg district of Gera, Thuringia (former East Germany). After training as a skilled building construction worker, he worked as a bricklayer and carpenter. During his national service in the National People’s Army (NVA) of the DDR, he started to take an interest in literature and wrote his first poems.
In the summer of 1989 Seiler worked as a seasonal employee on the island of Hiddensee, a popular former East German holiday resort located west of the island of Rügen off the north-eastern coast of Germany, an experience that later formed the basis of his first novel published in 2014, Kruso.
Seiler read German Studies at the universities of Halle (Saale) and Berlin up to 1990.
His 2014 debut novel, Kruso, won numerous awards.
Lutz Seiler is considered one of the most important German-speaking poets of today.

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be fair, one's enjoyment of this collection of essays will depend on whether one is a poet, or interested in the poetry and the process of inspiration/creation, or familiar with Lutz Seiler's own poetry and fiction. If an or all of the above apply, these pieces provide wonderful insight, not only into Seiler's work but that of other poets important to him in some way. I bought and read collections by Jürgen Becker and Peter Huchel while reading these essays. I had already read both of Seiler's poetry collections that have currently been translated and one of his two novels (and I have the other), so I am, perhaps, the ideal reader. Nonetheless, there is much in these essays beyond the vagaries of the writer's life. Seiler writes about growing up on a farm in the uranium mining region of the GDR (one of his grandfathers, a miner, could make the radio crackle by passing his hand over it) about his mandatory military service, and about the strangeness of returning to his much changed childhood home in the years since unification. Seiler is an important German poet and writer who is finally being more widely discovered by English speaking readers.
A longer review that takes in a few other poets along the way can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2024/12/19/th...

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of essays from the poet and novelist Lutz Seiler written over the last 30 years, translated by Martyn Crucifix.

Since 1997 Seiler has been the literary director and custodian at the Peter Huchel Haus and Museum, and several of the essays revolve around both the house (where Huchel one lived and Seiler now does). For me these presupposed a familarity with the poet's work which I don't have, and, more significantly, an interest in the life and house of an artist as much as their work, which I don't share.

Beside the writing shed is the oldest of the three sheds, the ur-shed, the others being additions from later periods. The poet Peter Huchel used this as his cats’ quarters, but also for tools and for parts of his Sinn und Form journal archive, which included correspondence and submitted work. The cat flap in the shed door is broken. Apart from a few stray items, the archive vanished after
the death of the poet Erich Arendt, who lived in this house on Hubertusweg after Huchel. It is said that Arendt never once set foot in Huchel’s tool shed. He was not a man much interested in tools and not especially drawn to the idea of life in a rural setting. But Huchel was, and this was, in part, to sustain a closeness to the materials and matters of village life, and it was from his memory of these things that much of his writing arose.

From a longer extract available a href="https://www.andotherstories.org/wp-co....

Perhaps tellingly, my favourite piece was on a work of art, Rik Wouters 1914 painting 'The Flute Player'



Some of the more autobiographical essays, of growing up in an East German landscape dominated by coal and, particularly, uranium mining, are evocative but felt a rather watered down version of Wolfgang Hilbig's prose.

Overall - not one for me.

[Vanessa Fernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this quiet, contemplative book. I knew nothing about the author or his context before, but from the first description of the house I was drawn in. The blending of everyday life details with poetic expansion into broader themes is delightful.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5
I want to note that I received "In Case of Loss" as part of my subscription to And Other Stories and that this was not a book I probably would have picked up on my own.
"In Case of Loss" is going to be a lot more meaningful to readers who enjoy and read poetry, specifically the poetry of Lutz Seiler and Peter Huchel. About half the book focuses on those, and so readers unfamiliar with them, such as myself, will spend a fair amount of the book on topics they don't know about and maybe don't care about. Some authors can make readers interested in something they previously knew little about, but unfortunately Seiler didn't accomplish that for me and those sections were a slog.
What was interesting for me in "Loss" were the parts about life in East Germany, Germany right after the fall of the wall, and the small slices of life, such as the essay about the man in the cherry-picker. Those were a lot more engaging, and I generally enjoyed them.
Overall, some of the essays were interesting but I can't see myself wanting to revisit it in the future and am going to give the book away. I've currently chosen to rounded up to three stars because I don't think I am the intended audience for the book.

[Edward Champion · Rating 3 out of 5]

These "essays" read more like unedited blog posts at their worst and interesting personal meditations (particularly on writing and the history of radium as a healing remedy) at their best. My main issue with Seiler is that the dude overexplains everything and, all too often, his need to document the somewhat inconsequential gets in the way of true insight. Yeah, whatevs, bro.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book of essays, I found this very informative and engaging.

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just found these very uninteresting essays. The only thing that stands in mind to these is East Germany's Uranium supplies (maybe that is more to do with current politics)

[Callum Osment · Rating 2 out of 5]

bleh