Martin Mosebach

Martin Mosebach (born July 31, 1951, Frankfurt am Main, W.Ger.) German novelist and essayist whose social commentary was informed by his Roman Catholic faith.

Mosebach embarked in the early 1980s on a career as a freelance writer in his hometown of Frankfurt am Main, having studied law both there and in Bonn. He mirrored his own homecoming in his first novel, Das Bett (1983), the story of a man who returns to Frankfurt and reverts to a childlike state. The book investigates themes of mining the past for core values applicable to the present, establishing one of the prevailing threads in Mosebach’s writings. Frankfurt became a recurring character anchoring many of the author’s literary efforts. The city featured prominently in such later works as Ruppertshain (1985), Westend (1992), and his breakthrough novel, Eine lange Nacht (2000). Der Mond und das Mädchen (2007) is a sardonic reimagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His non-Frankfurt novels included Die Türken (1999), a meditation on the true roots of man’s search for meaning, and Der Nebelfürst (2001), the humorous tale of a 19th-century newspaperman who gets caught up in an elaborate international confidence scam.

In addition to his career as a novelist, Mosebach was an equally accomplished nonfiction writer. His most prominent work in this genre was Häresie der Formlosigkeit. Die römische Liturgie und ihr Feind (2002; rev. ed., 2007; The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy, 2006), which eloquently argues for a return to the Latin Mass of the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church. Mosebach also published poetry; wrote scripts for radio, television, and theatre; and was a regular contributor to German newspapers.

Mosebach’s work attracted significant acclaim; he was awarded the Heimito von Doderer Prize (1999), the Kleist Prize (2002), and the Kranichsteiner Literature Prize (2005). In 2007 Mosebach received the Georg Büchner Prize, Germany’s most prestigious literary honour. The award was given by the German Academy for Language and Literature for the most outstanding lifetime contribution to German culture, and Mosebach’s selection continued a recent trend of awarding the prize to a socially conscious author. His particular brand of social awareness was noteworthy in that it originated with the writer’s deep faith in traditional Roman Catholicism and his desire to see the ethos of the church better reflected in the modern era.